Why is Hell (גהינום) named after גיא בן הינום , the Valley of the son of Hinom? And what is גיא בן הינום anyways? Why don’t we just call it Sheol like the Torah does?
Asked
Active
Viewed 205 times
1
-
1It is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna: "Gehenna is a small valley in Jerusalem. In the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was initially where some of the kings of Judah sacrificed their children by fire. Thereafter, it was deemed to be cursed (Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6). – Al Berko Aug 20 '19 at 04:39
-
2Who says that hell is named after the valley; maybe the valley was named after it. And who says Sheol and Gehinoim are one of the same? – Danny Schoemann Aug 20 '19 at 14:01
-
Rolled back edit as per https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1229/ – DonielF Dec 30 '19 at 21:22
-
Related: "The names of Gehinnom", "Hell or something else: גהנום/ גהנם and שאול what are these". – Tamir Evan May 04 '20 at 02:45
1 Answers
1
The Torah (well, Nach, really) does call it She’ol, but it also calls it a number of other names. You can ask on Nach itself: why does it use multiple names and not stay consistent? It’s because, as described in Eruvin 19a, each name has some significance regarding Gehennom’s function.
DonielF
- 34,262
- 4
- 40
- 143