bbhchurchconnection.wordpress.co … bage-dump/
Isaiah 66:24 is a weak basis to imply perpetual (conscious) judgment
wether it was a garbage dump or not is of no relevance, that it is place of divine judgment is not denied but the question is, what kind of judgment it is?
is it a merely earthly punishment, i.e. death?
is it a spiritual punishment, wether everlasting or not?
is it burning alive in literal fire, wether everlasting or not?
I posted this link elsewhere:
tcc.customer.sentex.ca/VH/VH-ind … o_geh.html
especially this is a good argumentation:
tcc.customer.sentex.ca/dload/balfour.pdf
this is also an interesting thought, however I think it takes gehenna and lake of fire too literal
I myself have been guilty of helping perpetuate the “flaming garbage dump” concept of Gehenna, but I’m also aware of its far more pertinent roles in the OT involving the ultra-sin of Israel and as a burying place for various slain rebels against God. The reference to the tail end of Isaiah, which Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount and in the final discourse at Capernaum, involves the destruction of pagan armies beseiging Jerusalem having been slain by YHWH in rescuing Jerusalem, and briefly refers to the situation discussed in more detail elsewhere in the prophets where teams of people go out from the city for months and years afterward to bury and burn the bodies.
This is not a prophecy that has ever been fulfilled, including in 70 CE at the fall of Jerusalem (where any bodies thrown in Gehenna were of relatively innocent as well as guilty rebel Israelites opposing the pagan invaders and oppressors!–YHWH definitely did not rescue them from the pagan beseiging army, much less slaughter the pagan army and create a new extension to the valley into which the hordes of invading pagans could be buried.)
At any rate, Jesus’ point was that those who think they are righteous with God (especially His own disciples and apostles per the warning at Capernaum) had better check their attitudes very self-critically or they’ll end up being punished with the unrighteous when YHWH comes in the eschaton. That would work just as well with the flaming garbage dump concept, so long as the point of eschatological punishment isn’t lost (which I have never once done); but as “Andre”'s sources point out, the evidence for it being such in the time of Jesus is sparse at best. (We do know there was at least one leper colony there, however, I think; and the connotations of the area would have made it seem accursed, so treating it as a convenient burning garbage dump would be very reasonable. Consequently neither am I denying it was used for that!)
What is more important, from an exegetical standpoint, is whether there is scriptural evidence that the story isn’t hopelessly over for anyone going into Gehenna (figuratively and/or literally). And of course Jesus Himself goes on in the final Capernaum discourse to strongly indicate hope for them by explaining the purpose of the unquenchable fire (although non-universalistic commentators usually neglect to talk about that. 
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If GosMatt harmonizes the same scene with GosMark (and I think it does), then what Jesus was saying was rather too strongly put for Simon Peter, who came back to Jesus later (apparently after getting the Temple tax for Jesus and himself from the fish) to see if he couldn’t have at least a little hope for hopeless punishment eventually! 
To me, it is very significant that the warnings concerning Hinnom Valley are primarily recorded in Matthew. Matthew contains all 4; Mark and Luke each repeat 1. Matthew wrote to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, and Luke to the Greeks (a Greek). With Matthew writing to the Jews who understood the historical significance of Hinnom Valley, it makes sense to me that the Jews would have understood Hinnom Valley to be a non-specific reference to the judgment of God against sin in the lives of His children. This judgment could be seen in:
- “IF” Hinnom Valley was a garbage dump, sin leading to a “trashed life”, a worthless life good for nothing but to be consumed in the fire of judgment.
- Hinnom Valley was where the children of Israel became so consumed by lust and evil that they sacrificed their own children to the idol Molech which speaks of being so consumed by evil from within that one sacrifices all they love to that evil.
- Hinnom Valley was where the bodies were piled when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, as prophesied by Jeremiah, thus warning of another coming destruction of Jerusalem (by the Romans).
- There is some evidence that the Pharisees used Hinnom Valley as a metaphor to speak of punishment of sin in the afterlife (primarily remedial for less than a year, but possibly annihilation after a year or indefinitely long suffering). Considering though Jesus’ denounciation of the doctrine of the Pharisees, I don’t think this is what Jesus meant to convey in His warnings of Hinnom Valley.
Was Hinnom Valley a trash dump? If it wasn’t, it would have made a very good one for that day because of its proximity to Jerusalem and its infamous history. It’s likely, imo, that some of Hinnom Valley was used as a trash dump along with other sites surrounding Jerusalem. Every city, even town, needs a place to discard their waste. And large trash dumps are regularly burnt and certainly have no shortage of flies and maggots (worms that do not die).
I think Jesus intended the meaning of the metaphor of Hinnom Valley to be multi-faceted and non-specific, a visionary apocalyptic warning of the devistation, destruction that comes to and through a person because of the sin in his/her life, destruction in this life, in their family, in their community, and potential non-specific punishment in the life to come - shame and reproach at the judgment when we all stand before the Lord. Primarily it speaks of destruction in this life though, I think! The significant thing to note is that Hinnom Valley is a non-specific metaphor of destruction that comes because of sin in our lives. Jesus did not spell out what He meant by His use of the Hinnom Valley metaphor. Also, as you may have noted, I like to call it Hinnom Valley instead of Gehenna; and I like to do that because it helps demystify, de-religiousize it and help us root it in it’s very real geography. Sadly, it is still mistranslated as Hell in most modern translations - very sad!
Very helpful. Thanks, youse guys!
I’m hesitant to swallow whole-sale AndreLinoge’s original post because it is a collage of quotes from internet sources. Having read a great many Bible scholars who their history, I find it hard to believe that they’ve all overlooked the “truth” that Gehenna was not a garbage dump. scholars to which I refer are Tom Wright, Ben Witherington, and various commentaries.
So… I’m not throwing it away entirely, but just suspicious… I will continue to dig.
On the subject of Gehenna, I’ve always been confused about the end of Isaiah 66. Generally, universalism seems to fit Isaiah’s prophecies especially smoothly, but what does he mean by these “corpses” that are “slain by the Lord?”
I’ve always sort of pictured a new heavens and a new earth, containing a new Jerusalem, with a new Gehenna (aka Lake of Fire) outside it. With this in mind, Isaiah 66 seems to imply some sort of annihilationist view I guess? I’m just confused. Are my “locations” wrong as well in regards to the new creation?
Chris
Hi, Chris!
I don’t know that I’ve seen you here; if I’m wrong about that, please forgive me. In any case, welcome!
Annihilationists do cite this, and it certainly points more toward annihilation than eternal conscious torment (ect). I believe it refers at least in part to the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD, possibly to the earlier atrocities of Antiochus Epiphanes, and possibly to some future end-times (also temporal) attack on Jerusalem. The Valley of Gehenna is of particular interest in that it was the location of the Jews’ Moloch worship in which they burned their children alive as offerings to the idol. God said that it was a thing He didn’t command and that such a thing never even entered His mind. (interesting proposition on its own) It was one of the reasons God sent them into exile in Babylon.
You might say that God didn’t slay those people – the Greeks did, or the Romans did. But God has always taken responsibility for allowing that sort of thing to happen. It was He,not the Babylonians, who exiled His people from the northern and southern kingdoms. And it was He, not Cyrus, who brought them back – well, the southern kingdom anyway. It may be, particularly if you hold a dispensationalist eschatology, that this slaughter will happen for the final time at the end of this present evil age. Let’s hope not – but even if it does, it makes sense that these people will be raised with everyone else at the great white throne judgment.
The thought of the New Jerusalem sitting there on the shores of the Lake of Fire for all eternity while the unsaved friends and loved ones of the residents burn in unending and hopeless agony without the walls . . . not a happy picture to me. No – not to you either, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t be here asking questions. But think about it. Why are the leaves of the Tree of Life for the healing of the nations? “The nations” always refers to the people outside the covenant of God. The kings of the earth always refers to the rulers of the ungodly nations. So here we have the Tree (symbolic of Jesus) with leaves to heal the nations though they have gone into the lake of fire.
And what’s more, we have this saying quite nearby that it’s possible to wash one’s robes in the blood of the Lamb, drink from the Living Water, and enter the Holy City. All this AFTER the GWT judgment. AFTER death and hades and everyone whose name isn’t found in the Book of Life have all been cast into the flames. So who is there who still needs to be healed and washed and given the Living Water? Is the bride thirsty? Again? But if you drink the Living Water, you’ll never thirst again. So who is being urged here to come and drink it? And who are these kings of the earth who are, in the end, bringing their treasures into Jerusalem?
Blessings, Cindy
I’m pretty sure contextually the end of Isaiah 66 refers to the slaying of pagan armies by God in order to rescue Jerusalem under its final siege–which logically doesn’t fit fulfillment with any sacking of Jerusalem at any time. Any future application of the prophecy as warning, such as to the apostles themselves in Mark 9/Matt 18, would be a warning not to be found on the side of the pagan oppressors. But then the Assyrians will have been sent by God to punish idolatrous Israel one last time, so it isn’t like Israel represents the moral good guys here: in fact YHWH’s personal visible intervention to save Jerusalem is expected to inspire conversions by rebel Israel back to proper loyalty to YHWH!
The interesting narrative result is that the survivors out doing due diligence with the dead bodies, giving them proper burials insofar as possible (and being disgusted thereby), are themselves supposed to be recent converts not really any better than the pagan oppressors whose bodies they’re burying, being merciful to the pagan invaders post-mortem by trudging along with this onerous task until it’s completed several months later! (Even afterward, special scouting parties are set up by YHWH to search for left-over bones that were missed in the main cleanup and flag them for proper burial. Meanwhile YHWH personally kicks the butts of an even larger pagan army coming into the area from another direction to challenge His descent and rule; while the first slaughter was largely accomplished by miraculous power along with some minor physical help by re-moralized Jews, the second slaughter is apparently a hands-on affair by YHWH alone without any help or long-distance zorching. It’s the second slaughter that provides the imagery of the visible YHWH Whose garments are drenched in blood after the fight.)
Anyway, since in narrative terms this all takes place before the general bodily resurrection (and maybe long before it, depending on which millennial interpretation of the data is true), not only does it certainly not involve annihilation of the souls, but it doesn’t even necessarily involve permanent annihilation of the bodies! So as a figure supposedly representative of annihilation, it’s rather lacking.
(I mentioned most of this already in the thread earlier, but it’s been a while so I thought I would reiterate for convenience. 
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