Pictured: The Valley of Gehenna today
Part 3: Gehenna
It is with a sense of irony that we finish our 3-part study on the biblical understanding of Hell shortly before Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. With All Saints’ Day being November 1st, one could argue it would be more appropriate to study the biblical understanding of Heaven. We’ll put that on the to do list, but for now…
The Hebrew term Gehenna can be a little confusing because it does not appear at all in modern English translations (unlike Sheol and Hades). It first appears in Joshua 15:8 as the name for the valley on the southern slope of Jerusalem (ge ben Hinnom = Valley of the son of Hinnom). The place came to resemble a kind of hell because it was used by Kings Ahaz and Manasseh for sacrifices to Molech—even burning their own sons there (2 Chronicles 28:3, and others). The connection with evil and judgment grew with the prophet Jeremiah’s condemnation of the sacrifices and a prophecy of future slaughter in the valley of Gehenna (Jeremiah 7:30-33 and others). The valley of Gehenna also became the place where the people of Jerusalem dumped their garbage, thus furthering the connection as a place of filth that one should avoid.
The word geena (the Greek translation of Gehenna) appears more than twice as often in the gospels than Hades. Interestingly, every time the word is used, it is spoken by Jesus. It appears three times in Mark 9 when Jesus taught on the relative value of eternity over a body part that one uses to sin, as well as twice in Matthew’s record of the same teaching (Matthew 5:29-30), and again in Matthew 18:9. Similar to Sheol and Hades, we see a connection with Gehenna and fiery judgment: “and whoever shall say, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell [geena]” (Matthew 5:22). Gehenna is also referred to as a “sentence” (meaning moral judgment) in Matthew 23:33.
There can be a point of confusion about whether or not souls last forever in Gehenna, based on Matthew 10:28 (parallel in Luke 12:5). “And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell [geena].” This does not mean the soul is annihilated and ceases to exist, but rather “it means torment without rest forever” (Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman, Jr., Sense & Nonsense About Heaven & Hell, 107). In other words, existence in Hell doesn’t equate to eternal life as we understand life, but nor is it destruction followed by nothingness. Matthew 25:46 refers to “eternal punishment” as judgment for the unrighteous.
Lastly, James 3:6 uses Gehenna [geena] as the source of the fire which burns on our tongues and defiles the body. This is a warning about failure to control what one says and the damage it does to us and others, using the very strong image of fire, which not only burns, but spreads. This passage indicates that Gehenna is a source of evil.
So of the three terms we have studied, Gehenna does seem to paint the clearest biblical picture of Hell, while Hades is tainted by Greek mythological ideas, and Sheol was a concept in flux. It also helps that Gehenna was the term used most often by Jesus himself. This is not to say that we should downplay or ignore the Bible’s use of the other terms (including the single use of tartaroo [Greek for being cast into Tartarus – a punishment reserved for angels] in 2 Peter 2:4). It simply helps to understand that the Christian concept of Hell is complicated, and there is much we don’t know.
