Translation
Then death
and hades
were cast into the lake of fire.
Go to footnote numberThe lake of fire is
the second death.
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
Then death itself, and the place where unrighteous souls go after death, were destroyed in a visible, continual manner.
The lake of fire represents the punishment and destruction that comes after removal from the physical realm.
Footnotes
1: “The lake of fire”
God could have simply made death and hades disappear. Instead God made them a visible, constant reminder of His victory, by demonstrating that death and hades will never return to their former status; they have been conquered, they are being punished, they are continually being destroyed as a testimony to the reality of their powerlessness over mankind, and the complete victory God has won. In this case the “lake of fire” is not as much about the accumulation of evidence for punishment but about the visible and continual nature of its destruction.
2
This explanatory sentence is added because this use of the phrase, “lake of fire” is outside its normal usage. The explanation points to the broad meaning of the phrase, justifying its application to things that are not living beings.
To what does “the second death” refer? I take it to mean the punishment and destruction that comes after removal from the physical realm. Death has been a part of the human experience since Adam sinned, but one day God will remove it from this realm we live in, after which death itself will be destroyed and eliminated.
It is obvious that Hades does not fit into the “physical realm,” but Hades was added to show the completeness of God’s victory. Since this is symbolism, we cannot afford to wave a red flag every time something does not fit our logical analysis. We need to accept it for what it is according to how the original audience would have seen it.