Gehinnom and Gan Eden

A narrow gully runs along the southern foot of Jerusalem, and the rabbis said it could be found by its smoke. Between two palm trees in the Valley of Hinnom, a passage of the Talmud reports, a thin column rises and never stops: the gate of Gehinnom, one of three. The other two open in the wilderness and in the sea. The garden that answers it has doors of its own, placed with the same odd confidence. If paradise lies in the Land of Israel, said Resh Lakish, its entrance is at Beit Shean; if in Arabia, at Beit Gerem; if between the rivers, at Damascus.

The fire came before the theology. In the Hebrew Bible, Gei Hinnom is simply a place, the valley of the son of Hinnom on the boundary of Judah’s tribal lot. It earned its reputation the hard way. At a site there called Topheth children were burned in a cult the prophets condemned as service to Molech, and when King Josiah purged the land he defiled Topheth so that no one could pass a son or daughter through the fire again. Jeremiah promised the valley a new name, the Valley of Slaughter. A place that notorious was bound to become a word. By the time of the Book of Enoch it is the accursed valley of judgement, and by the rabbinic period Gehinnom names the place where the wicked are punished after death. The word kept travelling after that, into Greek as Gehenna in the Gospels, and into Arabic as Jahannam.

This is a different afterlife from the one the oldest scriptures knew. Sheol, the pit of the Hebrew Bible, took everyone, the righteous and the wicked on the same terms, and burned no one. Gehinnom and its opposite, the heavenly Gan Eden, belong to the later tradition that sorted the dead by what they had done: the literature of the Second Temple and, above all, the Mishnah and the Talmud, where the two realms are almost always mentioned in the same breath. Each person, the Talmud says, is allotted two portions, one in each. At death the righteous inherit their own share of the garden and their neighbour’s as well, and the wicked inherit a double share of the fire.

The rabbis furnished Gehinnom lavishly and not always consistently. Its mouth is narrow, which traps the smoke, but below the mouth it widens without limit, and it is divided into seven compartments. Its fire burns sixty times hotter than any fire on earth, and yet the place is dark as night, all that heat giving no light. A river of fire pours down on the heads of the condemned. The hot springs of Tiberias were said to steam and smell of sulphur because their water runs past Gehinnom on its way to the surface, and the setting sun turns red, another passage explains, because it skirts the rim of the furnace and borrows its glow. The size of the place was worked out with the kind of arithmetic that stops meaning anything by the third step: Egypt is a sixtieth of Cush, Cush a sixtieth of the world, the world a sixtieth of the garden, the garden a sixtieth of Eden, and Eden a sixtieth of Gehinnom. The whole inhabited earth, the Talmud concludes, sits over it like a lid on a pot.

The garden above is harder to see, and the tradition makes a point of that. The rabbis split its name in two. Adam, said Samuel bar Nahman, lived only in the Gan, the garden; Eden itself no eye but God’s has ever seen. Most authorities held that there are two gardens, a lower one on earth and a higher one for the souls of the righteous, and that the garden of Genesis is a small copy of the one above. What the sources do give the upper garden is order and light. It was made by the same word that made the heavens, its chambers are laid out like theirs, and where the sky has rows of stars, Gan Eden has rows of the righteous, who shine like them. Later accounts divide it into seven sections, with seven more for righteous women under Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, Jochebed, Miriam, Huldah and Abigail, and the highest kept for the Matriarchs. It has a smell, too. Now and then the Leviathan pushes its head through the opening of Gan Eden, and the spice scent that pours out is the only thing that stops the monster’s breath from poisoning the world.

The ordinary business of Gehinnom is not eternal torment. The judgement of the wicked there lasts twelve months, says the Mishnah, and Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri thought even that too long: Passover to Shavuot, seven weeks, would serve. The schools of Shammai and Hillel argued over who goes down at all. Shammai’s disciples counted three groups on the day of judgement: the wholly righteous, sealed at once for eternal life; the wholly wicked, sealed for Gehinnom; and the middling, who go down, cry out, and come back up, refined as silver is refined. A soul of that middling sort drops into the dark heat and screams, and it is heard. It climbs back out cleaner than it went in, which is the whole point of the place. Hillel’s disciples answered that God, abundant in kindness, tips the scale, so the middling need not go down at all.

For some there is no climbing out. Those who sinned without leading others astray are finished off after their twelve months: bodies consumed, souls burned, the ash scattered by the wind under the feet of the righteous. For the heretics, the informers and those who led the many into sin, the Talmud reserves its bleakest line: Gehinnom itself will come to an end, and they will not. Korah and his company, who went down alive when the earth opened under them in the wilderness, became the tradition’s proof that the wilderness gate is real. An Arab guide once led the sage Rabba bar bar Hana to the spot, where smoke rose from two cracks in the ground. The guide dipped a tuft of wool in water, fixed it to the tip of a spear and lowered it in, and it came out scorched. Then he told the rabbi to listen, and from below came voices saying that Moses and his Torah are true and that they themselves are liars. Every thirty days, the guide added, Gehinnom turns them past that spot again, like meat stirred in a boiling pot.

The third name that travels with these two is not a place at all, and it has never been pinned down. Olam Ha-Ba, the World to Come, is promised in one of the Mishnah’s best known lines: all Israel have a share in it. Rav described it by subtraction. There is no eating there and no drinking, no business, no jealousy, no hatred and no rivalry; the righteous simply sit with crowns on their heads and take their pleasure in the radiance of the divine presence. Whether that describes the garden where souls go now, or a world that begins only after the resurrection of the dead, is exactly where the great medieval thinkers parted. Maimonides read the World to Come as the eternal life of souls without bodies. Nachmanides kept the bodies, placed the World to Come after the resurrection, and gave the waiting souls a separate world of their own in the meantime. Nobody settled it.

The powers of the two realms follow from what they were built for. Gehinnom punishes, but mostly it purifies, and its fire has limits written into it from the start. Charity, fasting, visiting the sick and study were all said to keep a soul away from its gates, and one tradition holds that sinners of Israel who confess before those gates are not touched by the flames. Gan Eden rewards, and its reward is less a place of pleasures than a nearness to God that the living cannot picture. Neither is meant to last in its present form. In the time to come, one passage says, there will be no Gehinnom at all: God will draw the sun out of its sheath, and its light will heal the righteous and judge the wicked. None of that certainty reached the deathbed of Yohanan ben Zakkai, the sage who rebuilt Jewish learning after the Temple fell. His students found him weeping. There were two roads before him, he said, one to Gan Eden and one to Gehinnom, and he did not know which one he would be led down.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gehinnom in Jewish tradition?

Gehinnom is the place where the wicked are judged and purified after death in rabbinic Jewish tradition. The name comes from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where children were once burned at a site called Topheth. The Talmud describes Gehinnom as a vast, dark pit of fire with gates in the wilderness, in the sea and in Jerusalem.

Is Gehinnom eternal hell?

For most souls, no. The Mishnah says the judgement of the wicked in Gehinnom lasts twelve months, and the Talmud describes middling souls going down, crying out and coming back up refined. The Talmud reserves permanent punishment for a small group, including heretics and those who led many others into sin.

What is Gan Eden?

Gan Eden is the heavenly Garden of Eden, the realm where the souls of the righteous are rewarded in rabbinic Jewish tradition. Most rabbinic authorities distinguished it from the earthly garden of Adam and Eve, which they saw as a small copy of the higher one. The righteous in Gan Eden are described as shining in rows like the stars.

What is the difference between Sheol and Gehinnom?

Sheol is the realm of the dead in the Hebrew Bible, and it receives the righteous and the wicked alike without fire or punishment. Gehinnom belongs to later Jewish tradition, from the Second Temple period and the Talmud, when the dead began to be sorted by their deeds. In that later tradition Gehinnom is paired with Gan Eden as punishment and reward.

What is Olam Ha-Ba?

Olam Ha-Ba means “the World to Come” and is promised in the Mishnah, which says that all Israel have a share in it. The Talmudic sage Rav described it as a world without eating, drinking, jealousy or hatred, where the righteous enjoy the radiance of the divine presence. Maimonides understood Olam Ha-Ba as the life of souls without bodies, while Nachmanides placed it after the resurrection of the dead.

Related Entries

Sheol, Leviathan, Adam, Eve, Moses, Samael, Satan, Jannah, Hades, Tartarus, Elysium, Duat, Hel, Mictlan