Gehenna

Biblical Text

"Gehenna" (Greek γέεννα) is the New Testament term for the place of God's final judgment. It is generally said to occur twelve times in the New Testament: Matthew 5:22, 5:29–30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23:33; Mark 9:43–47; Luke 12:5; and James 3:6. Apart from the occurrence in James, every instance appears in the words of Jesus.

The New Korean Revised Version translates every instance of the word as jiok ("hell"), so Korean Bible readers rarely encounter the original term directly. In the text, Gehenna is depicted as a place of "the fire that never shall be quenched." Mark 9:48, drawing on Isaiah 66:24, describes it as the place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Matthew 10:28 speaks of God as the one "which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Term and Background

The word is generally understood to derive from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom ("Valley of Hinnom"), which passed into Greek by way of Aramaic. The valley is thought to lie south or southwest of Jerusalem. Its precise location is discussed in the article Valley of Hinnom.

• As a place name: In Joshua 15:8 and 18:16 it appears as part of the boundary between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
• A site of idolatry: According to 2 Chronicles, King Ahaz (28:3) and King Manasseh (33:6) burned their children as offerings there. The site of these sacrifices was called "Tophet."
• Josiah's reform: Josiah defiled Tophet so that no one might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings 23:10).
• Jeremiah's prophecy: Jeremiah prophesied that the valley would be called "the valley of slaughter" and would become a burial place for the dead (Jeremiah 7:31–32; 19:6).

From Place Name to Symbol of Judgment

As a place where idolatry and judgment converged, the valley gradually came to symbolize God's judgment. Jewish literature of the intertestamental period, such as 1 Enoch, reportedly depicts an "accursed valley" beside Jerusalem as the place where the wicked are judged. The New Testament takes up this understanding and uses Gehenna for the place of punishment following the final judgment.

Many scholars distinguish Gehenna from "Hades." Hades commonly refers to the abode of the dead in general and is usually rendered in the New Korean Revised Version as eumbu ("the underworld"). Gehenna, by contrast, denotes the place of final punishment. However, "Tartarus" in 2 Peter 2:4 is likewise translated as "hell" in the New Korean Revised Version, so the distinction among the three terms is not readily apparent in Korean.

Interpretations and Debates

• Eternal punishment: The Westminster Confession of Faith (chapter 33) confesses that the wicked are cast into eternal torments. Most major Korean denominations understand Gehenna as a place of conscious, eternal punishment.
• The nature of the fire: Some interpreters read the fire and the worm literally, while others regard them as figures expressing the severity of the punishment. John Calvin regarded such expressions as figurative.
• Annihilationism: This view, which focuses on the word "destroy" in Matthew 10:28, holds that the wicked are not tormented forever but cease to exist. John Stott is known to have tentatively expressed sympathy for this view. The Seventh-day Adventist Church also teaches the annihilation of the wicked. Most evangelical denominations reject this view.
• Jehovah's Witnesses: Jehovah's Witnesses regard Gehenna as a symbol of eternal destruction and reject the doctrine of a burning hell.
• The "garbage dump" story: Sermons frequently explain that in Jesus' day the valley was a garbage dump with perpetually burning fires. This account is generally traced to the commentary of the Jewish scholar David Kimhi, written around AD 1200. It is widely noted that no ancient literary or archaeological evidence has been found to support it, and the biblical text itself does not say this.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, following the New Korean Revised Version, the concept is expressed mainly with the words jiok ("hell") and jiok bul ("hellfire"). The original term "Gehenna" is introduced chiefly in Bible studies, commentaries, and sermons that explain the original text. It is frequently mentioned in preaching and evangelism dealing with heaven and hell and the Last Judgment.