9:43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, to the unquenchable fire. 9:45 If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 9:47 If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out! It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 9:48 where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

The word Gehenna (translated ‘hell’ here) transliterates the Greek form of an Aramaic word (itself derived from Hebrew) meaning, ‘Valley of Hinnom’.

Jesus quotes from Isa 66:24, and the description of the fate of those who have excluded themselves from the “new heavens and the new earth”.  However, it seems that Jesus also had the Targum in mind, for it is this (rather than the Isaiah passage itself) which mentions Gehenna.

The only place in the NT, outside the Synoptic Gospels, where this word occurs in James 3:6.

It was a place with awful associations, and because of these it lent its name, during the intertestamental period, to the place of the final punishment of the wicked.

According to the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible,

‘The place became notorious because of the idolatrous practices which were carried out there in the days of Judah’s kings Ahaz and Manasseh, especially involving the heinous crime of infant sacrifice associated with the Molech ceremonies (2 Kgs 16:3; 21:6; 2 Chr 28:3; 33:6; Jer 19:56; 32:35).’

It is clear that it was a place where children were burned.

But was Gehenna the place were Jerusalem’s rubbish was burned?  This idea is often repeated (including in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, The Apologetics Study Bible, and Holman Apologetics Commentary).

According to N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God, p183, n142),

‘Gehenna was Jerusalem’s smouldering rubbish-heap, and thence became a metaphor for the place of fiery judgment after death.’

More recently, Wright has written:

‘Gehenna was a place, not just an idea: it was the rubbish heap outside the south-west corner of the old city of Jerusalem.  There is to this day a valley at that ponit which bears the name Ge Hinnom…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.’ (Surprised by Hope, p188)

Rob Bell (Love Wins) perpetuates the ‘rubbish dump’ legend, giving his own twist:

‘Gehenna, in Jesus’s day, was the city dump. People tossed their garbage and waste into this valley. There was a fire there, burning constantly to consume the trash. Wild animals fought over scraps of food along the edges of the heap. When they fought, their teeth would make a gnashing sound. Gehenna was the place with the gnashing of teeth, where the fire never went out. Gehenna was an actual place that Jesus’s listeners would have been familiar with. So the next time someone asks you if you believe in an actual hell, you can always say, “Yes, I do believe that my garbage goes somewhere…”’

On the meaning of Gehenna, Edwards comments:

‘The Greek word for “hell” in vv. 43, 45, and 47 is Gehenna, from which the Hinnom Valley, the steep ravine to the southwest of Jerusalem (Josh 15:8) where human sacrifice had been practiced under Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kgs 16:3; 21:6), derives its name. The detestable practice of human sacrifice was later excoriated by Jeremiah (Jer 7:31; 32:35) and abolished by King Josiah (2 Kgs 23:10), who desecrated the Hinnom Valley by making it a garbage dump. “ ‘To go into hell, where the fire never goes out,’ ” became a symbol of divine wrath and punishment in subsequent Judaism and Christianity, or of the darkness, pain, and torment resulting from it.’

On the purpose of such warnings, R.P. Martin (Q by Milne) writes:

‘Jesus warnings were meant to shake his hearers out of their complacency. They were thinking, “The Gentiles will burn in hell.” Jesus turned it around, “you will suffer in an awful place like Gehenna if you live in a way that causes other people to stumble through your bad example”…These “uncomfortable words” of Jesus were spoken whenever leaders of others placed stumbling blocks in the path of simple folk and tried to stop and thwart their entry into the Kingdom of God. Sermons on hell are just as needed today, provided we aim their thrust at the people who most need to hear them…as warnings to Christians, especially those who are lax and careless, and above all, judgmental of all and sundry.’

But Beasley-Murray and Bailey have shown that there is scarcely any evidence in favour of viewing Gehenna as some kind of rubbish tip.

See this article by Lloyd R. Bailey, this post by Todd Bolen, this post by Chris Loewen and chapter 9 in Urban Legends of the New Testament. by David A. Croteau)