The Bible does speak of people being thrown into a fire. But symbolisms are frequent in the Bible. So, is the fire literal or symbolic? And if symbolic, what does it represent?

For example, Revelation chapter 20, verse 15 (King James Version), says: “Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” But Re 20 verse 14 says: “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.” Strange! Is hell itself to be tormented? And how can death, a condition, be thrown into a literal fire? The rest of Re 20 verse 14 reads: “This [the lake of fire] is the second death.” Revelation 21, verse 8, repeats this point. What is this “second death”? The Catholic Jerusalem Bible adds this footnote concerning “the second death”: “Eternal death. The fire . . . is symbolic.” Very true, for it signifies complete destruction, or annihilation.

However, some may ask: ‘Why does Revelation 20, verse 10, say that the Devil will be tormented in the lake of fire?’ If, as we have seen, the lake of fire is symbolic, then, logically, the torment is also.

In Bible times, jailers often cruelly tortured their prisoners, hence they were called “tormentors.” In one of his illustrations, Jesus spoke of a cruel slave as being ‘delivered to the jailers’ (Greek, ba·sa·ni·stesʹ, which actually means “tormentors” and is so rendered in several translations). (Matthew 18:34) So when Revelation speaks of the Devil and others as being “tormented . . . forever” in the lake of fire, it means that they will be “jailed” to all eternity in the second death of complete destruction. The Devil, the death inherited from Adam, and the unrepentant wicked all are spoken of as being destroyed eternally​—“jailed” in the lake of fire.​—Compare Hebrews 2:14; 1 Corinthians 15:26; Psalm 37:38.

Appreciating Bible symbolism helps us to understand what Jesus meant when he spoke of sinners’ being “cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:47, 48, KJ) The Greek word here used, translated as “hell fire,” is geʹen·na, or Gehenna. A valley by that name was located just outside Jerusalem and was used as a garbage dump. A fire burned day and night there to destroy the city rubbish. This, at times, included the bodies of criminals considered unworthy of a decent burial or of a resurrection. Worms were also present in the valley as destructive agents, but they were certainly not immortal! Jesus was simply illustrating graphically, in a way well understood by Judeans, that the unrepentant wicked would be everlastingly destroyed. Hence, Gehenna has the same meaning as “the lake of fire”​—it represents the second death of everlasting destruction.