My take on hell is this: Throughout most of the Old Testament "hell" (King James Version) is the Hebrew "sheol" which is a different word than the "hell" used in the New Testament. Sheol was a gloomy, dark place where everybody--good and bad--expected to go when they died. There was no personal salvation! People got their rewards and punishment in this life, not in some afterlife! Notice that Job was not promised a heavenly afterlife. He got his reward in the here and now. One or two people did get snatched directly up to heaven to live with God, but those were really special cases. God's blessing was primarily on Israel. If Israel kept its pact with God then God (Yahweh) would bless it.

Unfortunately, after Nebuchadnezzar smashed Judah (the remaining Hebrew kingdom after the Assyrians took out Israel in the north--the "lost tribes") they began to dream of a time when Judah would be restored and its oppressors crushed.

A little side note here. The first time Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem, the old Hebrew king died early on and was replaced by a new king who soon surrendered. Nebuchadnezzar spared the city but took the temple treasures. He also took the Hebrew king and some nobles back to Babylon after installing his own king (one of the Hebrew royal line). Apparently, the former king taken back to Babylon was treated well, while the nobles were educated in Babylonian ways. A few years later the newly installed king saw an opportunity to join the surrounding nations in a revolt, violating his loyalty oath to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar came back and brutally crushed Judah, destroying Solomon's temple while taking prisoner anyone of note. It seems that this contingent taken back to Babylon were treated rather decently. They could play their harps by the river as they dreamed of returning. They did fairly well in that when Cyrus offered to allow all peoples to return to their lands many Jews chose to remain in Babylon. The Babylonian Jewish community, originally made up of the Hebrew elite who passed along their stories, was a major Jewish center for years. They probably were the ones who had the knowledge, means, and motivation to write Genesis and much of the Old Testament.

So, the end of days (as viewed then) consisted of the arrival of a divinely appointed messiah who would crush Judah's enemies and raise up Israel (a new Hebrew kingdom) to rule over all nations, the messiah being its new king (in a very kingly sense). It would be a glorious time lived right down here on Earth. Thus, punishment and reward centered on nations and not on individuals. Somehow that evolved into punishment and reward for individuals. Satan, at first, was merely a heavenly court functionary (a kind of prosecutor) on good terms with God. God was the author of both good and evil.

When God gave up his evil gig, Satan became the all-powerful opponent of God, which followed the Iranian model. It was then a battle of good versus evil, and everyone had to choose their sides. Hell was, at first, compared to the trash dump in one of the valleys adjoining Jerusalem. (Think of perpetually burning trash and maggots working their way through the garbage.) Presumably, those sent to hell were simply burned up and were not subject to eternal torture. By the time the New Testament was written, hell (now expressed by a Greek word) was not a nice place at all! The Church was not long in appreciating that a really hot hell would be a great recruiter! Then Dante turned up the heat, way up! However, the idea of a perfectly good God is so contradictory to the idea of hell that many modern Christian sects turned the heat back down or simply jettisoned hell altogether.

As for that wily snake, equating him with Satan is a much later interpretation of Genesis. Remember, Satan was not God's opponent until late in the game! Who created hell? Read Matthew.