What Is Gehenna in the Bible?

Valley of Hinnom and Biblical History

Gehenna is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew ge-hinnom — "Valley of Hinnom" or, in its fuller form, ge ben-hinnom, "Valley of the Son of Hinnom." The valley runs along the south and southwest of Jerusalem, originally belonging to a man named Hinnom. It became infamous in the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh, when Israelites sacrificed their children to the god Molech at a site within the valley called Topheth. Jeremiah 7:31 condemns it directly: "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 commanded them not, neither came it into my heart." Jeremiah pronounced a curse on the valley: it would become the Valley of Slaughter, filled with the dead (Jeremiah 7:32-33; 19:6). After the reforms of King Josiah (2 Kings 23:10), the valley was desecrated and became Jerusalem's refuse dump — a place where garbage and the corpses of criminals were burned continuously. By the first century, Jews used ge-hinnom as a metaphor for the place of post-mortem punishment. Jesus uses the word Gehenna eleven times in the Gospels (Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5). The KJV renders it consistently as "hell." In Matthew 5:22 he warns that saying "Thou fool" puts one in danger of "hell fire" — the Greek is literally "the Gehenna of fire." In Matthew 10:28 he distinguishes it from mere physical death: "fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Gehenna must be distinguished from two other terms the KJV also translates as "hell." Sheol (Hebrew) and its Greek equivalent Hades refer to the realm of the dead where all go — both righteous and wicked — in the Old Testament understanding. Gehenna, by contrast, is the place of final judgment. The lake of fire in Revelation 20:14 is described as the final destiny of Death and Hades — a destination, not a waiting room.

How Christians Understand Gehenna Today

Jesus's eleven uses of Gehenna constitute the primary New Testament teaching on final judgment from his own lips. The concentration is notable: Jesus warned about Gehenna more than any other biblical figure, and his warnings were directed primarily at religious leaders and self-righteous insiders, not only at obvious sinners. In Christian theology Gehenna became the default reference for the doctrine of hell as final, conscious, and terrible — as opposed to the intermediate state (Hades/Sheol). The metaphorical force of the image is significant: it is a rubbish heap, a place of waste. Whatever was valuable was removed; only the refuse ends there. Jesus adds the image of the worm that does not die and the fire that is not quenched (Mark 9:44, 48, quoting Isaiah 66:24). Denominational traditions vary in their interpretation of Gehenna's duration and nature — eternal conscious punishment, conditional immortality (annihilationism), or universal restoration are the three main positions. What all traditions share is the seriousness of Jesus's warnings: Gehenna was not a polite theological category. It was the most urgent word in his vocabulary. He said it was better to lose an eye or a hand than to arrive there whole.

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