“Cast them deep into hell”
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment. (2 Peter 2:4 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A standard statement that fallen angels were sent to hell.
The cultural key
The word behind 'cast deep into hell' is tartaroo, found nowhere else in the Bible. It comes straight from Greek mythology: Tartarus was the abyss far beneath Hades where the Titans were imprisoned after their revolt against the gods. Peter reaches for this pagan cosmological term to describe the prison of the angels who sinned, held 'in chains of darkness' until judgment, drawing on the tradition of the fallen 'sons of God' and its rich retelling in books like 1 Enoch. It is a striking case of the New Testament borrowing the surrounding culture's vocabulary of the underworld.
Recovered meaning
Peter names the fallen angels' prison with a word plucked from Greek myth, the deepest dungeon of the cosmos. Even rebellious angels did not escape judgment, which is his warning to false teachers who assume they will.