Smith’s Bible Dictionary makes an interesting and rarely heard claim in it’s definition of hell…

In the Old Testament this is the word generally and unfortunately used by our translators to render the Hebrew Sheol. It really means the place of the dead, the unseen world, without deciding whether it be the place of misery or of happiness. It is clear that in many passages of the Old Testament Sheol can only mean “the grave,” and is so rendered in the Authorized Version; see, for example, Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 1 Sam. 2:6; Job 14:13. In other passages, however, it seems to involve a notion of punishment, and is therefore rendered in the Authorized Version by the word “hell.” But in many cases this translation misleads the reader. 

Consider the following statements from the book, How to Get Into the Bible: Big Scenes from Revelation.

Punishment for doing wrong is something most people seem to understand and accept. But eternal torture in a lake of burning sulfur is quite another thing—especially if the torturer is God, whom the Bible describes as the essence of love (1 John 4:8).

Part of the problem in understanding what God’s end-time punishment for sinners will be like is that the Bible has to resort to word pictures from the physical world to describe what will take place in an entirely different, spiritual dimension. John says Satan and his followers will be thrown into “a lake of burning sulphur” (19:20) where they will suffer “in pain day and night forever and ever” (20:10, see also 20:15). Jesus confirms that sinners are “in danger of the fires of hell” (Matthew 5:22), a place outside of the kingdom of God where people “cry and grit their teeth in pain” (Matthew 8:12). Surprisingly, Jesus also describes this as a place of darkness (Matthew 8:12). Yet fire displaces darkness.

What exactly is that place of fire and darkness, which the Bible sometimes calls hell? Hell is a word that comes from the Hebrew term Gehenna, an ever-smoldering garbage dump in a valley outside ancient Jerusalem. Here is where people threw their trash, as well as the corpses of executed criminals. The Jews in Jesus’ time used this place as a figure of speech to describe God’s punishment of sinners on Judgment Day.

From beginning to end, the Bible is clear that people have to suffer the consequences of their sinful choices. God honors their decision to reject him, his love, and his rescue from sin and judgment. But how those who reject him will suffer remains in the hands of God who “never does wrong” and “can always be trusted to bring justice” (Deuteronomy 32:4)

Miller, S. M., & Gross, P. (1998). How to get into the Bible. Includes index. (457). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.