In the last week of his life, Jesus stood in the temple in Jerusalem. He was speaking to the religious teachers who ran the place. A short walk away, below the city wall, lay the valley where fathers had once burned their own children for a god. Jesus looked at these powerful men and told them they made their new followers into children of that valley.
That was not the only time. In the gospels, Jesus says the name of that valley eleven times. English Bibles later put an old word for the world of the dead in its place, so the place got lost. But he was naming a real valley that everyone in Jerusalem knew. Each time, he was pointing at the place where people killed their own children because they thought a god wanted it. He kept showing people how ugly we become when we believe God is on the side of killing. People had believed for thousands of years that the highest God made killing right in his name, and Jesus refused that picture of God every time he spoke.
The word he used
The gospels were written in Greek, and the word Jesus used is γέεννα (geenna), "the valley of Hinnom." In the last lesson we walked down into that valley. Kings of Judah, the small kingdom around Jerusalem, had passed their sons through the fire there for a god named Molech. Then a king named Josiah made the spot unclean so no one could use it again. After that, people said its name with a shiver.
The word shows up twelve times in the whole New Testament. Eleven of those times, Jesus is the one speaking. The twelfth is in a short letter that carries the name of James, which says the tongue can be set on fire by the valley (James 3:6). The word never shows up in the Gospel of John, in the letters of Paul, or in the book of Revelation. So the best way to learn what the valley meant is to follow the man who kept saying its name.
On the hillside
The first time comes in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, when Jesus sat on a hillside and taught a large crowd. He had just reminded them of the old rule against killing. Then he went further. He knew that killing starts long before anyone picks up a stone. It starts when you decide another person is worth nothing.
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (Matthew 5:22)
The word Jesus actually said there was Gehenna, the name of the valley, and the King James translators turned it into "hell."
Raca was an insult that meant "empty head," and the council was the high court in Jerusalem. So Jesus took his listeners one step at a time. First you are angry, and then you call your brother worthless. At the end of it is the valley where people burned the ones they did not value.
A few sentences later, in the same talk, he said the name twice more (5:29-30). He said it would be better to lose an eye or a hand than to have your whole body thrown into the valley. He meant the things that pull a person toward hurting others. Cut them away, he said.
Kill, destroy, and the sparrows
The fourth and fifth times come when Jesus was sending his twelve friends out on the road. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, he warned them that people would drag them into court and hate them because of him. He knew they would be afraid, so he told them who was worth fearing:
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
The word for destroy is ἀπολέσαι (apolesai), "to destroy, to bring to an end." It is not a word for pain that goes on and on. The Gospel of Luke tells the same saying in chapter 12, when a crowd of thousands had pushed in so close that people stepped on each other. In the Greek of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus speaks of the one who, after killing, has power to throw a person into Gehenna (Luke 12:5). That was the valley outside Jerusalem where the unburied dead and the burned children had been left. Neither book says a person will be kept alive in fire so they can be hurt forever.
And in the Gospel of Luke, the very next thing Jesus said was about birds. Five sparrows were sold for two small coins, he told them, and not one of them is forgotten by God. Even the hairs on their heads were all counted. Then he said it plainly: "Fear not" (Luke 12:6-7). That is where he was driving all along. He named the valley so that frightened friends would stop being afraid, because the Father does not forget even one sparrow.
The child in the middle of the room
The sixth time comes in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18. His followers had come to him asking which of them would be the greatest. Jesus called a little child over and stood the child in the middle of them. He told them that unless they became like little children, they would never even get into the kingdom. Then he spoke about the eye that pulls a person wrong, and about the valley (18:9). Right after that, he told them about a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep on the hills to look for the one that got lost. He finished like this:
Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. (Matthew 18:14)
The Gospel of Mark tells the same scene in chapter 9, in a house in Capernaum, a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee. There Jesus picked the child up in his arms. He said that anyone who made one of these little ones fall would be better off thrown into the sea with a heavy stone tied around his neck. Then, still in that room, he named the valley three times, for the hand, the foot and the eye (9:43, 9:45, 9:47). The last time, he added a line from the very end of the book of Isaiah:
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:47-48)
In Isaiah, those words are about the dead bodies of men lying outside Jerusalem. They are about corpses, not about living people being hurt forever.
So here is the scene. A man holds a little child in his arms, and he warns grown men who want to be great about the valley where children were burned. The Father he spoke for wants the child held. The valley belonged to the gods who wanted the child given up.
Child of the valley
That brings us back to the temple. Matthew, chapter 23, is a long speech Jesus gave to the scribes, who taught the law, and to the Pharisees, a group of strict religious teachers. He told them they loaded heavy rules onto other people's backs and would not lift a finger to help carry them. Then he said:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)
A proselyte is a new follower. These men went over land and sea to win one, and then they made that person twice as much a child of the valley as they were. Jesus was saying out loud what religion becomes when it teaches that God wants someone hurt. It does not stay small. It gets passed from teacher to student, and it grows, until people are ready to burn their own children and call it worship.
A few lines later, in the same speech, he said the name for the eleventh time. He called them snakes, and he asked how they would escape the judgment of the valley (23:33). Within days, the high priest's council said Jesus had spoken against God and deserved to die. They handed him to the Roman governor, and the governor had him nailed to a cross. The men who were sure God was on their side killed him in God's name. It was the very thing he had warned them about.
What the valley shows
So this is what the eleven sayings have in common. Jesus did not make up a new word for the worst place a person can end up. He took the name of a real place, the place where people did the ugliest thing people have ever done because they believed a god wanted it. Each time, he was talking to people who were angry, or proud, or hungry to be great, or who taught others to look down on the weak. And each time he pointed at the valley as the place where that road ends.
So Gehenna is not a place we are sent to. It is a reminder of how far we could go if we believe in the wrong God, the kind of God who wants blood, and of how far his Father is from that valley.
How the valley later turned into a place of endless pain in people's minds is its own long story. Another teaching tells it. None of it came from Jesus.
What he gives you
Maybe you grew up afraid of a fire after death. Maybe you lay awake at night as a child, scared that one wrong thought could send you into a fire that never ends, and you never told anyone. If so, it may help to know where the word came from. Jesus was not threatening children. He was holding one in his arms while he warned the grown men about what they could become.
The Father he showed knows every sparrow that falls, and he has counted the hairs on your head. He does not want to lose even one of his little ones, and that includes the little one you once were. Every time Jesus said the name of that valley, he was asking people to stop handing their children, and each other, to frightened gods. He was asking them to come home instead, to a Father who has been waiting with open arms for every one of them, and for you.