Isaiah 1:31
1:31 The powerful will be like 1 a thread of yarn,
their deeds like a spark;
both will burn together,
and no one will put out the fire.
Jeremiah 4:4
4:4 Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin
as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,
you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord
and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me, 2
people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.
If you do not, 3 my anger will blaze up like a flaming fire against you
that no one will be able to extinguish.
That will happen because of the evil you have done.”
Jeremiah 7:20
7:20 So,” the Lord
God 4 says, “my raging fury will be poured out on this land.
5 It will be poured out on human beings and animals, on trees and crops.
6 And it will burn like a fire which cannot be extinguished.”
Ezekiel 20:47-48
20:47 and say to the scrub land of the Negev, ‘Hear the word of the
Lord: This is what the sovereign
Lord says: Look here,
7 I am about to start a fire in you,
8 and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The flaming fire will not be extinguished, and the whole surface of the ground from the Negev to the north will be scorched by it.
20:48 And everyone
9 will see that I, the
Lord, have burned it; it will not be extinguished.’”
Mark 9:43-48
9:43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life crippled than to have
10 two hands and go into hell,
11 to the unquenchable fire.
9:44 [[EMPTY]]
12
9:45 If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better to enter life lame than to have
13 two feet and be thrown into hell.
9:46 [[EMPTY]]
14
9:47 If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out!
15 It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to have
16 two eyes and be thrown into hell,
9:48 where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
1 tn Heb “will become” (so NASB, NIV).
2 tn Heb “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskin of your heart.” The translation is again an attempt to bring out the meaning of a metaphor. The mention of the “foreskin of the heart” shows that the passage is obviously metaphorical and involves heart attitude, not an external rite.
3 tn Heb “lest.”
4 tn Heb “Lord Yahweh.” The translation follows the ancient Jewish tradition of substituting the Hebrew word for God for the proper name Yahweh.
5 tn Heb “this place.” Some see this as a reference to the temple but the context has been talking about what goes on in the towns of Judah and Jerusalem and the words that follow, meant as a further explanation, are applied to the whole land.
6 tn Heb “the trees of/in the field and the fruit of/in the ground.”
7 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
8 tn Fire also appears as a form of judgment in Ezek 15:4-7; 19:12, 14.
9 tn Heb “all flesh.”
10 tn Grk “than having.”
11 sn The word translated hell is “Gehenna” (γέεννα, geenna), a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew words ge hinnom (“Valley of Hinnom”). This was the valley along the south side of Jerusalem. In OT times it was used for human sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (cf. Jer 7:31; 19:5-6; 32:35), and it came to be used as a place where human excrement and rubbish were disposed of and burned. In the intertestamental period, it came to be used symbolically as the place of divine punishment (cf. 1 En. 27:2, 90:26; 4 Ezra 7:36). This Greek term also occurs in vv. 45, 47.
12 tc Most later mss have 9:44 here and 9:46 after v. 45: “where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched” (identical with v. 48). Verses 44 and 46 are present in A D Θ Ë13 Ï lat syp,h, but lacking in important Alexandrian mss and several others (א B C L W Δ Ψ 0274 Ë1 28 565 892 2427 pc co). This appears to be a scribal addition from v. 48 and is almost certainly not an original part of the Greek text of Mark. The present translation follows NA27 in omitting the verse number, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations.
13 tn Grk “than having.”
14 tc See tc note at the end of v. 43.
15 tn Grk “throw it out.”
16 tn Grk “than having.”