Luke 16:23

in hell Rather, in Hades. Hades, which is represented as containing both Paradise and Gehenna, and is merely the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol,-the grave," is the intermediate condition of the dead between death and the final judgment.The scene on earth is contrasted with the reversed conditions of the other world. The entire scenery and phraseology are Jewish, and are borrowed from those which were current among the Rabbis of Christ's day. Beyond the awful truth that death brings no necessary forgiveness, and therefore that the retribution must continue beyond the grave, we are not warranted in pressing the details of the imagery which was used as part of the vivid picture. And since the scene is in Hades, we cannot draw from it any safe inferences as to the finalcondition of the lost. The state of Dives may be, as

Tertullian says, a praelibatio sententiae, but it is not as yet the absolute sentence.