20:14a
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire: This clause symbolically indicates that Death and Hades will be destroyed so that they will no longer have any effect on people. After this time, no one will die and no one will go to Hades.
In some languages a literal translation would not have the correct meaning. If that is true in your language, you may want to:
• Explain its meaning in your translation. For example:
death and Hades were ⌊destroyed by being⌋ thrown into the lake of fire
-or-
death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire ⌊and therefore became useless/powerless⌋
• Translate the meaning without the figure of speech. For example:
death and Hades were destroyed
-or-
death and Hades became useless/powerless
You may then want to indicate the literal words in a footnote. An example footnote is:
Literally: “death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” These words indicate that death and Hades will be destroyed. They will longer have any effect on people.
• Explain its figurative meaning in a footnote. An example footnote is:
This saying refers figuratively to death and Hades being destroyed so that they no longer have any effect on people.
Death and Hades were thrown: This clause is passive. Some languages must use an active clause. For example:
⌊God⌋ threw death and Hades
-or-
⌊they/someone⌋ threw death and Hades
-or-
⌊God commanded/caused someone to⌋ throw death and Hades
20:14b
This is the second death—the lake of fire:
The first death is when a person’s body dies on earth. The phrase the second death refers to being thrown into the lake of fire. Other ways to translate this clause are:
The lake of fire is what is called the second death
-or-
The lake of fire is the second time of dying
See how you translated the phrase second death in 20:6.
the second death: This phrase is emphasized in the Greek. If possible, emphasize this phrase.
© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.