In the previous post I sketched out some detail about the word ‘Gehenna’ – and suggested that its use in referring to hell was developing in the period between the two testaments. It is probably fair to suggest, therefore, that in Jesus’ time the word conjured up different pictures for different people and it may be that even Jesus himself did not have one consistent thought in mind when using the word. After all, metaphors are often flexible rather than rigid.

The first three recorded uses of Gehenna by Jesus are to be found in Matthew chapter 5 – that is, in what we refer to as ‘the Sermon on the Mount’. And straight off it is important to note this context. Predominantly, the Sermon includes teaching about how we should live in the here and now. Though it may be fair to extract theology about other issues, such as ‘hell’, this is not the main point of Matthew 5-7.

I’ll focus on the first instance of Gehenna today – found in Matthew 5:22. The immediate context is Jesus’ teaching on murder and his extending this to include anger, where he says, ‘But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, “You good-for-nothing,” shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, “You fool,” shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell’ (NASB). Many have noticed that there seems to be an upward (or is it downward) progression here – from an inward but unexpressed anger to a direct verbal attack. (It is noted that there two verbal assaults here – and I have to confess that I’m unsure why the second is worse than the first.)

But it is the consequence of anger and its expression that is important for us today. And just as the wrongdoings seem to increase in seriousness, so do the consequences. In the first instance – that of inward anger – the result would be to have to face a local court (krisis). In the second – calling someone a ‘good-for-nothing’ – the result would be standing trial in the high court (Sanhedrin – sunedrion). And then finally, calling someone a ‘fool’ could result in ‘go[ing] into the fiery Gehenna’. If eternal punishment in hell is meant by this last phrase then there is one mighty jump from the second instance to the third.

Rather than having this understanding Gehenna here, however, would it not be better to interpret it as a place of being judged? After all, the first two consequences in the verse are facing actual courts – a local and the high court, or Sanhedrin. Both these places heard and decided upon cases and then passed a punishment sentence of some kind. They were not the place where the punishment itself was actualised. It would seem reasonable, therefore, to interpret Gehenna in the same way – as a place where the accused is judged but not necessarily punished. As for any sense of the punishment being eternal here I believe we could dismiss this as well. It certainly does not suggest so clearly and since being before any court has a limited timeframe, then I would argue that the sense of eternity is not implicit for Gehenna either.

But even if we should understand Gehenna here as an eternal place of punishment, should we understand that Jesus meant this literally or could he have been using hyperbole? This question can be answered, I believe, by referring once again to the progression in seriousness that can be seen in the verse and the massive jump between the second and third crime. Is it reasonable to believe that Jesus would have a person calling someone a good-for-nothing facing a high court with at best the power to execute an offender, and have another person guilty of calling someone a fool facing eternal punishment in a fiery hell? I think most people would conclude that this would not be reasonable and that everything we know about Jesus would not lead us down this interpretation.

So to conclude, when Jesus used the word Gehenna in Matthew 5:22, though it is translated in many English Bibles with ‘hell’, we do not in fact need to understand the word as being a place of eternal punishment.