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Gehenna is the
only biblical “hell” that has a Hebrew origin in the Old Testament.
It is simply the Greek spelling of the Hebrew phrase, Ge-Hinnom,
“valley of Hinnom.” This, too, was a shortened form of the Old
Testament place called “the valley of Ben-Hinnom” (son of Hinnom).
This valley was at the base of the hill on which Jerusalem was
built.
Gehenna is thus
the only term of the three where we can use its biblical meaning.
The valley of the son of Hinnom was the place where Baal-worshipping
Israelites had sacrificed their children to Molech (Jer.
32:35).
35 And they built the high places of
Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and
their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had
not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do
this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
For this reason
the prophet said that it would become a “valley of slaughter” when
God brought judgment upon Jerusalem (Jer. 19:6). This is also the
passage where God directed the prophet to break the jar in that
valley in the sight of the elders of Judah. Verses 10 and 11
read,
10 Then you are to break the jar in
the sight of the men who accompany you 11 and say to them, Thus says the Lord
of hosts, Just so shall I break this people and this city, even as
one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot again be repaired. . .
.
Jerusalem was
destroyed shortly afterward by the armies of Babylon. But it was
rebuilt a century later in the days of Nehemiah. The city was
destroyed again in 70 A.D., this time by the Roman armies. But it
was later rebuilt. It was destroyed a number of times during the
past 2000 years, but each time it has been rebuilt. Currently, the
city still stands. Hence, Jeremiah's prophecy has only had its first
fulfillment. There remains a later destruction of Jerusalem that
will exhaust the prophecy of Jeremiah.
It is to that day
Jesus was referring when He used the term Gehenna in Matt. 23:33. In
that passage Jesus says,
29 Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and
adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, If we
had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.
31 Consequently, you bear witness against yourselves
that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.
32 Fill up then the measure of your fathers.
33 You serpents, you brood of vipers,
how shall you escape the sentence of
GEHENNA.
Later in the same
passage, verse 37 Jesus applies this prophetic sentence of doom upon
Jerusalem itself, saying,
37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who
kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often
I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 Behold, your house is being left to
you desolate!
After Jeremiah
linked Gehenna to the destruction of Jerusalem through his prophecy
of the broken jar, the term itself began to take on a prophetic
meaning beyond the mere geographical location. It became a symbol of
divine judgment upon those who rejected the word of the Lord through
the prophets (and Jesus Himself). Jerusalem had killed the prophets
as well as the Son, and this sealed its ultimate fate as Jeremiah
said. In fact, in the same passage in Matthew 23 Jesus prophesied a
later time in which Jerusalem would fill its cup of iniquity just
prior to its final destruction. Verses 34-36 read:
34 Therefore, behold, I am sending
you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill
and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues,
and persecute from city to city. 35 that upon you may
fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the
blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of
Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
36 Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon
this generation [genea, “race,
offspring”].
Jesus warned the
believers to flee from Jerusalem when they saw the city surrounded
by foreign armies. They did so in 66-67 A.D. at the first siege of
Jerusalem. However, since Jerusalem was subsequently rebuilt, we see
the same warning applicable today. Those believers living in
Jerusalem and the Israeli state should take heed to Jesus' words
once again and flee the city before its destruction occurs. They
should not count upon God saving the city at the last minute, for
Jeremiah's prophecy is very clear. The city and nation WILL be
destroyed in such a way that it cannot be repaired again.
The term,
Gehenna, was a Hebrew word that was not necessarily familiar to
Greeks or Romans. So we find that Jesus used this term eleven times
when speaking of judgment upon the unbelievers in His audience. (See
Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9, 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke
12:5.) His use of this term, instead of Hades (“the place or state
of the dead”) gives his words a specific flavor, for He was warning
them that if they did not believe His words, they would see
Jeremiah's prophecy of destruction fulfilled. And they, as
individuals, would find themselves cast into Gehenna. Jeremiah had
prophesied that that valley would become “the valley of
slaughter.”
Jesus spoke more
of Gehenna than of Hades. We will not do a complete study of Jesus'
words about Gehenna, but it would be useful to look at one specific
passage in Mark 9:47, 48,
47 And if your eye causes
you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the
kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into
hell [gehenna], 48 where their
worm does not die, and the fire is not
quenched. Jesus was quoting
and commenting upon Isaiah 66:24, which says,
24 Then they shall go forth
and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against
Me. For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be
quenched [Greek: “is not quenched”]; and they shall be
an abhorrence to all mankind. Isaiah was writing specifically about the old and
new Jerusalem (66:10) and the new heavens and the new earth (66:22).
That is why Jesus used the term Gehenna, rather than Hades. It was
a symbol of judgment upon the wicked. By the time Jesus walked the
earth, Gehenna was no longer used for human sacrifice, but was the
city dump. It was also the place where they cast the unclaimed
bodies of criminals that had been executed or crucified. Like many
dumps today, Gehenna was always smoldering, because it was fueled by
the trash that people threw into it. But because it also contained
organic matter, dead animals and men, it also was continuously
infested with maggots (“worms”).
It is often claimed that this is a picture of a
burning “hell” torturing conscious sinners in an afterlife, but that
is an extended and unwarranted interpretation of this passage. First
of all, neither Isaiah nor Jesus meant to imply that the worms were
immortal, but rather that there were always worms there. Maggots
live for a while and die after breeding more maggots.
Likewise, the
fire is not perpetual. The point is that no man can quench it. Only
God can quench this fire. The NASB above shows the bias of the
translators when it renders the phrase too strongly, “shall not be
quenched.” The literal rendering of the phrase is simply “is not
quenched,” that is, not by any man. That is, the fire of judgment
will surely come, and no man can prevent it.
This word, Gehenna, refers to the destruction of
Jerusalem and the slaughter occurring at this city's final judgment,
because its citizens had become God's enemies. Most
have been taught that the “enemies” being slaughtered are non-Jews
of some kind who come from other nations to destroy the Israeli
state. But the prophecies do not tell us that they are non-Jews;
they say simply that they are God's enemies who have come from those
foreign lands. The way God defines His “enemies” in the law, the
prophets, and in the New Testament shows that the judgment is upon
the unbelieving Jews who are returning to the old land without first
repenting of their hostility against Jesus Christ.
The law of
tribulation found in Lev. 26:40-42 (and, indeed, the entire chapter)
sets forth the principle that if the people were hostile to Yahweh
(who is Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form), then Yahweh would
be an enemy to them as well. The only way to stop being God's enemy
is to do as He says in Lev. 26:40-42,
40 If they confess their
iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their
unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their
acting with hostility against Me— 41 I
also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into
the land of their enemies—or if their uncircumcised heart becomes
humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity,
42 then I will remember My covenant with
Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My
covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the
land. An enemy is one
who is not reconciled to another. As long as anyone—including any
unbelieving Jew—is hostile to Jesus Christ, they are legally defined
as God's “enemies.” Furthermore, the laws of tribulation make it
clear that God will not remember His covenant with Abraham until the
people repent. In Isaiah 63:9, 10 the prophet gives us a specific
example of this, saying,
9 In all their affliction He was
afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; in His love
and in His mercy He redeemed them; and He lifted them and carried
them all the days of old. 10 But they rebelled and
grieved His Holy Spirit; therefore, He turned Himself to become
their enemy, He fought against them. This happened all
through the book of Judges, where God “sold them” into the hands of
their enemies because of their sin. (See Judges 3:8 and 4:2.) God
never reversed their captivities until the people
repented.
God also became
their enemy when He gave their land to Nebuchadnezzar, king of
Babylon (Jer. 27:6). The captivity was finally reversed after 70
years, not only because it was the appointed time (Jer. 25:11; Dan.
9:2), but also because Daniel repented on behalf of his people for
the sins of their fathers. This fulfilled the conditions of the
law.
This idea carries
over into the New Testament as well. In Matthew 22:1-7 Jesus told a
parable about the servants who refused to come to the wedding.
Verses 6 and 7 say,
6 And the rest seized his slaves
and mistreated them and killed them. 7
But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those
murderers, and set their city on fire.
Jesus
specifically called the inhabitants of Jerusalem “enemies” in Luke
19, where the “citizens” (i.e., citizens of Judea) hated Him and did
not want Him to rule over them (Luke 19:14). Jesus' verdict in verse
27 was,
27 But these enemies of
mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here
[Jerusalem] and slay them in my
presence. The Apostle Paul
likewise says in Philippians 3:18,
18 For many walk, of whom I often
told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are
enemies of the cross of
Christ. Jesus prophesied
that Jerusalem (Matt. 23:27, 28) would be destroyed with its temple
(Matt. 24:2) because of the unbelief of its citizens. This occurred
in 70 A.D., and God imposed upon them a “yoke of iron” (Deut.
28:48), which was God's sentence of exile. In the early 1900's the
Zionist movement began, by which the Jews—still in a state of
unbelief—decided to end their exile by force, rather than by
fulfilling the conditions laid down in Lev. 26:40-42. Hence, their
return as “enemies” put them in a position of fulfilling the
prophecies of destruction in Gehenna. In their blindness they are
being led to slaughter, and much of the evangelical Church
encourages them as they go into the fire.
Yet God in His
mercy has caused the majority of the Jews to remain in other
countries, in spite of Zionist browbeating. Perhaps when the final
destruction comes, many of these will be sufficiently shocked and
disillusioned with Zionism and Judaism itself and will be ready to
hear the Word of the Lord and accept Jesus as the
Messiah.
The only other one who used the term, Gehenna, was
Jesus' brother, James, in James 3:6. James most likely wrote his
epistle in Hebrew, using the term Ben-hinnom, but it has come down
to us in Greek, where the translation reads Gehenna. He says that a
man's tongue “defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course
of our life, and is set on fire by GEHENNA.” James was the
leader of the Church in Jerusalem, and so his audience was familiar
with the term, both its geographical location as well as its
symbolic application. James wrote that the tongue is a like the
rudder of a ship. Even as the rudder sets the course of the ship, so
also does the tongue set “the course of our life.” And if that course was evil, then those individuals would
go down with the ship.
Gehenna, then,
was really a prophetic judgment directed against Jerusalem and its
citizens who refused to believe the prophets or accept the Messiah.
It did not directly refer to the actual state or place of the dead,
which is Hades.
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