What is Gehenna?

The Valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna, is a real place on the south-west side of Jerusalem. In the Old Testament the Israelites sacrificed their children in the fire there Jeremiah 32:35. In later times it was where Jerusalem’s rubbish was destroyed by fires that never went out. When the Lord Jesus uses the word “Gehenna”, he is using it as a parable to show that the wicked will be destroyed as completely and as permanently as the fires of Gehenna destroyed the rubbish of Jerusalem.