Reviewed
Does the devil run hell?
Almost every picture we have of hell puts the devil in charge of it. In the text he is the one thrown into it, and the verbs are all done to him. What that does and does not settle.
What happens after you die · Reviewed
Also asked as Is the devil in charge of hell? · Does Satan rule hell? · Is hell the devil’s kingdom?
The question
Is hell the devil’s kingdom? Is he the one down there in charge of it, handing out the punishments, ruling something even if what he rules is awful?
Almost everyone who grew up in a culture shaped by Christianity carries this picture. Red figure, horns, pitchfork, throne. In cartoons he is the manager. In films he is the landlord. Even people who believe none of it can describe the office.
02 The objection — as its best advocate would put it
Here is the version of the difficulty that actually has teeth, and it is not the cartoon.
Scripture does give the devil a domain. Paul calls him “the prince of the power of the air” and “the god of this world”. John’s Gospel has Jesus calling him “the prince of this world”. In Matthew 4 he offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and the offer is not treated as a bluff — Jesus refuses the terms, not the ownership. So the idea that this figure has a realm is not something Christians made up in the Middle Ages. It is in the letters and in the Gospels.
And then there is the sharper form of the objection: this whole correction looks like tidying up after the fact. Christian art, Christian preaching and Christian imagination put a devil on a throne in hell for the better part of a thousand years. Now that the image has become embarrassing — too cartoonish, too pagan, too much like a folk tale — Christians go back to the text and discover it was never there. That is a convenient discovery. And “hell” in English Bibles is not even one word underneath. It covers several different things. If the vocabulary is that unstable, how much weight can a distinction about who is in charge of it possibly carry?
If that is roughly your objection, you have stated it better than most.
The answer
Start with the concession, because it is a real one. Scripture does assign the devil a sphere of operation. Ephesians 2:2 has him as “the prince of the power of the air”. 2 Corinthians 4:4 has him as “the god of this world”. Those are not marginal phrases. What is worth noticing is where that sphere is located: it is here. It is this world, this age, the air over your head. Not an underworld. And in John 12:31 that title arrives attached to an eviction notice: “Now the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out.”
So the text does not say the devil has no realm. It says his realm is the one you live in, and that it is being taken from him.
Now look at what happens grammatically wherever the text puts him near the fire. In Matthew 25:41 the fire is described as “prepared for the devil and his angels” — prepared for him, the way a cell is prepared for an occupant, not the way a workshop is prepared for a craftsman. In Revelation 20:1–3 an angel comes down with a key and a chain, and the verbs pile up: seized, bound, cast, shut, sealed. Five verbs, and he is the object of all five. In Revelation 20:10 he is “thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur”, and the sentence that follows uses the passive again: “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Tormented. Not tormenting.
That is the whole of the textual case, and it is worth being clear about how narrow it is. It is not an argument about what hell is like. It is an argument about who is doing what to whom, and on that one narrow question the text is not ambiguous anywhere. There is no passage in which the devil administers, presides over, owns, governs or is even said to be present in a place of punishment as anything other than a prisoner.
Where he is described as being, in the meantime, is here. 1 Peter 5:8: “Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Job 1:7 has him answer the question “Where have you come from?” with “From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” Both of those are pictures of movement across the surface of the world, not of residence beneath it.
The objection about vocabulary is fair and should be granted rather than argued with. English Bibles have used the single word “hell” for more than one underlying word. There is Sheol in the Hebrew, the realm of the dead. There is Hades in the Greek, which the Septuagint uses to translate Sheol. There is Gehenna, which is a place name — the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem — and which is the word Jesus actually uses in the Gospels. 2 Peter 2:4 uses a fourth term, Tartarus, borrowed from Greek mythology, and it uses it of angels rather than of people. And then the lake of fire in Revelation is a further image again, into which, in Revelation 20:14, Hades itself is thrown. Anyone who tells you these are simply four names for one place is going beyond the evidence.
But notice that the vocabulary problem does not touch the point. Whatever the lake of fire is, whatever Gehenna is, whatever the relationship between them, the devil is on the receiving end in every text that mentions him and it together. You can be entirely undecided about the nature of the place and still read the syntax.
As for where the throne came from: it is traceable, and it is not a conspiracy. Dante’s Inferno, around 1320, puts Satan at the very bottom of hell — and even there he is frozen waist-deep in ice, immobile, more furniture than sovereign. The poem that most powerfully put him at the centre did not put him in command. Milton’s Paradise Lost, 1667, gives us the line everyone remembers: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (Book I, line 263). That sentence is spoken by Satan, in character, in the poem’s opening act, and Milton spends the next eleven books showing what it is worth. It is a boast, not a job description, and not the poem’s verdict.
Two poems, seven hundred years of painting, and a great deal of cartooning later, the picture is common property. Nobody hid anything. An image simply became more available than the text it decorated.
The scripture in full
World English Bible · Public domain
Matthew 25:41
Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels;
Revelation 20:1–3
I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited earth, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were finished. After this, he must be freed for a short time.
Revelation 20:10
The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 20:14–15
Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.
1 Peter 5:8
Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
Ephesians 2:2
in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience;
2 Corinthians 4:4
in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
John 12:31
Now is the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out.
Job 1:6–7
Now on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, Satan also came among them. Yahweh said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”
The World English Bible renders the divine name as “Yahweh” where most English versions print “the LORD”. That is a translation decision by this version, not a difference in the underlying text.
Where Christians disagree
How long it lasts, and what it is
This is the live one, and it is not settled by anything on this page. Historically there are three positions. Most Christians through most of history have held eternal conscious torment. A minority tradition, with a long pedigree and a good deal of contemporary support, holds annihilation — that the second death is a death. A third position, held by some in the Eastern Christian tradition and by others besides, hopes for final restoration. Each has texts it leans on and texts it must work at. This page takes no view, and nothing above depends on one.
What Revelation 20 is describing
Christians read the chapter as a chronological forecast of future events, as a symbolic depiction of the present age, or as something in between. The disagreement is old and it is not going to be resolved by a website. It is worth saying that the reading of the syntax offered above holds on every one of those views, because on all of them the devil is the one to whom things are done.
Where the devil comes from
Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are the passages usually cited for his fall. In their own contexts, Isaiah 14:4 addresses “the king of Babylon” and Ezekiel 28:12 addresses “the king of Tyre” — both are named human rulers. Some Christians read a second, deeper referent in the poetry; others read them strictly as oracles against kings. Both readings are held by serious people.
Whether the lake of fire is literal
Some read fire, sulfur and smoke as description. Others read them as image. The text does not stop to tell you which it intends.
What the text does not tell us
- i.It never says who is in charge of the lake of fire. Not the devil, and not anyone else. The question is simply not answered.
- ii.It never gives a continuous narrative of the devil’s origin. There is no passage that tells the story from beginning to end. What exists is a set of images in different books, and Christians assemble them differently.
- iii.Luke 10:18 has Jesus say, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven.” It does not say when, or whether he is describing something past, something in progress, or something ahead.
- iv.It does not say what “tormented” involves.
- v.It does not describe the geography of any of this in a way you could draw. Every attempt to map it — including the famous ones — is illustration.
In one paragraph
The picture of the devil ruling hell comes mostly from two poems and seven centuries of art, not from Scripture. Scripture does give him a domain, and is quite direct about it: he is called the god of this world and the prince of the power of the air, and 1 Peter has him prowling around on the earth. But wherever the text puts him near the fire, he is the object of the sentence, never the subject. The fire in Matthew 25:41 is “prepared for” him. In Revelation 20 he is seized, bound, cast, shut and sealed, and then thrown into the lake of fire, where “they will be tormented”. Hell, on the text’s own account, is not his kingdom. It is his sentence. How long that sentence lasts, and what exactly it consists of, are separate questions, and Christians answer them differently.
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thefairquestion.com/questions/does-the-devil-run-hell/ · Reviewed 2026-07-30 · Scripture: World English Bible, public domain