Gen. 4:8-11) Doubtless many memorial tombs were made for the dead from Abel’s time down to the earth-wide flood of Noah’s day, but, for the most part, those memorial tombs were wiped out by that destructive flood. However, the all-knowing God Jehovah knows and remembers all those who went down into Sheol or Haʹdes before the Flood, “both the righteous [like Abel and Enoch] and the unrighteous.” Jehovah will cause Haʹdes or Sheol to deliver up all those dead under his kingdom by Jesus Christ. The same will be true regarding the many graves and memorial tombs that have disappeared since that flood in 2370 B.C.E. down to our own day.

GEHENNA, “THE VALLEY OF HINNOM”

24, 25. (a) Jesus spoke of some men as going to what different place at death, and what would this mean for them? (b) In Matthew 23:13-33, whom did Jesus specify those men to be?

²⁴ In the year 33 C.E., when Jesus was speaking about the “righteous blood spilled on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah,” he spoke of men then living who at death would go, not to Haʹdes or Sheol, but to another place, to Gehenna. For that reason it would mean “woe” to them. Who were those men? In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, Jesus specified who they were, saying:

²⁵ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut up the kingdom of the heavens before men; for you yourselves do not go in, neither do you permit those on their way in to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you traverse sea and dry land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one you make him a subject for Gehenna twice as much so as yourselves. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you build the graves of the prophets and decorate the memorial tombs of the righteous ones, and you say, ‘If we had been in the days of our forefathers, we would not have been sharers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Therefore you are bearing witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. . . . Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”—Matt. 23:13-15, 29-33.

26. Why were such ones subjects for Gehenna or liable to its judgment, and how did Jesus then show this?

²⁶ Thus those religious persons who were subjects for Gehenna and who were liable to the judgment of Gehenna were the unrepentant Jewish scribes and Pharisees and their proselytes. They were persons who were unrepentant and who refused to enter into the kingdom of the heavens. Jesus showed this by next saying: “For this reason, here I am sending forth to you prophets and wise men and public instructors. Some of them you will kill and impale, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city; that there may come upon you all the righteous blood spilled on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you, All these things will come upon this generation.”—Matt. 23:34-36.

27. How does the book of Acts show whether some of such liable ones fled from the judgment of Gehenna?

²⁷ Some Pharisees did repent and quit shutting up the kingdom of the heavens, like Saul of Tarsus who became the Christian apostle Paul. (Acts 7:58; 8:1-3; 9:1-30; 22:1-5; 23:6; Phil. 3:4-6) Also, Acts 2:10; 8:27-39 speaks of circumcised proselytes, and Acts 6:7 says: “The number of the disciples kept multiplying in Jerusalem very much; and a great crowd of priests began to be obedient to the faith.” These gave up all religious hypocrisy and stayed faithful to the Christian faith. Thus they successfully fled from the judgment of Gehenna to which they had been liable. They proved that they were not “serpents, offspring of vipers,” sons of the Devil as a religious father, offspring of the “original serpent, who is the Devil and Satan.”—John 8:44; Rev. 20:2.

28. From what is the Greek word Gehenna drawn, and what is the literal translation of the original expression?

²⁸ Just what is this place called Gehenna, or what does it symbolize? The Greek word “Gehenna” is a transliteration of the Hebrew expression Gei-Hinnom, meaning “the valley of Hinnom.” In the Greek word Gehenna the syllable “Ge” stands for the Hebrew word Gai (גיא) meaning “Valley,” and the addition “henna” stands for Hinnom, the name of a man in the days of Judge Joshua.

29. What was the original Gehenna, and what did it mark according to Joshua 15:8; 18:16?

²⁹ This Valley of Hinnom or Hinnom Valley is first mentioned in the Bible in Joshua 15:8 as marking the boundary between the territories of the tribes of Judah and of Benjamin, and it is associated with Jerusalem: “The boundary [of Judah] went up to the valley of the son of Hinnom to the slope of the Jebusite at the south, that is to say, Jerusalem; and the boundary went up to the top of the mountain that faces the valley of Hinnom [Gei-Hinnom, Hebrew; Ge-Ennom, Latin] to the west, which is at the extremity of the low plain of Rephaim to the north.” Here the Greek Septuagint translation calls it the Pharanx of Onom, that is to say, the Cleft (Chasm, Ravine, Gully) of Onom. Hinnom Valley or Valley of Hinnom is also mentioned in Joshua 18:16, in connection with the territorial boundary of the tribe of Benjamin.

30. How did Gehenna come to be misused by the Israelites, and how was it made unfit for such misuse?

³⁰ The Valley of Hinnom, lying to the west and southwest of ancient Jerusalem, came to be misused by the backsliding Jews. In 2 Chronicles 28:3 we read about King Ahaz of Jerusalem: “He himself made sacrificial smoke in the valley of the son of Hinnom [Gai-benenom, LXX] and proceeded to burn up his sons in the fire.” (Also, 2 Chron. 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 32; 32:35) Faithful King Josiah saw good to defile this Valley of Hinnom because it had been used for the idol worship of Baal and for offering human sacrifices to this false god. In 2 Kings 23:10 it says of Josiah: “And he made unfit for worship Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to [the false god] Molech.”d The modern name of the valley is Wadi el-Rababi.

Part Two

1. In Jesus’ day, what was Gehenna, and of what punishment was it used as a symbol?

GEHENNA, or the Valley of Hinnom, is mentioned twelve times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. In the days of Jesus Christ on earth it was a fiery place and, being a valley outside the walls of Jerusalem, it was on earth. It became a symbol of the worst punishment that could befall a person. For instance, in Matthew 5:22, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus