Did Jesus descend to Hell?

Interpreters of Ephesians 4:9 have long wrestled with the meaning of the phrase “the lower parts of the earth.”  Many have conjectured that phrase means that after the crucifixion Christ went to Hell to proclaim the truth of His death and resurrection to those who resided there.  Interpreters base this understanding not only on Ephesians 4, but also a similar understanding of 1 Peter 3:18.

Interpreters from as long ago as the Apostle’s Creed have held this position.

However, it is best to understand this phrase as simply referring to the incarnation of Christ — that having left the height of heaven, He descended to the lowliness of earth and took on humanity in addition to His deity.

There are multiple reasons why this is the case, among them:

• Jesus ascended from earth to heaven, and since Paul is contrasting only two places, it is more likely that His descent was from heaven to earth (not hell).
• The emphasis of the passage is on the ascent of Christ from earth to heaven; to see His descent as being to hell is to import an idea that is not obvious in the reading of the text and to distract from Paul’s purpose in using the quote from Ps. 68.
• John 3:13 is a better parallel to this passage than 1 Pt. 3:18 and the Gospel passage makes clear that Christ’s descent was to earth.

Charles Hodge offers a helpful concluding explanation of this passage:

The Hebrew phrase [“lower earth”] to which the apostle’s [the lower parts of the earth] answers, is used for the earth in opposition to heaven, Is. 44, 23; probably for the grave in Ps. 63, 10; as a poetical designation for the womb in Ps. 139, 15; and for Hades or the invisible world, Ez. 32, 24. Perhaps the majority of commentators take this last to be the meaning of the passage before us. They suppose the reference is to the desensus ad inferos, or to Christ’s “descending into hell.”  But in the first place this idea is entirely foreign to the meaning of the passage in the Psalm on which the apostle is commenting. In the second place, there as here, the only descent of which the context speaks is opposed to the ascending to heaven. ‘He that ascended to heaven is he who first descended to earth.’  In the third place, this is the opposition so often expressed in other places and in other forms of expression, as in John 3, 13, “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven.”  John 6, 38, “I came down from heaven.” John 8, 14, “I know whence I came and whither I go.” John 16, 28, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”  The expression of the apostle therefore means, “the lower parts, viz. the earth.”  The genitive [“of the earth”] is the common genitive of apposition. Compare Acts 2, 19, where the heaven above is opposed to the earth beneath; and John 8, 23. [p. 220-1.]