Hinnom

2 definitions found

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Hinnom
     a deep, narrow ravine separating Mount Zion from the so-called
     "Hill of Evil Counsel." It took its name from "some ancient
     hero, the son of Hinnom." It is first mentioned in Josh. 15:8.
     It had been the place where the idolatrous Jews burned their
     children alive to Moloch and Baal. A particular part of the


     valley was called Tophet, or the "fire-stove," where the
     children were burned. After the Exile, in order to show their
     abhorrence of the locality, the Jews made this valley the
     receptacle of the offal of the city, for the destruction of
     which a fire was, as is supposed, kept constantly burning there.
     
       The Jews associated with this valley these two ideas, (1) that
     of the sufferings of the victims that had there been sacrificed;
     and (2) that of filth and corruption. It became thus to the
     popular mind a symbol of the abode of the wicked hereafter. It
     came to signify hell as the place of the wicked. "It might be
     shown by infinite examples that the Jews expressed hell, or the
     place of the damned, by this word. The word Gehenna [the Greek
     contraction of Hinnom] was never used in the time of Christ in
     any other sense than to denote the place of future punishment."
     About this fact there can be no question. In this sense the word
     is used eleven times in our Lord's discourses (Matt. 23:33; Luke
     12:5; Matt. 5:22, etc.).
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Hinnom, there they are; their riches