Torments

Torment in scripture is the conscious suffering of the wicked — present anguish that breaks into the narrative as a sign of God's judgment, and final anguish that follows after death and after the world's end. The vocabulary is consistent: "torment" names a state of pain inseparable from the wrath that produced it, and it is paired with images of flame, brimstone, smoke, fixed sentence, and unbroken duration.

Death in Torment

Wickedness in this life can end with the body itself in torment. Of Alcimus, who set himself against the temple, the record is brief and final:

"And Alcimus died at that time in great torment" (1Ma 9:56).

The line speaks for itself: a wicked end, in pain, on this side of death.

The Place of Torment after Death

The fullest picture of post-mortem torment in the umbrella passages is the rich man in Hades:

"And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and sees Abraham far off, and Lazarus in his bosom" (Lu 16:23).

The man begs for relief — "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame" (Lu 16:24). Abraham answers that the present suffering is the inversion of a past comfort: "Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things: but now here he is comforted, and you are in anguish" (Lu 16:25). And the divide is not a temporary distance:

"And besides all this, between us and you⁺ there is a great gulf fixed, that those who would pass from here to you⁺ may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us" (Lu 16:26).

The rich man's last request is that his brothers be warned — "lest they also come into this place of torment" (Lu 16:28). Three features stand out: torment is located (Hades, with a fixed gulf), it is conscious (sight, speech, memory, request), and it is the explicit destination some are urged to avoid.

The Torment of Those Who Worship the Beast

In the Apocalypse, torment is the announced fate of those who take the beast's mark:

"he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed undiluted in the cup of his anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name" (Re 14:10-11).

The same elements appear: wrath, fire, brimstone, witnesses (angels and the Lamb), unending duration, no rest. The torment is public — visible in the presence of the holy ones — and continuous.

Torment as Judgment Plague

Torment also enters the bowl-judgments as present plague rather than final state. When the fifth bowl falls on the throne of the beast, "his kingdom was darkened; and they gnawed their tongues for pain" (Re 16:10). Pain on the body, before the last sentence is read.

The Torment of Babylon

The fall of Babylon is itself a scene of torment witnessed at a distance:

"standing far off for the fear of her torment, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour is your judgment come" (Re 18:10).

Here torment is not the body's pain but the city's collapse — a judgment so terrible that those who profited from her keep their distance for fear of being touched by it.

The Final Torment

The umbrella closes at the lake of fire, where the devil, the beast, and the false prophet meet a sentence whose two qualifiers — "day and night" and "forever and ever" — match the language used for the worshipers of the beast:

"And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever" (Re 20:10).

This is the terminal scene of torment in the umbrella: the deceivers cast in, their torment continuous, the duration unbounded.

Torment as Discipline

Alongside torment as final or judicial suffering, the wisdom tradition uses the word for the punishment proper to a wicked servant:

"A yoke and a strap will bend the neck, and for a wicked servant, punishment and torment" (Sir 33:26).

The image is harsher than the household discipline elsewhere in Sirach: a yoke bends the neck and a strap does the rest. The vocabulary of torment, even in this everyday register, keeps its connection to wickedness — it is what is meted out where wickedness has not yielded to instruction.