In Mark’s Gospel the word Gehenna appears only three times and all of them in the one passage and this passage is very similar to the ones Matthew records about Jesus’s teaching on ethical living. In order to keep from falling into sin he suggests we should cut off our hand or foot or pluck out our eye (Mark 9:43, 45, 47). Better to limp into heaven than skip into hell. Few would disagree with the view that Jesus was using hyperbolic and figurative language here to make a point about the importance of living well in this life.

The reference to Gehenna could also be interpreted as Jesus being figurative in his use of language. However, Mark does add to these sayings by including a phrase that seems to expand on the picture of Gehenna: ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched’. Here Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 66:24. I intend dealing with these words and other similar passages in a later post but it is worth noting here what Jesus says about fire in verse 49 – that it is something that ‘salts’ people, a phrase that is interpreted by many as an act of purifying. This isn’t fire as punishment, therefore, let alone eternal punishment, but a fire that purifies – a concept that has led some Christian traditions to hold a theology of purgatory.

Even if we were to take these warnings literally it would still not be necessary to conclude that they refer to a place where the unrepentant would suffer eternal conscious torment and punishment. Jesus does not say that having been cast into Gehenna we would stay there forever. Remember that Gehenna was an actual place – Jerusalem’s rubbish tip – and that judgement in the here and now was visited upon Israel there at one point in history. But that was a temporary judgement not an eternal one.

To conclude, therefore, in my view Gehenna is not a synonym for ‘place of eternal punishment’ in Mark 9.

The previous post on hell can be found here.


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