Hades and Abraham's side

Blomberg calls Abraham's bosom and Hades "two traditional Jewish names for the places of the righteous and wicked dead." The picture of Abraham's side comes from the banquet, where the most honored guest reclined nearest the host, his head close to the host's chest. True Israelites, martyrs above all, hoped for a place beside Abraham in the age to come. Many believed that descent from Abraham secured a seat at the feast with the patriarchs. Hades by itself names the realm of the dead, the Greek equivalent of Sheol. Where torment and fire are added, it is what Jewish tradition called Gehinnom, or something like it, and Jewish literature often pictured hell as burning. In Jewish stories and art, angels carried the righteous off to paradise, and demons sometimes hauled the wicked away; Blomberg points especially to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Paradise, the garden of Eden, was set over against Gehenna. Jewish texts disputed where it lay, in the third heaven or at the edge of the earth, but often made it the home of the righteous after death or after the resurrection. The Talmud uses both paradise and Abraham's side for the place of blessedness. A folk tale in which a rich man and a poor man trade places after death, Egyptian in origin, was retold in Jewish circles (Blomberg). Keener calls the rabbinic form of it a story of uncertain date.

The poor man at Abraham's side and the rich man in Hades, in Luke 16:22-23, are placed with names every hearer knew, and then the expected places are reversed. Paradise named the home of the righteous, and Paul uses the word in 2 Corinthians 12:4 for the place he was caught up to. In Revelation 20:13-14 death and Hades give up their dead and are themselves thrown into the lake of fire.