Charles Ellicott Commentary Mark 9:42-48

"And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good for thee to enter into life maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. [where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.] And if thy foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good for thee to enter into life halt, rather than having thy two feet to be cast into hell. [where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.] And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." — Mark 9:42-48 (ASV)

Whosoever shall offend. See Notes on Matthew 18:6-9. The verbal, or nearly verbal, reproduction of these verses indicates the impression that they had made on the disciples. It may be noted, however, that St. Mark omits the Woe unto the world because of offences . . ., which we find in St. Matthew, and that the emphatic thrice-repeated words, Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, are found only in St. Mark. It should be noted, however, that in Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45 the words into the fire that never shall be quenched are omitted in some of the best MSS., and that the same MSS., and others, omit both Mark 9:44; Mark 9:46, leaving Mark 9:48 to stand as the only description of Gehenna.

Into hell. Better, Gehenna, to distinguish it from the other word “Hades,” also translated “Hell.” (See Notes on Matthew 5:22.)

Where their worm dieth not. The words are taken almost literatim from the closing verse of Isaiah (Isaiah 66:24), where they appear as part of the description of the triumph of Jehovah. The true worshippers should serve in His Temple continually, and they should go forth and see the carcasses of the transgressors, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. The scenery is, like that of Isaiah 63:1-6, drawn from the slaughter of earthly battles, and the prophet exults in vision over the putrid carcasses and the blazing fires that consume them, and thinks of that scene as perpetuated throughout eternity.

The imagery was thus already familiar, and it coalesced naturally with the ideas of Gehenna. Possibly the valley of Hinnom, as the great cloaca of Jerusalem, receiving its solid as well as its fluid sewage, with putrid offal and blazing fires consuming them, had become in this way a visible type of the unseen Gehenna; but the authorities are hardly definite enough to warrant the positive statement that it presented such a scene.

The interpretation of the symbols (for a literal acceptance of the words is obviously out of the question) is not far to seek. Almost all Christian thinkers have seen in the gnawing worm the anguish of an endless remorse, the memory of past sins. Fire retains its usual force as the expression of the righteousness of God (Hebrews 12:29) manifesting itself to the consciousness of the sinner in all its awfulness, purifying where there is any desire, and therefore capacity, for purification, but never altering its essential character, even as the fire never can be quenched. The words distinctly declare this, as the law of righteous retribution. They do not absolutely exclude the thought that the fire may consume or destroy what it cannot purify; still less do they affirm that it will.