Luke 16:24

I am tormented Rather, I am suffering pain. The verb is not basanizomaibut odundmai, as in Luke 2:48, where it is rendered -sorrowing."

in this flame Perhaps meant to indicate the agony of remorseful memories. In Hades no

"Lethe the river of oblivion rolls:

Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks

Forthwith his former state and being forgets,

Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain."

As for the material flame and the burning tongue, "we may," says Archbishop Trench, "safely say that the form in which the sense of pain, with the desire after alleviation, embodies itself, is figurative." Even the fierce and gloomy Tertullian says that how to understand what is meant by these details "is scarcely perhaps discovered by those who enquire with gentleness, but by contentious controversialists never."