Revelation 20:14

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:14 (ESV / NIV)

Context

Revelation 20 closes the apocalyptic arc: the thousand-year reign (vv.1-6), the loosing of Satan and the final battle (vv.7-10), the judgement before the white throne (vv.11-13), and finally the casting of Death, Hades and all those not enrolled in the book of life into the lake of fire (vv.14-15). V.14 is textually the centre: it defines what the lake of fire is — namely “the second death.” This self-definition is repeated almost verbatim in 21:8 (ho thanatos ho deuteros).

The term “second death” (deuteros thanatos, Aramaic mota tinjana) has a clear Jewish-Aramaic background: in Targum Onkelos to Deut 33:6 the warning runs: “Let Reuben live and not die the second death.” In Targum Jonathan to Isa 65:6 and Jer 51:39 the same expression denotes the definitive perishing of the wicked after judgement. The seer of Revelation takes up a term already familiar in the synagogue — not a dogmatic construction of his own.

The “lake of fire” image draws on the language of destruction in the Old Testament and early Judaism: Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:24), the judgement on Gog (Ezek 38:22), the destruction of the instruments of covenant-breaking (Dan 7:11). In none of these templates is what is burned preserved forever — the fire completes the destruction. Jude 7 confirms it: the “eternal fire” of Sodom is a completed act that has reduced the cities to ashes, not a torment-event still ongoing today.

The literary function of v.14 is also theologically important: Death and Hades, who appeared in 6:8 as rider and companion, are at last themselves thrown into the lake of fire. They are not persons but designations of power and realm. The text thereby makes it explicit: what is destroyed here is the power of dying itself. A doctrine of human beings who “suffer forever but never die” would presuppose that death as a power continued — which v.14 precisely rules out.

The immediately following verse, 21:4, drives the point home: “Death shall be no more.” In the new creation there is no more dying — neither a first nor a second. That presupposes that the judgement is completed; were hell an everlasting institution of dying, Rev 21:4 could not be true.

The Socinian central thesis

The Socinian thesis on Rev 20:14 is this: death means death, not a perpetual life under torment. The text gives its own exegesis with it: “This is the second death.” Whoever interprets the second death as eternal, painful waking presence adds to the text’s self-definition what the text precisely does not say. Thanatos in biblical usage means perishing, vanishing, ceasing-to-be — not another mode of being.

This reading is consistent with the basic anthropological commitment of the Brethren of Raków: man is by nature mortal; immortality is solely God’s gift in Christ through resurrection. Whoever remains in Christ receives the gift of life — whoever rejects it returns to the nothingness from which he came. The “second death” is the definitive perishing of those who turn their backs on the gift of life once and for all.

Thereby the tension dissolves which in the traditional teaching remains inescapable: an eternally suffering soul presupposes a natural, God-independent immortality. This assumption rests on nothing in the Bible; it was imported into theology from Plato’s Phaedo. If the Platonic premise is let go, the eternal life-under-torment falls with it — and Rev 20:14 simply says what it says: second death.

V.14b adds a decisive point: “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” These two are not moral agents but designations of power and realm. What they represent — dying and the shadow-existence of the dead — is definitively abolished. An everlasting hell would be the perpetuation of death, not its destruction; it would contradict v.14b.

Exegesis: key terms and word-field

Five key terms decide the interpretation of Rev 20:14 linguistically and theologically:

deuteros thanatos — “second death”

The expression ho thanatos ho deuteros occurs in the New Testament exclusively in Revelation (2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8). It has no precursor in classical Greek, but it does in the Jewish-Aramaic literature: Targum Onkelos to Deut 33:6 (“Let Reuben live and not die the second death”), Targum Jonathan to Isa 22:14 and 65:6, and to Jer 51:39, 57. In all these places the second death is the definitive perishing of the wicked after the final judgement — not a form of survival under torment.

Linguistically, thanatos in the LXX and the NT is the antonym of zoe (life). Where life ceases, death begins; where death is, there is no life. A semantic narrowing of thanatos to “separation from God while remaining fully conscious” is a theological, not a philological operation. Biblical usage does not know this meaning.

The designation second death presupposes logically the first death. If the first death is the ceasing of biological life, the second death is the ceasing of the life restored after resurrection — a definitive, no longer revocable perishing. It is more severe than the first death because no further resurrection follows it. But it is death, not perpetual torment.

limne tou pyros — “lake of fire”

The image of the lake of fire is an apocalyptic symbol of destruction, not a topographical report on the next world. It draws on Dan 7:11 (the fourth beast is killed, its body destroyed and given over to the burning fire), on the Sodom tradition (Gen 19:24), on 1 Enoch 54:6, and on the Old Testament Tophet-imagery (Isa 30:33). In all these templates the fire destroys; it does not preserve.

In the context of Rev 19:20 and 20:10, first the cosmic symbol-figures of evil — the beast, the false prophet, the dragon — are thrown into the lake of fire. In 20:14 the same lake of fire is now explicitly defined as the second death. This hermeneutical bridge is important: what for cosmic mythical figures appears in the language of the judgement-image as “torment day and night” (v.10) is in v.14 interpreted for mortal humans as death.

Jude 7 also helps: Sodom and Gomorrah suffered “eternal fire” (pyros aioniou) — and yet today they lie in rubble and ashes, no human being suffers there. “Eternal” designates the definitive, irreversible character, not an infinite duration of subjective enduring.

eblêthêsan — “were thrown”

The aorist passive eblêthêsan denotes a completed, singular act. What “was thrown” is now at its destination — not in a continuing throwing-process. This punctiliar aspectuality fits the destruction reading: the act is finished, what is destroyed is done away with.

The subjects of the throwing here are “Death and Hades” (ho thanatos kai ho hades). Both are personifications of abstract realms, not individuals. The text says: the power of dying and the realm of the dead are conveyed into the lake of fire and there brought to an end. For a doctrine of the eternal consciousness of the reprobate, that is the worst conceivable choice of image.

hades — “realm of the dead”

Hades in the NT (following the LXX) is the standard equivalent of the Hebrew sheol — the realm of the dead, the “land of silence” (Ps 115:17), a state of separation from consciousness, not a torture-custody. Whoever is in Hades “thinks no more” (Ps 146:4), “does not praise God” (Ps 6:5), “knows nothing more” (Eccl 9:5).

When v.14 says that Hades itself is thrown into the lake of fire, then the intermediate state of the dead is definitively dissolved. This has a fine theological logic: after the resurrection (v.13) no realm of the dead is needed any longer; either man lives in the new aeon, or he dies the definitive death. A third option (perpetual torment) is not envisaged by the text.

houtos estin ho thanatos ho deuteros — “This is the second death”

This identification-formula — comparable to the Johannine ego eimi sayings — sets two entities in absolute equation: lake of fire = second death. It is the text’s explicit self-interpretation of the image. Wherever a text interprets its own images, that self-interpretation has priority over every dogmatic tradition.

Whoever reads the verse in the traditional-orthodox way must in effect ignore v.14b or allegorise it. Both are hermeneutically costly: in the first case one sacrifices the text’s self-exegesis; in the second one does not carry through consistently what is said about Death and Hades and apply it to what is said about humans. The destruction reading needs to allegorise nothing: it takes the identification-formula at its word.

Comparison of the readings

Reference to Fausto Sozzini

The Socinian exegesis of Rev 20:14 is not an isolated special opinion but an integral part of the basic anthropological decision of the Brethren of Raków: man is by nature mortal, immortality is solely God’s gift in Christ. Fausto Sozzini formulates this principle programmatically in his main work On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore); the Racovian Catechism translates it into a catechetical form of teaching.

I confess that not only the first parents but the whole human race is subject, on account of sin, to death — and that to eternal death. But this did not flow from any necessary justice of God, but from his free will. Therefore, just as God could rightly have not delivered men, although they sinned, to eternal death, so also, having once delivered them by his edict to that death, he could by his mere will and with right release them again from that dominion.

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), Part I (reply to Covet’s ninth question)

Sozzini holds firmly: “eternal death” is the real consequence of sin — but it is so by free divine edict, not by any natural necessity. With that the Platonic premise of a naturally immortal soul that suffers forever under punishment falls away. God can impose death or remit it; what he does not sustain, perishes. That is precisely what Rev 20:14 describes: the definitive, no longer revocable death of those whose names are not in the book of life.

The Racovian Catechism draws the anthropological consequence from this foundation and explains in the section “On the way of salvation” that man is a mortal creature from the beginning:

“Man was created mortal from the beginning, that is, as one who not only by his nature could die, but also, if left to his own nature, would inevitably have to die, although by divine grace he could be continually preserved in life.” Racovian Catechism, section “On the way of salvation — The mortality of man”

From this it follows necessarily: whoever does not receive God’s gift of life in Christ remains given over to his own nature — and dies. The second death of Revelation is the definitive realisation of this natural mortality, after even the temporary resurrection life granted with a view to the final judgement (John 5:29) passes away.

The Racovian Catechism explicitly defends this basic distinction in the discussion of Romans 5:12 against any blending of mortality with eternal death and writes: “The Apostle there is not treating of mortality but of death itself, indeed of eternal death. But immortality is very different from death, indeed from eternal death, since someone can be mortal and yet never have to die, much less that it would be necessary that he should remain forever in death.” Racovian Catechism, section “On the way of salvation”

The catechetical thought is precise: mortality is not the same as eternal death, and eternal death does not mean an everlasting remaining-in-death under torment. Whoever dies definitively is definitively no more — that is the definition of death, not a hint at another mode of existence. That is precisely what Rev 20:14 does as the biblical self-definition of the lake of fire.

Overview of Sozzini’s writings

Logical arguments

From Rev 20:14 and its context the following logical and linguistic arguments emerge in favour of the conditionalist, Socinian reading:

1. Argument from self-definition. The text interprets itself: “This is the second death, the lake of fire.” Where a text exegetes its own image-language, this self-exegesis takes precedence over every dogmatic tradition. An interpretation that re-interprets “death” as “a perpetual life under torment” contradicts the text-internal hermeneutic.
2. Argument from the double throwing. According to v.14 also Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Both are not persons but designations of realms. If the lake of fire abolishes these realms of power themselves, it cannot at the same time be the eternal preservation of what it is precisely destroying. An everlasting hell would be the perpetuation of death — but in v.14 it is abolished.
3. Argument from Rev 21:4. In the immediately following verse God proclaims: “Death shall be no more.” In the new creation there is no more dying. That works only if the second death is a completed act. Were hell an everlastingly continuing institution of dying with conscious suffering, “death shall be no more” would be a false statement.
4. Argument from natural mortality. If man is by nature mortal (cf. Racovian Catechism on the Adam-image, Gen 2:7; 3:19; 1 Tim 6:16; Rom 2:7), then immortality is a gift — and a gift refused leads back into mortality. An eternally suffering soul presupposes a non-biblical Platonic anthropology that the New Testament does not share.
5. Argument from the Sodom comparison (Jude 7). Sodom and Gomorrah suffered “eternal fire” — and are today ashes. “Eternal” designates the irreversibility of the act, not the infinite duration of a subjective enduring. Precisely this semantics carries Revelation: the second death is definitive, not endlessly tormented.
6. Argument from the Jewish-Aramaic background. The “second death” is prefigured in the Targumic literature (Deut 33:6; Isa 22:14; Jer 51:39). There it is a term of destruction, not of torment. The seer of Revelation takes up a term introduced in the synagogue; a complete reversal of its meaning against the Jewish linguistic background would be hermeneutically improbable.
7. Argument from the LXX semantics of Hades. Hades is the Old Testament sheol: the “land of silence” in which no one any longer thinks or praises God (Ps 6:5; 115:17; Eccl 9:5). If Hades itself is thrown into the lake of fire, there is no longer any intermediate state of conscious suffering — either resurrection-life or the second death, no third.
8. Argument from the book of life (v.15). Whoever is not inscribed in the book of life is thrown into the lake of fire. That is a life/death dualism — not a life/perpetual-life-under-torment dualism. Biblical speech knows only two options: life in God or death; eternal life-under-torment would be a third option for which the text leaves no room.
9. Argument from Mk 9:48 and Isa 66:24. The “fire that is not quenched” in Mark quotes Isa 66:24 — and there it is the corpses that are eaten by the worm, not eternally living souls. The fire in Isa 66 burns over the dead, not over the living. This intertextual line confirms the destruction-semantics of the apocalyptic fire.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages deepen the conditionalist exegesis of Rev 20:14:

Genesis 2:17; 3:19 — You shall surely die

The penalty for the breach of the Eden covenant is death, not eternal life under torment. The Hebrew expression mot tamut is interpreted by 3:19: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The Old Testament basic semantics of death is the return into the nothingness of matter — not a second form of existence.

Malachi 4:1 (3:19 LXX/MT) — Neither root nor branch

“They shall be stubble, and the day that is coming shall set them ablaze, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” This is the Old Testament template for the eschatological image of the destroying fire. What burns is no longer there afterwards — “neither root nor branch” remains. Cf. Malachi 4:1.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 — The dead know nothing

“The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.” This radical this-worldly anthropology of Qoheleth breaks every notion of a conscious intermediate state. If the first death already leads to complete not-knowing, the second death is not less than that: complete perishing.

Psalm 146:4 — His breath departs, his plans perish

“His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; on that day his plans perish.” Death is the ceasing of the person as a thinking being. This Hebrew anthropology underpins the conditionalist reading of Revelation.

Ezekiel 18:4 — The soul that sins shall die

Nephesh (soul) here is not the eternally immortal self but the living human being. What sins, dies. This is the Old Testament main line: sin leads to death, not to an eternal perpetual life under torment.

Matthew 10:28 — Destroy both body and soul

“Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The Greek apolesai means to destroy, annihilate, ruin — not to preserve forever under torment. God is the power that can destroy. Cf. Matthew 10:28.

Romans 6:23 — The wages of sin is death

Paul does not set life over against perpetual torment but life over against death. Thanatos is the consequence of sin, zoe aionios is the gift of God. The two terms exclude one another. Cf. Romans 6:23.

Jude 7 — Eternal fire as completed destruction

Sodom and Gomorrah suffered “eternal fire” — and are today ashes. The term aionios designates the irreversibility of the destructive act, not the infinite duration of a subjective suffering. Precisely this semantics carries the “eternal fire” of Revelation.

Revelation 21:4 — Death shall be no more

In the immediately following chapter God promises the end of death. That presupposes that the second death is a completed act. Were hell an everlastingly continuing dying, “death shall be no more” in the new creation would simply be untrue.

Objections and Socinian replies

Objection 1: “Revelation 20:10 does after all speak of torment day and night for ever and ever!”

V.10 speaks of cosmic symbol-figures of evil — of the dragon (personification of Satan), of the beast (personification of deifying world-power) and of the false prophet (personification of pseudo-religious seduction). These are not mortal humans but apocalyptic symbol-figures for the anti-divine principle. What is said in the image-language of a vision-like text about such cosmic personifications of power need not be transferred one-to-one to human beings.

Decisive is this: for human beings Revelation itself interprets in v.14 what the lake of fire means: second death. This self-definition has hermeneutical priority over v.10. An interpretation that makes v.10 the guiding norm for v.14 reverses the text-internal direction of exegesis — that is methodologically problematic.

In addition, the formula “day and night for ever and ever” in Revelation also stands at another place (14:11) for the fire of judgement and there clearly takes up the image of the smoke (cf. Isa 34:9-10 concerning Edom). There too the “eternally” rising image is a statement about the irreversibility and the definitive expiration, not about an infinitely continuing subjective torment.

Finally: even if one understood v.10 substantively as concerning the fate of the symbol-figures, this would have no logical force for the anthropological question of the second death of human beings — because human beings are constituted differently from cosmic symbol-figures. The Socinian reading can let v.10 stand and take v.14 at its word; the traditional reading has to re-interpret v.14 against its own self-definition.

Objection 2: “If the damned simply cease to exist, that is no real punishment at all.”

This objection presupposes that the weight of a punishment is measured by the subjective quantum of suffering — a thoroughly modern, utilitarian premise. Biblically, the heaviest conceivable punishment is definitive exclusion from life with God, not the maximum endured duration of pain. The complete loss of that for which man was created (divine fellowship, eternal life, participation in the new creation) is a total punishment — even when it is not endured forever in consciousness.

Moreover, the objection overlooks that Jewish apocalyptic thought regarded precisely the “second death” as the heaviest possible punishment — not as a relief. In Targum Onkelos to Deut 33:6 the wish “that Reuben should not die the second death” is the most intense form of any prayer for salvation. Whoever within the text-internal image-world of the Apocalypse relativises the second death misjudges the weight with which the sources picture it precisely as the final term of horror.

Finally, it is theologically problematic to derive a measure of punishment from the requirement that a maximum duration of pain must obtain in order for God to preserve his justice. That would subject God to a vengeance-logic fixed upon pain, a logic which the Old Testament and New Testament image of God do not carry. God’s judgement is just, definitive and total — but not longer-lasting than is justly necessary.

Sozzini hit on exactly this point: if God imposes the punishment of his free will (cf. the main quotation above), then its shape is bounded not in necessity but in his saving action. Annihilation is definitive — more than definitive a punishment cannot be.

Objection 3: “But the Bible teaches the natural immortality of the soul — it cannot cease to exist at all!”

Biblical anthropology knows no natural immortality of the soul. 1 Tim 6:16 says expressly that God “alone has immortality.” Man is nephesh hayyah (Gen 2:7) — a living soul, not a being possessing a soul. This anthropology is holistic, not dualistic: if man dies, his whole being dies.

The immortal soul is a Platonic doctrine that came into Christian theology through Augustine — not a biblical prescription. If the Platonic premise is let go, most of the burdens of proof for eternal torment dissolve. That is precisely what Socinian theology does: it reads Scripture in its own anthropological logic, not through the Greek-philosophical spectacles.

Christ himself teaches a conditional immortality: “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). If the soul can be destroyed (apollymi), it is not naturally immortal. Paul refers to the reprobate as those who are “perishing” (apollymenoi, 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15) — a word-field that designates destruction, not survival.

In the Racovian Catechism this point is held in principle: God alone has immortality of himself; all other beings are mortal and need his preservation. With that the destruction reading of Rev 20:14 is not a daring special opinion but the consistent application of the biblical anthropology of creation.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast with the reading developed here:

• Matthew 25:46 — “Eternal punishment” and “eternal life” are complementary outcomes of judgement, not eternal states of experience.
• Malachi 4:1 — Neither root nor branch — Old Testament language of destruction as the background of the apocalyptic image of fire.
• Matthew 10:28 — Body and soul destroyed — God can destroy the whole person, not merely cause him to suffer.
• Romans 6:23 — The wages of sin is death, not perpetual life; biblical complementarity of life and death.
• 2 Thessalonians 1:9 — Destruction from the presence of the Lord as the Socinian-conditionalist key passage.

Summary

Revelation 20:14 supplies what is perhaps the clearest biblical self-definition in eschatology: the lake of fire is the second death. The text-internal exegesis of the Apocalypse leaves no room for an eternally suffering, but not dying, mode of existence. Death in biblical usage means perishing, ceasing-to-be — not a mode of perpetual life under torment.

Understood with Socinus, Rev 20:14 is the crown of conditionalist eschatology: because man is by nature mortal and immortality is solely God’s gift in Christ, the second death is the definitive perishing of those who reject the gift of life. Sozzini and the Racovian Catechism formulate the anthropological and soteriological foundation; Revelation 20:14 is its biblical place of completion.

The double throwing of Death and Hades into the lake of fire shows in addition: the judgement is the destruction of the power of destruction itself, not its perpetuation. Thereby room is made for the promise “death shall be no more” (21:4) and for the eschatological goal that God be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). The Socinian reading has theological consistency on its side here.