Moralia in Job 456

Verse 21. — Before I go, and return not, to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death. 95. The punishments of hell are neither transient nor imaginary. Why hell is called a land, why a lake. — For what is signified by the name of a dark land but the foul barriers of Tartarus? Which the mist of eternal death covers, because it forever separates every damned one from the light of life. Nor is hell called a land without reason, because whosoever have been seized by it are held fast unmovably. For it is written: One generation passeth, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever (Ecclesiastes 1:4).

Rightly therefore are the dark barriers of hell named a land, because those whom they receive to be punished they torment by no transient punishment or phantom imagination, but keep by the solid vengeance of perpetual damnation. Which, however, is sometimes signified by the name of a lake, the prophet bearing witness, who says: They bore their shame with those that go down into the lake (Ezekiel 32:24,25). Hell, therefore, is both named a land, because it holds those it receives unmovably; and is called a lake, because those whom it has once seized it swallows up, ever wavering and trembling amid the torments that flow round about them.

But the holy man, whether in his own voice or in that of the human race, asks to be suffered before he goes—not because he who bewails his fault is destined to go to the dark land, but because he who neglects to lament undoubtedly goes to it; just as a creditor says to his debtor: Pay the debt before thou be constrained for the debt; who, however, is not constrained if he delays not to pay what he owes. Where it is also rightly added: I shall return not, because the mercy of Him who spares in no way ever after frees those whom the justice of Him who judges has once damned in the places of punishment. These places are described yet more subtly, when it is said: