Gehenna is a Greek form drawn from the Hebrew geh hin·nomʹ, the Valley of Hinnom, situated to the southwest of Jerusalem. It was a place where children were in times past sacrificed to the god Molech and, states The Jewish Encyclopedia, “for this reason the valley was deemed to be accursed, and ‘Gehenna’ therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for ‘hell.’”

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Hell and Gehenna​—The Difference

The word “hellfire” is an English distortion of “Gehenna,” the name of the ancient refuse dump outside the city of Jerusalem, which term was used by Jesus as a symbol of everlasting destruction. (Matthew 10:28)