Gehenna is a Greek word for Hell in the New Testament. It refers not just to the state of death but to a terrible place of punishment. The word originates from a real location on Earth — a valley beside the old city of Jerusalem. According to the Bible, during its history, it was used as a place of idol worship and child sacrifice. Then it became a bloody battlefield and an ever-smoldering rubbish dump. Finally, Gehenna took on a symbolic and eschatological significance to describe a Lake of Fire that will imprison God’s enemies forever.
Gehenna: The Origin and Meaning of the Word
The type of ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written has several different names. It is sometimes called Hellenistic Greek or the Alexandrian dialect but it is most usually known as Koine or “common” Greek. One of the words it contains is γέεννα or Gehenna. This word occurs twelve times in the New Testament. Eleven of those times are in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). On each of those eleven occasions, the word is placed directly in the mouth of Jesus himself. This word is usually translated as “hell.”
There is another Greek word sometimes translated as hell—“hades”—which means the grave, the state of death, or the place of the dead. It is neutral regarding what takes place there. Gehenna is a different word with a definite association — fiery punishment. This connection with fire is made explicitly in Matthew (5:22; 18:8) and Mark (9:43), as well as in the only other place outside the Gospels the word is employed, James (3:6). Matthew also links it with destruction (10:28) and legal sentencing (23:33).
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterAlthough it is a Greek word, it is Hebrew in its origin. The word derives from the name of a place. There is a valley or cavity near Jerusalem, on its southwest side, called the Valley of Hinnom, or, sometimes, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. Its name is a single Hebrew term that is transliterated into Gehenna. So, how did this place gain its hellish reputation?
Gehenna: The Geographical Location
The first mention of the Valley of Hinnom in the Bible is topographical rather than theological. It is found in a section of the Book of Joshua that deals with the division of the land of Canaan between the various tribes of Israel after the conquest. The valley—sometimes described as a deep, narrow glen to the south of the Old City of Jerusalem—was part of Judah’s inheritance and bordered on the portion of land allotted to the tribe of Benjamin.
“The boundary then passed through the valley of Ben-Hinnom, along the southern slopes of the Jebusites, where the city of Jerusalem is located. Then it went west to the top of the mountain above the valley of Hinnom, and on up to the northern end of the valley of Rephaim.”
Joshua 15:8
Where exactly this is today is unclear. The Valley of Josaphat and the Tyropoeon Valley have both been suggested as possible candidates. Wherever it was, the Valley of Hinnom would most likely have been placed outside the walls of the Old City because of its associations. From the viewpoint of modern archaeology, this area is best known for the Hinnom Scrolls, the oldest surviving texts of the Hebrew Bible, discovered in 1979.
Gehenna: The Place of Child Sacrifice
During the reign of King Ahaz of Judah, Hinnom became prominent for a sinister reason. Ahaz was one of the kings that did not follow the religion of Yahweh like David, his ancestor and fellow tribe member. Instead, we are told that Ahaz took his lead from the northern kingdom of Israel and even cast images of the god Baal. But that was not all.
“Ahaz burned incense in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and burned his children in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.”
2 Chronicles 28:3-4
As punishment, we are told that God allowed him to suffer a military defeat from the king of Syria, who took many of his citizens as slaves back to Damascus. But worse was to come under King Manasseh of Judea (7th century BCE), generally considered to be the most rebellious and apostate of all the southern monarchs. According to the records, his zeal for promoting pagan worship took him to the path of occult practices and child sacrifice, mass infanticide, and possibly even filicide.
“He raised up altars for the Baals, and made wooden images; and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them … Also he caused his sons to pass through the fire in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom; he practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft and sorcery, and consulted mediums and spiritists … He even set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the temple of God.”
1 Chronicles 33:3, 6-7
There is some debate among scholars as to the exact significance of this phrase: “caused his children to pass through fire.” Does it merely refer to a religious ceremony in which a priest walked the child between two lanes of fire? This is now a disproved, minority view. Does it mean he slaughtered them as part of a pagan ritual and then burned their dead bodies on a fire? Or, more graphically, does it describe how he sacrificed them? And was it the children of his citizens that he sacrificed like this or his own male progeny?
Most scholars hold that some form of child sacrifice was certainly involved, possibly accompanied by gruesome orgies, most likely to the Canaanite god Molech or Milcom (Leviticus 18:21). This is one of the foreign gods to whom Solomon (10th century BCE), in his later apostate phase, built an altar for offering incense and sacrifices on a hill east of Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:7). We also know that the reforming king Josaiah deliberately “desecrated” and defiled the Valley of Hinnom, making it unfit for worship, so that these human sacrifices to Molech could not continue (2 Kings 23:10). Josaiah made the valley “unclean” — ritually and literally.
Molech worship, and the god Molech himself, was called “the abomination of the Ammonites.” Because of the terrible nature of what was carried out there in Molech’s name, the Valley of Hinnom itself became regarded as a place of abomination for the Jews, associated forever with blood, corpses, filth, and burning.
Gehenna: The Valley of Slaughter
King Josiah was encouraged in his reforms against the Valley of Hinnom by the prophet Jeremiah. But Jeremiah went further than calling for reforms. He not only condemned the practices that took place in the valley, and warned them of ruin and disaster if it happened again. Jeremiah foretold of God’s judgment against Judah for permitting it to happen at all. One day, he said, they will have to rename it from the Valley of Hinnom to the Valley of Slaughter because of all the dead bodies that will lie there. There will be so many corpses that there will be no space left. The birds and beasts will eat them, and the place will eventually become a wasteland (Jeremiah 7:30-34 – see also Chapter 19).
“They have built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Hinnom to make their sons and daughters pass through the fire to Molech — something I never commanded them, nor had it ever entered My mind, that they should commit such an abomination and cause Judah to sin.”
Jeremiah 32:35
Many commentators take Jeremiah’s prophecy of judgment as a reference to the Babylonian captivity of Judah. This interpretation fits from a chronological viewpoint. Jeremiah was active as a prophet from the thirteenth year of King Josiah (626 BCE) until after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 587 BCE. Jeremiah’s prophecy was considered seditious and he was kept in prison until Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and captured it.
Gehenna: The Ever-Burning Rubbish Dump
There is a tradition that the Valley of Hinnom was made into an unclean place due to the reforms of Josiah. This re-purposing of the valley from a place of infanticide to an ever-burning rubbish heap became permanent after the return from exile. It is said the valley was deliberately used as:
- A rubbish dump for the entire city, beside it but outside it
- A place where the dead bodies of criminals and animals were thrown
- An outlet for human faeces, dirty water, offal, waste and refuse of all kinds
- An area of continual burning and smoke, since a perpetual fire was kept up to prevent pestilence and foul odours from spreading
The picture painted is one of religious defilement, as Josiah planned, to discourage the reintroduction of those practices that made the valley infamous. But there is also an added sense of disgust and destruction. This is how the name of the place became synonymous with all that is evil and ugly.
Inhabitants of Jerusalem in Roman times who used or observed the heap would have been morally and physically repulsed by Jesus’ mention of it. Added to all this were the maggots and worms crawling through the waste. This is perhaps the origin of the phrase used by Jesus to describe the horrors of hell:
“Where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.”
Mark 9:43, 45 (Isaiah 66:24)
Other Names for Gehenna
In Jeremiah chapters 7 and 19, the Valley of Hinnom is also called Tophet. Scholars think this word is Aramaic in origin and means something like a fire pit, hearth, or any place of burning. Archaeologists use the term “tophet” as a general noun to apply to any significant cemetery at Carthaginian sites that hold the bodies of sacrificed children, as described by Hellenistic and biblical sources. The claim that “tophet” is a generic name is evidenced by Isaiah’s vivid use of the word as if there were other Tophets. He seems to particularly refer to the strong and sickening smell of smoke they produced.
“For a Topheth is prepared of old; yea, for the king it is made ready; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”
Isaiah 30:33
There is another interesting word in the New Testament that is often related to Gehenna even though it might initially seem to contrast with it. This is the word Tartarus. It is only used once in the New Testament, and that is in Peter’s Second Epistle (2:4). Here are a few facts about this word:
- Many modern English versions only translate Gehenna and Tartarus as “hell” (with Gehenna in the margins or footnotes). Other words that were traditionally translated as hell are now usually rendered as “the grave.”
- In contrast to the torturous fire-pit of Gehenna, Tartarus was more associated with blackness and darkness, like a deep abyss or bottomless pit. Peter writes of it like this (3:4, 17) while still connecting it with the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah (v 6).
- In Greek mythology, Tartarus is described as a place of gloom even far below the rest of the underworld of Hades. It is the prison that held the Titans in chains. Rebellious gods were sent for punishment. Peter seems to have employed this meaning while switching rebel gods for fallen angels.
Gehenna: The Future Lake of Fire
Scholars are virtually unanimous in believing that Gehenna and the Lake of Fire are synonymous titles for the same place. There are hints in the Old Treatment of a burning lake where the wicked will remain for eternity. For example, Daniel wrote of a river of fire that flowed out from God’s presence (Daniel 7:10). It is not clear if this fiery river is a reference to lightning or lava, fire bursts, or light beams. But that is not the important point.
“Fire and the shining of fire are the constant phenomena of the manifestation of God in the world, as the earthly elements most fitting for the representation of the burning zeal with which the holy God … punishes and destroys sinners … The fire which engirds with flame the throne of God pours itself forth as a stream from God into the world, consuming all that is sinful and hostile to God in the world …”
Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
Fiery rivers and lakes are mentioned in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. But it is mentioned more in the last book of the Bible — Revelation or The Apocalypse of St John. The first mention of it is when the Antichrist is thrown alive into the Lake of Fire that burns with brimstone (19:20). Then, during the last battle between good and evil, fire falls down from heaven to consume Satan and his army as they march against the saints. Then he too is thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur, where he will be tormented day and night forever (Revelation 20:9-10). Finally, personifications of Death and Hell are thrown in, as a symbol that every enemy has been defeated (20:14). The last mention of it is from Jesus himself.
“The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Revelation 21:8
This is how Gehenna—a tangible, physical place that people knew, despised, and feared—pointed to what lies beyond for the wicked, a symbolic hell on earth.
