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This question has some layers to it. Sometimes the concept of hell is confused with some other concepts, namely the word "Hades," which is not the "hell" that we think of as the ultimate judgement place, or, put crudely, the place that has "fire" in it.

Here's a simple run through of the the terms: in the Old Testament, a Hebrew word called "Sheol" was frequently used to mean, basically, the realm that people go to when they die. It's not heaven, it's not the hell of judgement that Jesus warns about.

In the New Testament, translators would often use the word "Hades" to mean a place where the dead go, not to judgement or to reward, but just a place they go after death to wait. So, basically, Sheol and Hades represent the same basic idea- in scripture. The word "Hades" was borrowed from Greek folks to describe a Hebrew idea, basically.

Okay, so then there's the term "hell" that refers to a place of judgement, the place that most people tend to think of as "fiery," etc. This is found about 15 times in the NIV New Testament (by my quick count). The word that we usually translate as "hell" is the word "Gehenna," and it was used often by Jesus to give an idea to His followers about what the future place of judgement would be like. You can find this in Matthew 5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33; Mark 9:43,15,47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6.

The reason that Jesus probably said "Gehenna" to people to describe the place of judgement for those who rejected God is because Gehenna is a valley where idolatrous worship and evil practices took place (2 Chron. 28:3) that Israel's king later destroyed (2 Kings 23:10). After it was laid to waste, people basically would throw the nastiest bits of their garbage into it, so it was a pretty awful, unclean place. That's probably why Jesus uses it as a metaphor to describe an scary place where the unclean things go. We tend to translate the word as "hell" instead of "Gehenna."

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