VV#58 - Condemned to "Hell" - Lazarus and Apocalyptic Honor/Shame Reversals
Understanding the fire of Hell as powerful imagery for historic society-wide reversals in values
In the previous part, we discussed the judgment that Jesus said was coming on Pharisees and the entire religious leadership of his day, because of their extreme and prolonged hypocrisy, and their refusal to return to the heart of their Torah, as Jesus claimed. Thus he declared to them:
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:33)
This very public diatribe was a furious rebuke that would have indeed ruffled many religious feathers (and was intended to) and set up a deep antagonism between this Jesus and the comfortable religious elites that enjoyed their powerful (but compromised) position under Roman subjugation.
It was within this prideful position of being only concerned with maintaining their sacred temple and political/social prestige that Jesus claimed they would—despite all their efforts to the contrary—lose their sacred temple and their city. It was here that Jesus said that they would indeed be “condemned to hell”.
But what was this “hell” that Jesus was speaking of? Was it the idea that is popular in our modern culture? Was this “hell” reminiscent of our ideas of eternal conscious torment in literal flames that some people are consigned to after they physically die?
Or did Jesus have something else in mind when he spoke within this pre-apocalyptic timeframe?
The Rich Man in Flames?
In Luke chapter 16, we have one of the most visceral descriptions of “hell” that exists in the whole Bible. Virtually completely absent from the Old Testament, what we come into contact here in Luke is not just the idea of hell, but also descriptive imagery of it at a whole different level in terms of it’s memorable quality:
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” (Luke 16:19-31)
I remember quite vividly first really getting into this passage as a teenager, and being quite shocked by what I read. It definitely fueled my zeal at the time to (selfishly) make sure that I wasn’t one of those who would be consigned to “this place of torment”.
Yes, in the same way that I (understandably) didn’t have a true sense how the shame of crucifixion was far worse than the physical pain and torture of it all, so also I couldn’t appreciate the fundamental idea that Jesus was driving at in this parable/story. Like almost all others around me, I couldn’t get past the frightening (apparently literal) imagery of fire and thus I read this passage as I did many others…like I was reading a newspaper.
But as I have since discovered to my shock, the imagery of fire that Jesus used in this passage had much broader and more profound historical implications than that of a literal torture chamber after death.
“He who falls on this rock”
In Matthew 21, Jesus publicly spoke against the Pharisees by quoting the Psalmist:
“Have you never read in the Scriptures:
‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” (Matthew 21:42-44)
What was this “stone the builders rejected” that has ended up “becoming the cornerstone”? What did it mean?
The verse that Jesus was referring to was from the book of Psalms, where the Psalmist said:
“I will not die but live,
and will proclaim what the LORD has done.
The LORD has chastened me severely,
but he has not given me over to death.
Open for me the gates of the righteous;
I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD
through which the righteous may enter.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.” (Psalms 118:17-21)
In this section, the Psalmist had submitted to the chastening and rebuke of the Lord (and the reminder about the spirit of the law of Moses), and that because of that, the way of righteousness had been (remarkably) open to him again. Just as Yahweh had promised to the Israelites long ago, if they did manage to fall away from the heart of their own covenant, Yahweh would be willing to take them back again—that is, if they were willing to “rend their hearts”.
Unlike all the other gods, Yahweh was a jealous God who really desired the hearts of his people, and even went to the extreme of saying that he loved his people (Jeremiah 31:3), and that he would be willing to forgive them if they had lost their way and offended their covenant.
Unlike other gods who more often didn’t care, or were often petulant and would not hesitate to wipe you out if you transgressed in a certain way (or simply didn’t do enough), Yahweh was famously quite different. Yes, it was not for no reason that the Psalmist above marvelled with amazement at the fact that “he [did not] die but live[d]” (after falling short) and thus “proclaimed what the Lord had done” for him.
He would marvel about this in a later chapter how Yahweh (unlike all the other gods) was gracious and kind:
“The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalms 103:8-12)
This aspect of Yahweh was both remarkable and repulsive to other nations. It was something other nations would reject outright—and something that the Israelites, if they were comfortable enough, would tend to forget themselves about how great and remarkable a potential it was that they could be forgiven at all to begin with:
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the LORD has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalms 118:22-23)
The Psalmist had seen this submitting to the “chastening” of Yahweh as a core element of what it meant to be an Israelite to begin with, and an amazing privilege. Very much unlike other cultures who would have been openly hostile to such a notion of submitting to just one God (and the idea of being forgiven by the Divine)—and also, as Israelites themselves had forgotten what it truly was to be faithful to their covenant—it was indeed “the stone that the builders had rejected”.
It was this great distinction and privilege that Jesus had said that “the builders rejected”, and it was soon going to come to pass that through those very hypocritical Pharisees who had forgotten this remarkable and—according to other nations—quite strange aspect of Yahweh, that through this Jesus, this “gracious and compassionate” aspect of the Divine would now be offered to those that the Pharisees had previously thought were excluded (and unworthy) from receiving… the Gentiles. As Jesus had said about how they had gotten too comfortable and couldn’t anymore see the forest for the trees:
“…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”
And as he said in the gospel of Luke:
“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.” (Luke 13:28-30)
Yes, those who were considered “first” in the age that Jesus lived in, would soon be considered “last” in the age that was coming. And those who were once considered “last” would then be considered “first”.
You see, this compassion of Yahweh for his people that the Psalmist marvelled at (in contrast with other gods) had always been intended to spill over into the world at large as well, which is why Israel—in stark contrast with other nations—had strict laws about making sure that those who were vulnerable in society were not left to perish:
“Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.
“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (Exodus 22:22-27)
This precedent set by Yahweh to have serious concern for those who were weak and perishing in society was not at all normal throughout the ancient world. In our modern times where democracies all have some sort of social safety net that (at least on the surface) appears to takes care of people who “fall through the cracks” to various degrees, in most ancient societies poverty would often mean death.
A Roman soldier or citizen simply had no regard for slaves and the poor at all in principle. Jesus simply wouldn’t have had anything to say to a Roman soldier about hypocrisy over not caring for the poor, because they were OVERT about their values at the very start… namely, that slaves were non-persons, and thus could not at all be conceived to be someone who deserved “dignity”—or even the “cloak” mentioned in the above verse—to begin with. The only reason that he went after the Pharisees was because they had claimed a distinguishing name that—in it’s very founding—was supposed to be different than other nations.
The Israelites as a people had historically set themselves apart as a nation in many ways (like circumcision), but a major distinguishing factor was in how they had treated the poor. Because Yahweh had established his people through liberation from slavery in Egypt, they were to be different from other nations and actually care about slaves and the poor in their own midst as well.
And this Jesus of Nazareth would have understood this principle clearly. In fact, he lived it out in his own life by caring for all the outcasts that both Roman society (which acted consistently with their own stated values when they disregarded them) and the Jewish elites (who acted inconsistently with their own stated values) had thrown overboard.
This was the whole point of why Jesus taught the parable of The Good Samaritan to begin with (Luke 10:25-37). He had been trying to bring his own people back to the very elements that had distinguished them as a people at the very start. And Jesus took very seriously the warning from Exodus that, if they did not learn to actually care about “the fatherless and the widow”, that the protection from Yahweh would be removed, and that he would use other nations to even kill them, as the above quoted verse says clearly:
“My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.”
For Jesus, it was futile for the Jewish elites of his day to resist Roman power, because they would not have the protection of Yahweh in battle as they had in previous ages, because they no longer obeyed the founding principles of their own holy texts. And if they persisted in resisting their overlords while ignoring their own scripture, the promise of their own scriptures would mean the hell of destruction… and the hell of regret.
Yes, Jesus wanted them to “fall on this rock” (come back to their own founding principles) before they would be “crushed” by the rock falling on them (reckoning).
Gnashing of Teeth - Regret over not seeing it coming
Thus we now have the ability to understand what Jesus meant when he described the rich man as someone who was “in agony in this fire” after he died, and how the poor man had gone to “Abraham’s bosom”:
In keeping with the distinguishing character of Judaism as a faith that actually cared about the poor and the outcasts, Jesus described this poor man, Lazarus, as someone who was taken to “Abraham’s bosom” (which was considered the place of blessedness in Jewish thought). While the rich man (who was probably a Jewish elite of some sort in his lifetime) was taken to a place of torment where he was “in agony in this fire”. And in this agony, he begged Abraham to send Lazarus to “cool the tip of his tongue” with water.
In modern times, it can be easy to interpret a story like this as either a story of revenge, or a story about literal hell fire after death. In reality, it is neither.
The enduring hell-fire spoken of here is very reminiscent of similar imagery when Jesus quoted the prophet discussing “the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”:
“…if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where
‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’
Everyone will be salted with fire.” (Mark 9:47-49)
Jesus was quoting here the prophet Isaiah when he said:
“And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” (Isaiah 66:24)
And so in context, we can clearly see that the “hell-fire” Jesus is speaking of here is simply extreme hyperbolic language to signify the incoming values inversion and apocalyptic reckoning that would soon be coming on the city of Jerusalem and the sacred temple that was a national point of pride for a people and faith that had turned their backs on the fundamental social issues that they had claimed to champion.
Whether it is the rich man “in flames” in this Lukan parable, or “the fire that burns and is not quenched” from the prophet Isaiah, it is all a profound metaphor of the incoming total disaster and extreme emotional and spiritual regret that would be felt in the people when they realized that this Jesus of Nazareth had been correct in his criticism of the religious elites of his day.
Yes, they would indeed see “the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven”. And the promise would come true that, because they had forsaken the “least of these” in the society around them, they would indeed be “killed with the sword” and be consigned to the “hell” of the garbage dump of history.