The images of ‘hell’ that appear in the Gospels are prophetic depictions of the coming judgment on Israel. ‘Gehenna’, as Jesus uses the term, is not a place of universal, eternal torment. Jerusalem’s notorious rubbish dump, where perpetual fire consumed the corpses of animals and criminals, has been made an image for the devastation of the city by the Romans, which is conceived not as an arbitrary historical occurrence but as a predictable act of divine judgment. The Jewish War, as Josephus graphically describes it, was the ‘hell of fire’ for a people who persistently defied God and acted unrighteously (cf. Matt.5:22, 29, 30). Jesus concludes his condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees with the warning that the judgment of gehenna ‘will come upon this generation’ and a lament over Jerusalem: ‘Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate’ (Matt.23:36-38). The fact that the judgment of gehenna is said to be ‘eternal’ or ‘unquenchable’ (Matt.18:8-9; Mk.9:43, 48) is indicative not of endless suffering but of the finality and irreversibility of the judgment. It is the fate of the nation, rather than of individuals, that is principally in view.
The parable of the weeds in the field (Matt.13:24-30, 36-43; cf. the parable of the catch of fish: Matt.13:47-50) describes not the final judgment of all humanity but the judgment of Israel at the end of the age, when the ‘righteous’ in Israel are separated from the unrighteous. Jesus concludes his explanation of the parable by saying ‘the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father’ (Matt.13:43). The allusion to Daniel 12:3 is unmistakable: ‘those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament’. What Jesus has in view is an impending national crisis, comparable to the crisis provoked by the intervention of Antiochus into Jewish religious life: unrighteous Israel will be destroyed, thrown into ‘the furnace of fire’ (Matt.13:42); but the righteous – the wise who ‘shall make many understand, though they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder’ (Dan.11:33) – will be raised to eternal life. But this is not a final and universal resurrection. It is the hope given (perhaps exclusively) to a particular group under particular historical conditions. Being the first to suffer, Jesus is also the first to be raised to life in advance of the group of those who will be raised with him (cf. 1 Cor.15:20-23; Col.1:18).
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