In another post, I already dealt with the nature of the punishment in Matt. 25:31-46 which Jesus also called the “outer darkness” or the “furnace of fire” (Matt. 8:11-12; 13:40-42, 49-50; 22:13; Lk. 13:28-29). These passages and their Old Testament contexts demonstrate that this judgment has nothing to do with whether or not someone goes to ‘hell’ and the Lake of Fire, but rather deals with where Gentile unbelievers are allowed to live during the Messianic age (whether within the kingdom in Israel, or outside the kingdom as a servant of Israel) based on how they treated the Israelites and other believers during the tribulation. However, I have not yet discussed the nature of the punishment in Gehenna, as described by Jesus in the synoptic gospels, and the Lake of Fire, as described by John in his Revelation. In this article, I would like to explain what I believe the nature of punishment in Gehenna and the Lake of Fire is, based on both the New and Old Testament descriptions of these places.
Gehenna: the unquenchable fire and undying worm
Jesus repeatedly spoke of a place called “Gehenna” (γεεννα) in the synoptic gospels, a place which is to be avoided at all costs, and which some wicked people will inhabit as a contrast to those who live in the “kingdom of God” (i.e., the Messianic kingdom). He repeatedly says that obedience to the Law is paramount in avoiding this place, and in a bit of hyperbole, that it is even more desirable to cut off one’s limbs than to enter Gehenna:
“I say to you, that every one who is angry at his brother without cause, shall be in danger of the judgment, and whoever may say to his brother, Empty fellow! shall be in danger of the sanhedrim, and whoever may say, Rebel! shall be in danger of the Gehenna of the fire... But, if thy right eye doth cause thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast from thee, for it is good to thee that one of thy members may perish, and not thy whole body be cast to Gehenna. And, if thy right hand doth cause thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast from thee, for it is good to thee that one of thy members may perish, and not thy whole body be cast to Gehenna.” (Matt. 5:22, 29-30)
“And if thy hand or thy foot doth cause thee to stumble, cut them off and cast from thee; it is good for thee to enter into the life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast to the fire the age-during. And if thine eye doth cause thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast from thee; it is good for thee one-eyed to enter into the life, rather than having two eyes to be cast to the Gehenna of the fire.” (Matt. 18:8-9)
“So that ye testify to yourselves, that ye are sons of them who did murder the prophets; and ye — ye fill up the measure of your fathers. Serpents! brood of vipers! how may ye escape from the judgment of the Gehenna?” (Matt. 23:31-33)
Jesus rarely elaborated on the nature or location of “Gehenna”, so we can expect that it was something already familiar to His Jewish audience. In fact, γεεννα in Greek is merely the transliteration of Hebrew gei (ben-)hinnom, that is, the Valley of (the son of) Hinnom. This is a physical location, a valley next to Jerusalem, and it appears as such throughout the Old Testament:
And the border went up by the Valley of the Son of Hinnom to the southern slope of the Jebusite city (which is Jerusalem). The border went up to the top of the mountain that lies before the Valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the Valley of Rephaim northward. (Josh. 15:8 NKJV)
Then the border came down to the end of the mountain that lies before the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, which is in the Valley of the Rephaim on the north, descended to the Valley of Hinnom, to the side of the Jebusite city on the south, and descended to En Rogel. (Josh. 18:16 NKJV)
And as for the villages with their fields, some of the children of Judah dwelt in Kirjath Arba and its villages, Dibon and its villages, Jekabzeel and its villages; in Jeshua, Moladah, Beth Pelet, Hazar Shual, and Beersheba and its villages; in Ziklag and Meconah and its villages; in En Rimmon, Zorah, Jarmuth, Zanoah, Adullam, and their villages; in Lachish and its fields; in Azekah and its villages. They dwelt from Beersheba to the Valley of Hinnom. (Neh. 11:25-30)
This was understood then to be merely a geographical location, a valley next to Jerusalem. It was considered to be cursed because of the fact that several wicked Judean kings had caused their children to pass through fire in that valley, in a pagan ritual to the god Molech (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6; Jer. 32:35).
However, many modern dynamic-equivalence translations - including the King James Version - have translated this word as “hell” instead, causing many Christians to believe that Jesus spoke of an ethereal place of torment in the afterlife (a similar problem to what was seen with the biblical phrase “kingdom of the heavens”). Are dynamic-equivalence translators justified in interpreting “Gehenna” as a reference to an ethereal realm of hell, or should it be interpreted as a reference to the physical location of the Valley of Hinnom?
The reason that most dynamic-equivalence versions translate γεεννα as “hell” is because of the Jewish tradition which calls the place of punishment of wicked souls “Gehenna”. They argue that, because this tradition was already well-known by the time of Jesus, this is what His listeners would have understood Him to be referring to. Unfortunately, this is simply a false assertion - the first appearance of Gehenna in Jewish thought as a place of punishment for the wicked is in the Assumption of Moses, written just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (after Jesus’ ministry), and the first hint that it was understood as anything less than the physical Valley of Hinnom is in Fourth Esdras, written in 100 AD [1].
There is no evidence that the tradition of Gehenna being an ethereal realm of punishment dates further back than the fall of Jerusalem; and even if Jesus had meant “Gehenna” in this way, He certainly would have clarified His meaning, since the tradition (if it existed in His time) had not yet reached mainstream apocalyptic Jewish literature that His audience would have been familiar with. Therefore, we can be sure that when Jesus spoke of “Gehenna”, he was not trying to explain to His Jewish audience that some people would go to an ethereal realm called “hell”, but rather that the wicked would at some point enter the literal, physical Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem. It seems that most translators have simply interpreted His meaning incorrectly [2].
Having determined that Gehenna should be understood as referring to the literal Valley of Hinnom, rather than an ethereal realm of “hell”, let’s take a look at what Jesus has to say about the nature of punishment in Gehenna. His most detailed explanation can be found in Mark 9:43-48:
“And if thy hand may cause thee to stumble, cut it off; it is better for thee maimed to enter into the life, than having the two hands, to go away to the Gehenna, to the fire — the unquenchable. And if thy foot may cause thee to stumble, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into the life lame, than having the two feet to be cast to the Gehenna, to the fire — the unquenchable. And if thine eye may cause thee to stumble, cast it out; it is better for thee one-eyed to enter into the kingdom of God, than having two eyes, to be cast to the Gehenna of the fire — where ‘their worm is not dying, and the fire is not being quenched’”
Here we are told three important things about Gehenna: (1) that it is an alternative to entering into the “kingdom of God”, the Messianic kingdom, (2) that it is a place of “unquenchable fire”, and (3) that it is the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 66:24 (“their worm is not dying and the fire is not being quenched”).
The significance of point (1) is that this gives us the timing of punishment in Gehenna, which is during the thousand-year Messianic age. As for point (2), we are told that this fire is “unquenchable” and “not being quenched”, but as explained in another post, this does not mean that the fire will never go out, but merely that it will not be put out by human means (as this description is used elsewhere in scripture of fires that have since gone out; Lev. 6:12-13; Isa. 34:10; Jer. 17:27; Ezek. 20:46-48). The fire of Gehenna may still go out once its fuel has been depleted, for which see point (3).
Now, let us examine the prophecy in Isa. 66 which Jesus applies to Gehenna and its context:
“For I know their works and their thoughts. It shall be that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory... Then they shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord out of all nations, on horses and in chariots and in litters, on mules and on camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem,” says the Lord, “as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will also take some of them for priests and Levites,” says the Lord. “For as the new heavens and the new earth Which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord, “So shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass That from one New Moon to another, And from one Sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the Lord. “And they shall go forth and look Upon the corpses of the men Who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, And their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.“ (Isa. 66:18, 20-24 NKJV)
First of all, in this passage we are told that all nations and people will come to Jerusalem to worship YHWH during the Messianic age. While they are in Jerusalem, they will be able to see those who are in Gehenna, which confirms that “Gehenna” cannot refer to ‘hell’ or the Lake of Fire, and must be the physical Valley of Hinnom that is adjacent to Jerusalem.
Second, we are told that there will be corpses - not living humans, but corpses - of those who have transgressed against YHWH, and that it is their worm that does not die, and their fire that is not being quenched. This proves that Gehenna will not be a place of conscious torment, but simply a place where the dead bodies of the wicked and unbelievers will be cast and burned. The “worm” spoken of here (tola in Hebrew and σκοληξ in Greek) cannot be some sort of ‘spiritual worm’ that punishes those in ‘hell’, as these words simply refer to maggots which eat the flesh off of dead bodies [3]. This Hebrew word, tola, is used as a symbol of death and decay throughout the Old Testament (Exod. 16:20; Deut. 28:39; Isa. 14:11).
“But,” cries the infernalist, “if the punishment for unbelieving Jews is merely to cast their dead bodies into the Valley of Hinnom to be burned, why was Jesus so insistent on keeping them out of Gehenna? Where is the urgency if there is no conscious torment?” In fact, this very question is answered by Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke:
“And be not afraid of those killing the body, and are not able to kill the soul, but fear rather Him who is able both soul and body to destroy in Gehenna.” (Matt. 10:28)
“And I say to you, my friends, be not afraid of those killing the body, and after these things are not having anything over to do; but I will show to you, whom ye may fear; Fear him who, after the killing, is having authority to cast to the Gehenna; yes, I say to you, Fear ye Him.” (Lk. 12:4-5)
According to Jesus, we are to fear God because He can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. The meaning of this statement can only be fully appreciated when we realize the full range of meaning of the word ‘soul’ (ψυχη) in Greek. This word often simply describes one’s consciousness, but it is also used figuratively in scripture to mean blissful or pleasurable experiences [4]. Thus, the fearfulness of Gehenna is not in the punishment itself, but in the fact that those whose bodies are desecrated in Gehenna are unable to be resurrected to experience the bliss of the Messianic kingdom.
In fact, even today, cremation is a forbidden practice in orthodox Jewish communities because it is believed that those who are cremated cannot be resurrected again to experience the Messianic kingdom, which they consider to be a terrible punishment. In the first century, the bones of dead loved ones were kept in ossuaries or ‘bone boxes’, as they thought that that was the best way to make sure they would be resurrected on the last day. So, to the first century Jews, the fact that those who disbelieved would be cast into Gehenna and their bodies burned and desecrated, never to experience the promised Messianic age, would have been an awful punishment to be avoided at absolutely all costs.
Conclusion
The place of punishment which Jesus called “Gehenna” refers to the literal, physical Valley of Hinnom which is next to Jerusalem. In this valley, the corpses of dead unbelievers will be burned with an unquenchable fire and their flesh eaten by maggots, per Isaiah 66:24. To the ancient Jewish people, this punishment (which prevented one from entering the promised Messianic kingdom) would have been terrible and unthinkable, which explains Jesus’ constant exhortation to obedience in order to avoid Gehenna. There is no indication at all in scripture that this is a conscious torment or purification.
[2] The question must be asked, how could so many translators have gotten this wrong? First of all, there is the issue of tradition: because “Gehenna” has been interpreted as referring to “hell” ever since this idea entered Judeo-Christian thought in the late first century AD, translators are naturally inclined to follow this traditional interpretation, regardless of whether it can be shown to be false.
Second, there is immense political pressure on translators to keep the word “hell” in the Bible. Already when translators corrected the awful translation of Sheol and Hades as “hell” in the twentieth century, there was a vast amount of pushback from conservatives who thought that these translators were pandering to religious pluralists by omitting all mention of punishment (which is patently false), so it’s natural that they would be reluctant to scrap the idea of “hell” altogether.
Third, there are many translations that keep “Gehenna” in the text rather than “hell”, especially formal-equivalence translations like the Concordant Literal and Young’s Literal Translation. The unfortunate truth, however, is that most Christians would rather use a dynamic-equivalence Bible that interprets the text for them, rather than take the time to find out for themselves what scripture says.
[3] This “worm” does not die, not because it is immortal, but to emphasize the completeness of the decay of these bodies; the maggots will not die until every bit of flesh is picked clean. See this article written from an annihilationist viewpoint.
[4] As an example, in Matthew 6:25, “soul” is glossed by “what you should eat and what you should drink”. Elsewhere, the adjective form ψυχικος is used to describe those who enjoy and place physical sensations over more important spiritual things (Jas. 3:15; Jude 19).
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