You very likely heard the claim that “Jesus talked more about hell than He did about heaven.” Take, for example, the words of famous Calvinist Pastor John MacArthur:
Yes, Jesus was a Hellfire preacher… Jesus spoke more about hell than anybody else in the Bible. In fact, He spoke more about hell than everybody else in the Bible combined…. He continually spoke about hell and He warned sinners to escape hell because of its horrible reality.
The gospels and the writers of the New Testament describe hell as a fiery place, and its fire is the fire of torture and torment. It’s also described as darkness, outer darkness, like being lost in the most infinite corner of space under horrible torture and pain, a place of weeping, wailing, teeth-grinding agony.
John MacArthur
This statement, however, is incorrect. In fact, Jesus not once spoke of “hell” but spoke of “Gehenna,” a term well-known in Judaism.
The term “Gehenna,” used by Jesus in the New Testament as a metaphor to describe the condition of suffering and divine consequences, was understood by Jews of the first and second centuries primarily as symbolizing harsh consequences rather than a destination in the afterlife.
In Matthew 23:15, Jesus condemns the religious leaders for making their converts “twice as much a child of hell” as themselves. Here, Jesus uses “hell” (Gehenna) as a present reality rather than a future destination, suggesting that He viewed Gehenna as a condition of moral, spiritual, physical, mental, or emotional corruption occurring in this life. This indicates that Jesus understood Gehenna more as an earthly state of separation from God’s ways and its consequences, characterized by hypocrisy and spiritual blindness, rather than an eternal place of torment awaiting sinners in the afterlife.
This interpretation aligns with the views of early Jewish and Christian thinkers, including Saint Origen. Origen, a Church Father from the second century, engaged extensively with Jewish scholars and writings, which influenced his understanding of scriptural texts. In his work ‘Against Celsus,’ Origen discusses Gehenna, suggesting that Jews who did use it in terms of afterlife reality in his time viewed it more as a temporary process or place intended for purification and correction rather than eternal damnation.
Origin was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis, hermeneutics, and homiletics. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in early Christian theology and apologetics. He has been described as “the greatest genius the early church ever produced.”
Origen wrote extensively about the New Testament gospels and his interactions with Jews, but the most pertinent section is as follows:
Now as we found that Gehenna was mentioned in the Gospel as a place of punishment, we searched to see whether it is mentioned anywhere in the ancient Scriptures, and especially because the Jews too use the word. And we ascertained that where the valley of the son of Ennom was named in Scripture in the Hebrew, instead of valley, with fundamentally the same meaning, it was termed both the valley of Ennom and also Gehenna. And continuing our researches, we find that what was termed Gehenna, or the valley of Ennom, was included in the lot of the tribe of Benjamin, in which Jerusalem also was situated. And seeking to ascertain what might be the inference from the heavenly Jerusalem belonging to the lot of Benjamin and the valley of Ennom, we find a certain confirmation of what is said regarding the place of punishment, intended for the purification of such souls as are to be purified by torments, agreeably to the saying: “The Lord comes like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and of gold.”
Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 25.
This context is crucial for interpreting New Testament references to Gehenna, as it underscores the idea that early interpretations of this term, even when using it as an afterlife concept, might have leaned towards a temporary, corrective punishment rather than an unending torment.
“Valley of Hinnom” (Gehenna/Géenna)
Gehenna comes from the Hebrew phrase “GEY HINNOM,” which means the “valley of wailing.” It’s an actual valley, here in Israel, on the southwest side of Jerusalem (Joshua 15:8). In that valley, in the gorge known as Topheth, worshipers performed child sacrifices in the fire (2 Kings 23:10). This site was dedicated to the god Molech, to whom Israel’s kings like Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their children (2 Chronicles 28:1-3; 2 Chronicles 33:6). The prophets confronted this evil, saying that God would send enemy nations to conquer Jerusalem, and Israel’s leaders would be killed and their dead bodies thrown into that valley to be burned (Jeremiah 7:30-33). The fires that those kings started to consume the innocent would one day turn and consume them. While Israel experienced many purifying fires from God for their sins (e.g., Isaiah 1:25, Isaiah 48:10, Jeremiah 9:7, Malachi 3:2-3, Zechariah 13:9.), the act of burning young children as offerings to pagan idols was the most abhorrent of them all. In ancient Israel, Gehenna was essentially synonymous with shame and disgrace, representing a dark and ignominious chapter in Israel’s history that led to significant purifying judgment. For example, Jeremiah said that this place would become “the valley of slaughter,” for in that ditch, the Babylonians would dump the corpses of Israelites:
So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
Jeremiah 19:6
In later Jewish literature, such as 1 Enoch, which predates the New Testament, the Valley of Hinnom symbolized Israel’s purifying punishments. God frequently punished Israel, but the biblical punishments were always for the sake of purification; otherwise, Israel would have long ceased to exist. God’s punishment is real, but it is not akin to Calvin’s or Luther’s ideas of punishment, explicitly enticing to burn and eliminate the Jewish people once and for all.
Jesus, also a prophet of Israel, used these same images of ‘fire’ and ‘Gehenna’ to describe horrible evils and shame and God’s response to them. God promised He wouldn’t let evil go unchecked (Isaiah 13:11, Nahum 1:3, Proverbs 11:21, Jeremiah 25:31, Ezekiel 18:30, Malachi 4:1). Therefore, the fire of God’s justice will ultimately consume all evil and remove it from His beloved nation. Likewise, He will purify His creation once and for all (Revelation 21:1-4; 2 Peter 3:3-9).
This Jewish term symbolizing shame and punishment, Gehenna, occurs 12 times in the New Testament and is translated as “hell,” misunderstood by many modern readers as an afterlife torturous destination.
The Valley of Unpleasant Odors
The Kidron Valley, now a national park in Jerusalem, encompasses the Valley of Hinnom, also known as Gehenna, within its borders.
The presence of urban garbage dumps, where city residents would burn waste, is widely recognized, although their exact locations have been unclear and debatable. To ensure you are well-informed of the ongoing heated debate, primarily between Calvinists and non-Calvinists, regarding Hellfire and whether Hinnom was a garbage dump, consider the following: In 2011, Francis Chan, a Calvinist pastor, authored “Erasing Hell,” aiming to disprove the garbage dump theory. Subsequently, in 2015, DL Kennedy penned “Gehenna Revisited: Rebutting Francis Chan,” which sought to counter Chan’s claims.
A recent excavation, however, has confirmed the existence of a substantial city garbage dump in the Kidron area:
The chance discovery of an Early Roman city dump (1st century CE) in Jerusalem has yielded for the first time ever quantitative data on garbage components that introduce us to the mundane daily life Jerusalemites led and the kind of animals that were featured in their diet. Most of the garbage consists of pottery shards, all common tableware, while prestige objects are entirely absent. Other significant garbage components include numerous fragments of cooking ovens, wall plaster, animal bones and plant remains. Of the pottery vessels, cooking pots are the most abundant type. Most of the refuse turns out to be “household garbage” originating in the domestic areas of the city…
Rabbi David Kimhi (1160–1235), in his commentary on Psalms 27:13, noted that fires were perpetually maintained in the valley of Hinnom to consume the waste and corpses deposited there. Likewise, the Jewish Talmud links the location with fire and smoke (Erovin 19).
As with all city dumps, the poor, including lepers, often scavenged through the garbage. The waste and refuse that accumulated were often incinerated to be disposed of. Since there was always someone throwing their trash in this worms’ paradise, the fires never ceased.
Quoting Isaiah 66:24, Jesus reminded his audience that:
Gehenna, where “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
Mark 9:47-48
Worms do die; however, the metaphorical notion that they never perish is possibly linked to the abundant, continuous “food” (either corpses, garbage, or both) they consume. This could represent the numerous individuals who perished and were cast into the valley at various times in history, both before and after Christ’s time.
The central issue is not whether the Valley of Hinnom served as the city’s refuse site or merely as a location for discarding dead bodies (as mentioned in Jeremiah 7:31-32, 9:6-7, 19:11-12, and Isaiah 30:33). The significance lies in its symbolism of Israel’s disgraceful past and the dire consequences that followed.
Jesus’ summoning of Isaiah 66:24 likely evoked memories in the Jewish consciousness of Isaiah and Jeremiah’s descriptions of numerous corpses thrown into the Valley of Hinnom during the Babylonian siege.
Jesus wasn’t trying to describe some horrific afterlife cosmic scenario but was referring to a place well-known to Jews. A place symbolizing shame, humiliation, degradation, and divine consequences on Israel when failing to walk in God’s ways. It was a way for Jesus to warn the nation of Israel of the upcoming repercussions of their failure to repent and change their ways.
American theologian, Edward William Fudge, explains:
The term conveyed a sense of total horror and disgust…Gehenna was a place of undying worm and irresistible fire, an abhorrent place where crawling maggots and smoldering heat raced each other to consume the putrefying fare served them each day.
Unfortunately, Jesus’ caution to Israel became a reality. The first-century historian Josephus documents that, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, corpses were thrown over the city walls into the adjacent valleys due to the lack of burial space within the city (Jos. War 5.12.3).
Clearly, to first-century Jews, Gehenna was a tangible location infamous for its disgustingness, repulsiveness, and revulsion. It was emblematic of shame and humiliation, accompanied by images of fire, refuse, and death. It was the same national warning as before, only this time coming from the Prophet of prophets.
To Be Thrown Into Gehenna (Matthew 5:27-29)
Let’s examine Matthew 5:27-29 as a case study:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna.
Matthew 5:27-29
What did Jesus mean when he said that men looking at a woman with lust will end up in Gehenna? Was Jesus really promoting self-mutilation and teaching—as some believe—that looking at a woman lustfully will result in eternal punishment in Hellfire?
It’s hard for me to imagine that Jesus, who only a few verses earlier said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish Law or the Prophets” (5:17), would contradict both himself and Moses in suggesting eternal Hellfire torment for anyone lusting in their mind, a concept utterly foreign to the Law and to Jews.
Clearly, Rabbi Jesus, a master of using parables, symbolism, and metaphors to convey deeper spiritual truths, was speaking figuratively. Otherwise, if we interpret Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:29 about plucking out one’s eye literally, we face an ethical and theological contradiction, as it seems unimaginable that Jesus would advocate for self-mutilation.
In his commentary on Matthew, theologian Francis Wright Beare points to the challenges in giving a literal interpretation to these words of Jesus:
If this [Mt. 5:29-30] is to be taken as a ‘demand’ of Jesus, then it must be said that he is demanding the impossible, for it is the universal experience that the sexual impulses are uncontrollable.
Francis Wright Beare
It is improbable that Jesus was saying that if you were sexually aroused by looking at another person or fantasizing about them, even momentarily, you’d literally end up tortured in Hellfire forever. Jesus likely had children and teenagers—such as his disciples—in his audience. Was he teaching them to literally dismember body parts, like their eyes, to ensure they would be saved from eternal torture in fire? If so, didn’t Jesus know we don’t need eyes to imagine and fantasize? People who become blind are still capable of lusting in their minds. Would Jesus actually instruct these young men that they would be eternally punished just for having sexual thoughts? Considering that sexual thoughts are a common human experience, why would God design us with these impulses and then imply eternal torture for entertaining them? How could that be considered just? A literal interpretation of Jesus’s hyperbolic metaphors in Matthew 5 is nonsensical and misrepresents God’s character, yet it does explain some of the religious legalism observed in the world.
Jesus often used hyperbolic language—a common rhetorical technique in Jewish teachings—to emphasize that evil begins with our thoughts. The use of such vivid metaphors was not to instill a fear of eternal damnation for typical human experiences like sexual thoughts but to stress the ethical life choices expected in his teachings. Lust was merely an example of something much bigger. Recognizing that lust is a common human experience his audience would relate to, Jesus highlighted the need for accountability and the pursuit of a higher moral standard, which Israel often failed to uphold. Jesus, knowing that probably all of his listeners lust in their minds, used it to make a point. Remember, Jesus wasn’t speaking to a specific individual. His audience was a “crowd of Jews” (verse 1); he was a Prophet addressing the nation of Israel.
Why Threaten With Gehenna?
Suppose you were judged and condemned by society and, therefore, had to scavenge for leftovers in Gehenna to survive; it meant you got to the lowest point in your life—a place of great shame. You’ve likely lost everything and become an outcast. When New Testament texts using Gehenna are considered, things become even more apparent. Jesus symbolically uses Gehenna to teach about consequences. Imagine the kind of shame people who lived in or scavenged through Gehenna Valley felt—constant shame and embarrassment. For that reason, missing one eye is better “than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of Gehenna” (Matthew 18:9). Losing a body part is preferable to scavenging for food amidst Gehenna’s trash and flames for the rest of your life.
Now, let’s connect the dots—If you were an Israelite caught committing adultery, you would either be stoned or become an outcast of society and find yourself living in shame in a dumpster—Gehenna. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright explains:
When Jesus was warning his hearers about Gehenna, he was not, as a general rule, telling them that unless they repented in this life, they would burn in the next one. As with God’s kingdom, so with its opposite: it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else.
N.T. Wright
Every act of adultery ever committed started with a lustful thought, but not all lustful thoughts led to adultery. Harboring lustful thoughts might lead to dire consequences, as thoughts can manifest into actions. In a rigid religious society, such as that of second-temple Judaism, certain actions may provoke severe repercussions, stripping you of all you hold dear and casting you out to scavenge in the city’s dump—Gehenna—as no one is willing to hire or work with you.
God’s Gehenna is Restorative
The ability to control one’s thoughts is essential, but there’s an even deeper lesson to be learned. It was not God who threw individuals into the Valley of Hinnom; it was the people—a hyper-religious society. While God desires that even sinners live with dignity, be rebuilt, and become self-sufficient, it is religious leaders who often cancel, boycott, degrade, and essentially lead sinners into the Valley of Shame.
In contrast, when God witnesses sinners committing adultery, He does not seek to shame or abandon them. How do I know? Well, because when religious people brought a woman caught in adultery before Christ, suggesting she needed to be severely punished, Jesus did the very opposite of what the religious leaders hoped for. He forgave her: “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11). She did indeed sin. But Jesus did not condemn her. The religious legalists did. Similarly, while some religious individuals may be quick to condemn others to Hellfire, Jesus chose to show grace instead of passing judgment. He recognized that love is a much more potent force for renewing the human heart and conscience than the threat of Hellfire.
Worms and Maggots
Even when we consider the metaphors used, such as worms, who indeed inhabit garbage dumps and consume decaying matter, we can see God’s grace. What is often lacking in modern Western thought is the Jewish context. For example, the Talmud (Shabbat 151b) mentions that maggots are formed for the deceased’s benefit, indicating their role in the natural decomposition process. This is seen as a component of the life and death cycle established by God. Such a view acknowledges the presence of worms as an integral part of the natural world and essential in the body’s return to the earth: “…till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)
Worms and maggots play a vital role in our ecosystem, contributing to the decomposition process and facilitating the recycling of nutrients. Historically, worm (larval) therapy has been very successful in treating wounds. However, in the modern era, sulfa drugs, also known as sulfur or brimstone drugs, became the popular method for treating infections in the 1940s. This led to the decline of worm therapy, which the public viewed with distaste. Subsequently, antibiotics became the preferred treatment. This all suggests that the predominantly negative view of these metaphors in the modern Western mindset was, in fact, more intricate and nuanced in ancient Israel. The metaphors of fire, sulfur, and brimstone, which we will explore later, are also included in this complexity.
Even if everything I have said so far is false… Even if Gehenna were to be taken literally as an afterlife cosmic fire chamber that endlessly burns people, this interpretation clashes with biblical prophecies. Jeremiah proclaims that one day Gehenna “will be holy to the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:40), while the Psalmist envisions it transformed into a place where “thirsty hearts journey to appear before God in Zion, the valley of Gehenna will become a place of springs” (Psalm 84:5-7). These passages suggest a restoration and sanctification of Gehenna, not its perpetuation as a place of eternal torment. How, then, could Gehenna be a literal and unending Hellfire if it is destined to become holy and rejuvenated? These Old Testament prophecies seem to directly contradict the idea of Gehenna as a place of eternal suffering in fire, as conceived by adherents of the ECT Hellfire doctrine.
Conclusion
To conclude, in Jewish thought, Gehenna symbolized the severe consequences of straying from God’s path. On a national level, this concept represented the tangible loss of divine blessings and protection. On an individual level, it represented the outcome of sin, especially in an unforgiving religious society. As a result, those who deviated faced vulnerability and adversity, akin to being left to fend for themselves in a desolate wasteland. Jesus used Gehenna both as a reminder and a threat for Israel—Your enemies will consume you, and you will be left to scavenge in the ruins.
Akin to the prophets of Israel before him, Jesus issued a direct warning to Israel: Turn away from your evil ways, or you will once again be consumed by Gehenna’s flames, scavenging through the ashes to survive. His admonition to Israel was a tangible threat. This prophecy’s fulfillment began 40 years later, starting in 70 AD, after a relentless five-month siege, with the Romans razing Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Rome decimated Jerusalem, killing and reducing the people of Israel to starvation amidst the ruins. According to first-century historian Josephus, over one million people, mostly Jews, were killed during the siege, with many corpses thrown into Gehenna.
This article was a copy-paste from my new book on hell: HELL: A Jewish Perspective on a Christian Doctrine
