66. WORM DIETH NOT. MARK 9:48 by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 5, 1892

66. WORM DIETH NOT. MARK 9:48.

By Editor

I would like an explanation of Mark 9:48. I do not understand what is meant by "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

See answer to question 63. To what we have said there we would add that the term "hell" occurring in Mark 9:43-48 comes from the word "Gehenna," from the Hebrew Valley of Hinnon, south of Jerusalem, "once celebrated," says Bagster's Greek Lexicon, "for the horrid worship of Moloch, and afterwards 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." And thus it "symbolizes," wherever occurring in the New Testament, as Wilson truly remarks, "death and utter destruction, but in no place signifies a place of eternal torment."