Why Did Peter Say Angels Were Cast Into Tartarus?
Second Peter contains one of the most unusual statements in the New Testament. While warning that false teachers will not escape judgment, Peter reaches back to earlier acts of divine punishment and writes that God did not spare “angels when they sinned.” Most English translations then say that God cast those angels into hell and committed them to gloomy darkness until judgment (2 Peter 2:4).
But the Greek text is more specific than the English phrase “cast into hell” suggests. Peter uses the verb tartaroō—to cast into Tartarus. It is the only occurrence of this verb in the entire New Testament.
That raises several questions. Why did Peter choose a word associated in the ancient world with the imprisonment of rebellious divine beings? Which angels had sinned? Why were these angels imprisoned rather than simply expelled? And why does Peter move immediately from their judgment to Noah and the ancient world destroyed by the Flood?
The answers become clearer when 2 Peter is read alongside Jude, Genesis 6, and the Jewish interpretive world surrounding the New Testament.
The Only Use of Tartaroō in the New Testament
The Greek verb tartaroō appears only in 2 Peter 2:4. It means to consign or cast into Tartarus. Peter could have used more familiar New Testament terms associated with death or final judgment, but he chose a word his Greek-speaking audience would have recognized as the language of deep supernatural imprisonment.
In classical Greek thought, Tartarus was portrayed as a deep place of confinement associated especially with rebellious or defeated divine beings. Peter is not endorsing Greek mythology as inspired truth. Biblical writers can use vocabulary familiar to their audiences without accepting the theology of every culture in which that vocabulary appears. Paul uses athletic, military, legal, and political language in the same way.
The important point is the conceptual force of Peter’s word. He is describing a prison for rebellious heavenly beings. These angels are not merely dead, and Peter does not portray them as freely roaming the world. They are restrained and kept for a future judgment.
That detail immediately distinguishes them from Satan and other spiritual enemies who continue to act in the biblical story.
Peter’s Sequence Is the First Major Clue
The context of 2 Peter 2 is as important as the unusual vocabulary. Peter gives a sequence of examples to prove that God knows how to judge rebellion. First, he speaks of angels who sinned and were confined. Then he says that God did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah when the Flood came. Next, he turns to Sodom and Gomorrah (2 Peter 2:4–6).
The order is striking:
angels who sinned → confinement → Noah and the ancient world → Sodom and Gomorrah
Peter does not explicitly write, “The angels of verse 4 are the sons of God in Genesis 6.” The connection therefore should be argued rather than assumed. Yet the sequence creates a serious historical question: What recorded rebellion involving a group of heavenly beings belongs naturally before Noah and the Flood?
Genesis 6 is the obvious candidate. Immediately before the Flood narrative, Genesis describes the sons of God taking the daughters of mankind and introduces the Nephilim (Genesis 6:1–4). If the sons of God are heavenly beings—as Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7 strongly indicate—then Genesis already contains the kind of angelic transgression Peter places before Noah.
Peter’s chronology does not prove the identification by itself, but it strongly supports it.
Jude Describes the Same Kind of Judgment
Jude provides an even closer parallel. Jude 6 speaks of angels who did not remain within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling. God now keeps them under darkness in chains until the judgment of the great day.
Several elements overlap with Peter. Both writers identify the offenders as angels. Both describe a past transgression. Both say the offenders are presently restrained. Both make final judgment future. And both place the event among ancient examples of rebellion that demonstrate the certainty of God’s judgment.
Jude’s phrase “proper dwelling” is especially important. The Greek word oikētērion refers to a habitation or dwelling place. The term appears only one other time in the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians 5:2, where Paul speaks of a heavenly dwelling. At minimum, Jude portrays these angels as abandoning the sphere or condition God assigned to them.
The emphasis is not merely that they moved from one location to another. They rejected their appointed order.
That idea fits naturally with Genesis 6 in the supernatural reading: heavenly beings cross a boundary, take human women, and enter a union that does not belong to the order God established.
Jude 7 and the Theme of Boundary Crossing
Immediately after mentioning the angels, Jude turns to Sodom and Gomorrah. He says those cities likewise gave themselves to sexual immorality and pursued “different flesh” (Jude 7). The Greek expression is sarkos heteras, flesh of another or different kind.
Interpreters disagree over precisely how Jude’s comparison works. Some emphasize the sexual immorality of Sodom generally. Others see a more specific boundary-crossing theme because Genesis 19 identifies Lot’s visitors as angels and Jude places Sodom immediately after angels who abandoned their own proper sphere.
The second reading deserves serious consideration. In Genesis 6, heavenly beings pursue human women. In Genesis 19, the men of Sodom attempt to violate visitors whom the narrative identifies as angels. The direction is reversed, but both stories involve a transgression at the boundary between the human and heavenly orders.
This should not be overstated beyond what Jude actually says. His point is judgment: created beings do not possess the right to redefine the boundaries established by their Creator. The angels of verse 6 and the cities of verse 7 become examples of rebellion followed by divine sentence.
The Ancient Jewish World Already Knew This Story
The connection becomes even more significant when we consider the Jewish literature known before and during the New Testament period. First Enoch gives an expanded interpretation of Genesis 6 in which heavenly beings—called Watchers—leave heaven, take human women, and are eventually bound in darkness while awaiting judgment.
First Enoch 10 describes rebellious Watchers being bound and confined. Chapters 18–21 portray regions of imprisonment associated with rebellious heavenly beings. First Enoch 19 specifically connects imprisoned angels with those who had united themselves with women.
These writings are not Scripture. Their authority is historical, not canonical. They show how many Jewish readers in the centuries before Christ understood Genesis 6.
That historical context matters because Jude unmistakably knew Enochic tradition. Jude 14–15 closely follows 1 Enoch 1:9. The fact that Jude can cite a tradition preserved in 1 Enoch does not make the entire book inspired, just as Paul’s use of nonbiblical poets does not canonize their works. It does show that Jude and his audience shared an interpretive world in which the Watcher rebellion was familiar.
Peter’s language belongs naturally inside that same world: angels sinned, they were placed in supernatural confinement, and the next historical reference is Noah.
Tartarus Is Not Simply Another Name for Every Biblical “Hell”
Modern English often uses the word hell to combine several biblical ideas that the original languages distinguish. That can obscure Peter’s point.
The Old Testament uses Sheol for the realm of the dead. The New Testament uses Hades in related contexts. Gehenna is frequently associated with final judgment. Revelation uses the image of the lake of fire for the final punishment of the devil and the wicked. Peter, however, uses tartaroō for a specific group of sinning angels who are being kept until judgment.
That last phrase is crucial. Their present imprisonment is not yet the final judgment. Tartarus in 2 Peter functions as a place or state of confinement pending the day when sentence is completed.
This is why it is better to avoid simply flattening Tartarus, Hades, Gehenna, and the lake of fire into identical terms. They overlap within biblical teaching about death and judgment, but they are not used in exactly the same way.
What About the Abyss?
The New Testament provides another image of supernatural restraint in Luke 8. When Jesus confronts the demons in the man known as Legion, they beg Him not to command them to depart into the abyss (Luke 8:31).
The Greek word abyssos refers to a deep or immeasurable depth and is associated elsewhere with the restraint of evil spiritual powers. Revelation likewise uses abyss imagery for confinement.
Tartarus and the abyss should not simply be declared identical; the New Testament does not explicitly make that equation. The conceptual overlap, however, is important. Both belong to a biblical world in which God can confine rebellious spiritual powers and prevent them from acting freely.
Peter’s angels are already in such restraint. Legion fears being sent into it.
Isaiah Had Already Spoken of Heavenly Prisoners
The concept did not originate with Greek mythology or 1 Enoch. Isaiah 24:21–22 describes a future day when the LORD will punish “the host of heaven, in heaven” and the kings of the earth. They will be gathered as prisoners in a pit, shut in a prison, and punished after many days.
The passage establishes the theological category inside Scripture itself: heavenly powers can rebel, God can confine them, and final punishment can occur at an appointed future time.
Peter’s use of tartaroō therefore does not import a foreign theology into Christianity. He uses a vivid Greek term to express a concept Scripture already knows—the divine imprisonment of rebellious heavenly beings awaiting judgment.
Why Genesis 6 Best Fits Peter’s Angels
Several observations converge. Genesis 6 places the sons of God immediately before the Flood. Job establishes “sons of God” as heavenly language. Ancient Jewish interpreters consistently read Genesis 6 as an angelic transgression. Jude speaks of angels who abandoned their assigned dwelling and are now restrained. Peter speaks of angels who sinned, uses the unique language of Tartarus, and immediately turns to Noah and the ancient world.
No single observation must carry the entire argument. Together, however, they form a coherent historical and theological pattern.
The alternative is to identify Peter’s angels with some other rebellion. Yet Scripture does not clearly describe another group of angels whose specific sin led to imprisonment before the Flood. Satan remains active. Other hostile spiritual powers remain active. Peter’s group is different: they sinned and were locked away.
That is precisely the fate ancient Jewish tradition assigned to the rebellious Watchers of Genesis 6.
Why Peter Uses This Story
Peter’s purpose is not to satisfy curiosity about the unseen realm. His argument is moral and theological. False teachers may act as though judgment will never come, but history proves otherwise. If God judged heavenly beings who violated His order, if He judged the world of Noah, and if He judged Sodom and Gomorrah, then rebellion in Peter’s own day will not escape accountability.
The Watcher story therefore functions as an argument from the greater to the lesser. If exalted heavenly beings were not beyond judgment, human rebels certainly are not.
That principle protects the passage from sensationalism. Tartarus matters because it reveals God’s sovereignty over the supernatural realm. Spiritual beings may rebel, but they cannot create a kingdom outside His jurisdiction. God can remove their freedom, confine them, and hold them until the day He has appointed.
What This Reveals
Second Peter 2:4 is far more specific than the phrase “angels went to hell” suggests. Peter uses the only occurrence of tartaroō in the New Testament to describe a particular group of angels who sinned and are now being kept for judgment. His historical sequence places their rebellion immediately before Noah. Jude describes a parallel group who abandoned their proper dwelling and remain in chains. Ancient Jewish tradition had long interpreted Genesis 6 as the rebellion of heavenly Watchers who were imprisoned for crossing the boundary between heaven and humanity.
The pieces fit together without requiring 1 Enoch to become Scripture. Genesis provides the event. Jude and Peter provide inspired New Testament testimony about rebellious angels under confinement. First Enoch provides historical evidence for how that event was understood in the Jewish world surrounding the apostles.
Peter’s unusual word is therefore not a decorative detail. Tartarus is a clue. It points to a specific supernatural judgment and helps identify the rebellion Peter expects his readers to recognize.
Continue the Study
Related article: Who Were the Nephilim in the Bible?
If the imprisoned angels of Peter and Jude are connected with the sons of God in Genesis 6, the next question is unavoidable: what were the Nephilim who appeared in connection with their rebellion, and why does the same name reappear in Numbers 13:33 centuries after the Flood?
Explore the Complete Story
The Bible You Thought You Knew: Recovering the Supernatural Narrative of the Scriptures traces the Watcher rebellion from Genesis 6 through Jude, 2 Peter, ancient Jewish interpretation, the Nephilim, and the wider biblical conflict between God’s kingdom and rebellious spiritual powers.
EXPLORE THE BOOK
Sources & Further Reading
Genesis 6:1–4; Isaiah 24:21–22; Luke 8:31; Jude 6–7; 2 Peter 2:4–6.
Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament, entries on tartaroō, oikētērion, and abyssos.
Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter.
George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation.
1 Enoch 10; 18–21.
Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ.
