Hell Yes

One of the highlights of my Jerusalem trip has been walking in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, aka Gehenna. The idolatrous kings of Judah sacrificed their children in this valley, and in Jesus' day it was a place where garbage and the corpses of criminals were burned. When you read in your English Bible about bodies being thrown into "hell", where "the fire never goes out", the Greek word it's translating is Gehenna.


I'm not sure what this says about me, but it gave me a thrill to see Gehenna now looking quite beautiful, and largely corpse-free. (Edenic may be an overstatement, but that's the word that first sprung to mind.) And having walked the full length of the valley, I can confirm that the fire has, in fact, gone out. Put that in your literalist pipe and smoke it.*


Curiously, I found several fire-damaged trees in Gehenna, with charred, hollowed-out trunks. Even more curiously, these trees are very much alive, lush, and bearing fruit. The allegoric significance is dizzying.


Further down, the valley becomes less picturesque. In fact, the east end really is strewn with trash (as vacant lots in Arab districts often are). This was at first deflating, then exciting. The redemption of Gehenna is a work in progress. The garbage is plentiful, but the workers are few.


So yesterday I spent the afternoon picking up trash on a little patch of ground at the bottom of the valley. I only got about half of it cleared, and more trash seemed to be arriving even as I worked, so you can chalk this one up in the "give a man a fish" column. But that's fine with me; I'm just here for the symbolism.


Redemption, I say, is a work in progress. Happy are those who pitch in.


*I'm not saying that the current state of the valley has any great theological significance. I'm just saying I love the symbolism. And yes, literalists, I'm aware that you don't smoke.