What Does Gehenna Mean in the Bible?
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When I was growing up, the idea of “hell” had common images associated with it. In those days, evangelism would generally begin with a warning about hell. People needed forgiveness from God to avoid this abysmal place. The old school tracks evangelists handed out would include images of souls in flames. I even got in trouble in high school for wearing a T-shirt with a man being sent there. It was the 80s, okay?
Today, Christianity has realized that much of the flames and dungeon imagery of hell came from the Middle Ages and other Western cultural influences. So we’ve perhaps swung too far the other way. The Bible clearly mentions punishment after death. However, the New Testament uses a term, Gehenna, to describe the horrors to come for unrepentant sinners. Looking further into the term and how the New Testament uses it, we can find the real message from Scripture apart from cultural distractions.
Where Does the Bible Mention Gehenna?
The Greek word geenna, or Ge Hinnom, referred to the Valley of Hinnom, a real place outside the hilly and mountainous area of Jerusalem. During the Old Testament, the Valley of Hinnom became associated with idolatry and the abomination of child sacrifice.
2 Kings 23:10 records how King Josiah brought the nation back to the Lord following a time of idolatry. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech.” Idol worship of Molech often included such horrendous practices, like sacrificing children through fire. Gehenna became a cursed place. God speaks later through Jeremiah about these detestable practices, so awful he never even considered anyone would do it, a type of hyperbole regarding immense evil. “And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.” (Jeremiah 7:31)
By the time of Jesus, Scripture uses the term to describe the place of eternal punishment, which we often translate to hell.
- Matthew 5:22 – “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to hell [Gehenna] of fire.”
- Matthew 5:29-30 – Jesus encourages his disciples to remove anything causing them to sin: “For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell [Gehenna].”
- Matthew 10:28 – “Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell [Gehenna].” Here, Jesus teaches not to fear humans who can only give earthly punishment. God gives eternal consequences and rewards.
- Matthew 23:15, 33 – Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, calling them “children of Gehenna” and asking, “How will you escape being sentenced to hell?”
- Mark 9:43-47 – Jesus employs more hyperbole: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… it is better to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell [Gehenna], to the unquenchable fire.”
- Luke 12:5 – Mirroring Matthew 10:28, Jesus warns, “Fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell [Gehenna].”
Jesus refers to a real place as more than a metaphor, using a common location with a cursed history to talk about eternal destruction. Christ warns of a dire destiny to reason with his hearers, for them to repent unto eternal life.
What Is Gehenna According to Scripture?
For years, I heard teaching that Gehenna referred to an active, burning garbage dump in Jesus’ day, an unclean place “outside the camp.” However, no historical records from that time describe the valley as a place where dead bodies continuously burned. The idea seems to come from a 12th-century rabbi, David Kimhi, who described Gehenna from Isaiah, including fires and maggots consuming waste and dead flesh. Interestingly, in Mark 9:43-47, later translations include the phrase, “where the maggots never die and the fire never goes out.” But English translations taken from older manuscripts don’t mention maggots. The idea that the valley served as a trash dump during Jesus’ day seems more myth than reality.
During the reigns of wicked kings like Ahaz and Manasseh, those rulers turned the hearts of the people to idolatry. Awful acts happened in the Valley of Hinnom, giving the place a permanently dark, cursed reputation. Because of things like child sacrifice and the ultimate exile of Judah to Babylon due to Israel’s idol worship, Gehenna became even more infamous and symbolic of God’s judgment.
Over time, the prophets revealed more about God’s promise of a future, eternal, and perfect Jerusalem where God would remove all wickedness and restore all good things. Along with this, Gehenna came to refer to the place where all the wicked would end up. By the time of Jesus, rabbis equated Gehenna with a place of fiery purification or punishment for the sinner. Jesus adopts this common symbol in his own teaching.
In the Gospels, Jesus uses Gehenna to warn of final judgment after death. He describes it as a place of “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), destruction of body and eternal soul (Matthew 10:28), and a location to punish hypocrites and evildoers (Matthew 23:33). Jesus taught about what we consider “hell” more than anyone in Scripture, clearly identifying an eternal place of punishment and calling people to repent.
How Is Gehenna Different from Sheol and Hades?
The Gospel idea of Gehenna developed from the Old Testament idea of Sheol, the place of the dead. This shadowy place held both the righteous and unrighteous after death. Jacob says he will go down to Sheol while mourning for his son (Genesis 37:35), and a psalm pleads from an escape from Sheol (Psalm 16:10). Sheol didn’t act as a place of punishment, but it began to develop more negative language—a dark pit where people wait for a later judgment. As such, it makes sense that the Jews would use Gehenna to express an afterlife of judgment more vividly.
In Greek mythology, Hades ruled the underworld, the realm of the dead. The underworld also took on the god’s name. While feared, Hades wasn’t evil. The underworld included judgment, reward, and punishment—a combination close to the Old Testament idea of Sheol, a type of holding place for the dead. The term Hades appears in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and was a common term in Jesus’ day. Jesus mentions Hades in Luke 16:23, describing the rich man suffering there after death. Lazarus gets to live there, close to Abraham, a high honor. There is, however, a great gap between the righteous and wicked, a different experience for the rich man than for Lazarus.
In contrast, Gehenna isn’t temporary or a place combining good and evil. In context, Jesus uses Gehenna to describe a final, torturous, and eternal realm of punishment, essentially separation from God.
Is Gehenna a Literal Place of Fire?
The more modern idea of hell developed from the biblical texts and European influence. During the Middle Ages, Western theologians and artists expanded on the pictures of hell. Most people were illiterate, and churches used elaborate art and architecture to communicate Catholic theology. These paintings depicted hell scenes of fire, demons, and torment. Dante’s Inferno further influenced the terrifying images of hell.
Scholars, theologians, and historians have intensely debated whether Gehenna includes an unquenchable fire. Many scholars argue that Jesus used Gehenna as a metaphor, not meaning it to be taken literally, using common cultural terms to make his point. Christ meant to make a clear and intense point about how final and agonizing this final judgment would be. For a Jew of his day, being sent to a cursed and unclean place, being burned like a child sacrificed to Molech, would have been beyond horrible.
Other scholars believe in a more literal view. Jesus repeatedly referred to fire and destruction, especially using words like unquenchable to describe the continual nature of it. Christ spoke clearly regarding the judgment and punishment, and some Christians believe the fire to be literal. Even Revelation talks about the final judgment for sinners and demons in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 19:20).
A third perspective exists called annihilationism. In this interesting view, annihilationists believe Gehenna to be a final judgment that leads to total destruction instead of an ongoing torment for all eternity. The Gospels and New Testament do use destruction terminology, but they also use terms like “dead in sin” to describe a spiritual state of people still walking around and breathing. Jesus also uses the continual idea of torment more than once, too much to completely dismiss an eternal punishment.
Either way, Jesus wanted to communicate a place so awful no one would want to go there. And he provided a loving way to avoid it, reconciliation with the Father through repentance, forgiveness, and spiritual rebirth through his finished work on the cross.
What Is the Christian View of Gehenna and Hell?
The Bible portrays hell as the place of punishment for the wicked and those who have rebelled against God’s holy and right rule and reign as Creator, and communicates that it’s a real place. As a righteous and loving God, he must respond to evil. Sin separates us from God and leads to death, as God warns in Genesis 3. We live in spiritual death while our bodies still operate in the world. However, if the spiritual death isn’t dealt with, upon physical death, we finalize our separation from God for all eternity, as we are eternal beings made in God’s image (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Only God is good, so therefore, this full separation from God becomes unrestrained evil and pain. Jesus describes this as being cast out into an outer darkness (Matthew 25:30), with weeping and gnashing of teeth (Luke 13:28), a conscious understanding and experience of the agony. Gehenna (hell) becomes a place of irreversible condemnation, where people are fully cut off from God’s love, community, intimacy, purpose, joy, peace, and presence. As the spirit is the core of a human, the spiritual pain of hell includes suffering in the body, mind, and soul.
God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, however (Ezekiel 18:23). God is eternal, and his love for humanity remains despite our rebellion. Since we still physically live while spiritually dead, an opportunity exists. While we breathe, redemption is possible. In his abundant love and mercy, he initiates a way to uphold justice (as a righteous God must) while offering forgiveness, life, and restoration to eternal life. Both happen through the work of Christ, who died on the cross for our sin, taking our punishment as the only innocent human. Upon his resurrection, Christ defeated sin, death, hell, and corruption.
While we deserve Gehenna, the Father doesn’t want this to be our destiny. Through Christ and by his Holy Spirit, God calls us to repent and live unto him, changing our path today to end in a different eternal destination with him in his eternal Kingdom.
Peace.
Photo credit: ©Images/Rastan
