There is other evidence, though no other is necessary, to show that the idea which would be conveyed, and which the language was designed to convey, to their minds, was that of complete extinction of being, an utter consumption by external elements of destruction. The word translated hell in the passage under consideration is ge-enna. It is better to enter into life maimed, than to go in full possession of all our members and faculties into ge-enna. Did those to whom Christ spoke know anything about this place, and what kind of a fate awaited those who were cast therein? A vivid picture of the place of torment to which our Lord refers was in constant operation before their eyes, near by Jerusalem.
Greenfield defines the word thus:--
“Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, once celebrated for the horrid worship of Moloch and afterward polluted with every species of filth, as well as the carcasses of animals and dead bodies of malefactors; to consume which, in order to avert the pestilence which such a mass of corruption would occasion, constant fires were kept burning.”
Such was the fire of Gehenna; not a fire into which people were cast to be kept alive and tortured, but one into which they were cast to be consumed; not one which was designed to prey upon living beings, but upon the carcasses of animals and the dead bodies of malefactors. Hence we can see the consistency of associating the fire and the worm together. Whatever portion of the dead body the fire failed to consume, the worm would soon seize upon and devour. If a person had been condemned to be cast alive into this place, as the wicked will be cast into their Gehenna, what would have been his hope of escape? If the fire could have been speedily quenched before it had taken his life, and the worms which consumed what the fire left, could have been destroyed, he might have had some hope of coming out alive; but if this could not be done, he would know of a surety that his life would soon become extinct, and then even his lifeless remains would be utterly consumed by these agents of destruction.
This was the scene to which Christ pointed his hearers to represent the doom that awaits the wicked; that, as they gazed upon the work of complete destruction going on in the valley of Hinnom, the worms devouring what the flames spared, they might learn that in the future Gehenna which awaited them, no part of their being would be exempt from utter and complete destruction, one agent of death completing what another failed to accomplish.
As the definition of the word ge-enna throws great light on the meaning of this text, so the definition of another term used is equally to the point. The words for unquenchable fire are pur (long u) asbeston, and this word asbeston, primarily means simply unquenched, that is, not caused to cease by any external means: the idea of eternal is a theological definition which has been attached to it. Ancient writers used it in this sense. Homer, in the Illiad[Illiad], xvi., 123, 294, speaks of the Trojans’ hurling “unquenchable fire” upon the Grecian ships, though but one of them was burnt by it. And Eusebius, who was a learned Greek, employs the same expression in two instances in recounting the martyrdom of Christians. Cronion and Julian, after being tortured in various ways, were consumed in an “unquenchable fire,” puri asbesto. The same is also said of Epimachus and Alexander. “The pur asbeston,” says Wetstein, “denotes such a fire as cannot be extinguished[extinguished] before it has consumed and destroyed all.”
Such is the evident meaning of this passage, and the sense in which it must have been understood at that time. Yet commentators, eighteen hundred years this side of that time, presume to turn this whole representation upside down, and give to the terms a meaning exactly opposite from that which they were intended to convey. That sense alone can be the correct one in which they were first spoken; and concerning that there can be no question.
There is another text often urged to prove the eternal conscious misery of the wicked. It is one in which fire is mentioned as the instrument used for the punishment of the wicked; and this fire being called eternal, is understood in the same sense as the unquenchable fire of Mark 9:43. It may therefore properly be examined in this connection.
Jude 7: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
This text, when rightly understood, will, we think, like that in Mark 9, be found to convey just the opposite meaning from that popularly given to it. The first great error in the interpretation of this text, lies, as we view it, in a wrong application of the tense employed. It is claimed that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, having been destroyed, were committed to the flames of hell, where they are now (present tense) suffering the vengeance of that eternal fire. But a moment’s glance at the text will show that it is the example set forth, and not the suffering, that is in the present tense. There are other facts mentioned in the same tense with the suffering; thus, “giving themselves over to fornication,” “going after strange flesh,” “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” If one of these expressions denotes something that is now going on, the others also denote the same. If they are now suffering the fire, they are now giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh; for all these declarations are in the same construction. But no one will claim that the Sodomites are now taking the course here described; neither, then, can it be claimed that they are now suffering the pain of fire.