Cast into Gehenna (9:42–48)
There is a ravine on the southern edge of Jerusalem called the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. In Hebrew, it is gê ben-hinnōm (גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם), often shortened to gê-hinnōm, and carried into Greek as γέεννα. It is a place on the map. Under Ahaz and Manasseh, it was a site of child sacrifice, and Josiah defiled it precisely to end that horror (2 Kgs 23:10). But its lasting meaning was fixed by Jeremiah, who announced what God would do to a people who would not repent:
“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere” (Jer 7:32).
Jeremiah’s threat is concrete and historical. The bodies of Judah would be cast into that valley because judgment was coming, and the slaughter would be too great for the ordinary graves. This warning sits in the same chapter as his temple sermon, the very text Jesus takes up when he enters the temple and pronounces its end (Mark 11:17).
So when Jesus warns of being thrown into γέεννα, he is not referring to a metaphysical underworld. He is alluding to Jeremiah’s words (just as he does in the cleaning of the temple) and warning of the same judgment. The parallel he draws makes this plain: the alternative to losing a hand is not afterlife in hell but being cast into the sea with a millstone, a death in this world (9:42). And the description of the place is lifted straight from the prophet who saw Jerusalem’s enemies lying dead outside the walls:
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched” (Isa 66:24).
Jesus stands where Jeremiah and Isaiah stood. He warns his own generation that the judgment prophesied for a faithless people is coming again, and within a generation, Roman armies would make the warning literal. Josephus wrote of AD 70:
The latter at the outset ordered the bodies to be buried at the public expense, finding the stench intolerable; afterwards, when incapable of continuing this, they flung them from the ramparts into the ravines. When Titus, going his rounds, beheld these valleys choked with dead and the thick matter oozing from under the clammy carcases, he groaned and, raising his hands to heaven, called God to witness that this was not his doing. Such was the situation within the city (Jewish War 5.518-519).
I’ve heard several people say that Jesus spoke more about hell than any other topic (with the implication that we should talk about it too). Not only is that obviously not the case, but I’m not even sure Jesus talked about hell at all. Gehenna is not hell. It’s a place on the map just outside Jerusalem.
Elijah Does Come First (Mar. 2, 2026)
Mark’s Gospel begins with a subtle literary technique. The evangelist states, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,” then quietly quotes Malachi first: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way” (Mark 1:2; cf. Mal 3:1). The Elijah question is subtly embedded from the Gospel’s opening line — evident to those with ears to hear, unseen to others.
Now, in Mark 9, as they come down from the mountain where Moses and Elijah had appeared beside their transfigured Lord, the disciples pressed Jesus with a question that had long troubled the scribes: why did they teach that Elijah must come first?
The question was significant. Malachi closes the Old Testament with a promise and a warning. Elijah would return before the great and dreadful day of the Lord to turn the hearts of the people — and if he did not, God would curse the land (Mal 4:5–6). In other words, Elijah was the one who would prevent judgment, acting as the forerunner preparing the people before the decisive moment arrived.
Jesus does not dispute the tradition. He affirms it:
“Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him” (Mark 9:12–13).
The answer is both a confirmation and a devastating redefinition. Yes, Elijah came. But instead of being welcomed as the great restorer, he was rejected and killed. John stepped into the role Malachi announced, and the people’s response was not repentance but violence.
This matters a lot. If Malachi’s Elijah came to prevent destruction and was himself destroyed, then judgment was not avoided — it was confirmed. Israel’s fate was sealed. Israel’s God (in the person of Jesus) would return to his city and his temple and declare their judgment.
Not surprisingly, the forerunner’s rejection foreshadowed the response that would greet the one he announced. The pattern is older than John: God sends His messengers, and they are rejected (Jer 7:25–26; 2 Chr 36:15–16).
But woven into Jesus’s answer about John is a haunting question about himself:
“How is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things?” (Mark 9:12).
The answer is obvious. The suffering of the forerunner and the suffering of the Messiah belong to the same script. The story of Jesus will go the same way as the story of John, and Israel’s rejection of its God, which started at Mount Sinai with the golden calf, would be complete.