What exactly IS Hell? I'm not disputing that Hell exists, what I want to know is WHAT IS HELL?

In my opinion there are only two possible answers, but you might inform me of something else. Many people have argued that evil is the absence of God, hell must be evil, thus hell is the separation of us from God. As poetic as this sounds, I've never found the scripture to back this up. Maybe you have some that I haven't read yet.

The second option in my understanding is that hell is the wrath of God against the disobedient. I have found one piece of scripture that debatable states that God is in Hell, but not what He is doing down there.

Can you set me straight with the scripture that I need to understand the lake of fire?
This is what we know of "Hell".

It's a place of darkness

Jude 1:13 (NIV)


  They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.


It's a place of torment

Luke 16:28 (NIV)


  for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’


It's a place of fire

Jesus says in Matthew 13:42 (NIV)


  They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.


It is eternal

Mark 9:48 (NIV)


  where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’


It is separation for God

Matthew 25:41 (NIV)


  “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.


God does not want you to go to Hell

John 3:17 (NIV)


  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.


Those are the highlights.  There are many other places that support each one of those facts.  I just picked a nice representative of each verse.