Isaiah 66:24

And they(the worshippers) shall go forth to some place in the vicinity of Jerusalem, no doubt the Valley of Hinnom, Nehemiah 11:30; cf. Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16; 2 Chronicles 28:3; Jeremiah 7:32; 2 Kings 23:10. (See below.)

the men that rebelled against me The apostates so often referred to in the last two Chapter s.

for their worm shall not die, &c. (see below) Jdt 16:17; Sir 7:17; Mark 9:44 ff.

an abhorring The Hebrew word (dçrâ"ôn) occurs again only in Daniel 12:2.

This verse is the basis of the later Jewish conception of Gehenna as the place of everlasting punishment (see Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, pp. 355 360). Gehenna is the Hebrew Gê-Hinnôm(Valley of Hinnom), the place where of old human sacrifices were offered to Molech (Jeremiah 7:31 f., et passim), and for this reason desecrated by king Josiah (2 Kings 23:10). Afterwards it became a receptacle for filth and refuse, and Rabbinical tradition asserts that it was the custom to cast out unclean corpses there, to be burned or to undergo decomposition. This is in all probability the scene which had imprinted itself on the imagination of the writer, and which was afterwards projected into the unseen world as an image of endless retribution. The Talmudic theology locates the mouth of hell in the Valley of Hinnom. But how much of the later theology lies in this passage it is difficult to say. Nothing is expressly said of torment endured by the dead, but only of the loathsome spectacle they present to the living; although the former idea may be implied and is suggested by a comparison with ch. Isaiah 50:11. "If this passage is of too early a date, as Dillmann thinks, to admit of a reference to the horrors of the Valley of Gehinnom, the double figure of the worm and the fire may be due to the two ways of disposing of the dead, by interment and by cremation. The immediate object of the description of the worm as never dying and the fire as never being quenched, appears to be to mark the destination of those men as a perpetual witness to the consuming judgements of God, and one which all flesh may see. The incongruity of the idea of a fire burning a dead body and never going out, is supposed, however, to point to something more.… It may be that the dead body is poetically conceived to be conscious of the pains of the worm and the fire, as Dillmann supposes [cf. Job 14:22]. But even that goes beyond the immediate object, which is to present the men in question as a perpetual spectacle of shame to all beholders" (Salmond, l.c.p. 212). The view thus expressed is reasonable if the passage was written by the author of the preceding Chapter s. But there is much to be said for the opinion (of Duhm and Cheyne) that the last two verses are an appendix to the prophecy, written at a later time, so that the language may to some extent be saturated with the ideas which were afterwards associated with the word Gehenna.

In Heb. Bibles and MSS. part of Isaiah 66:23 is repeated (without the vowel signs) after Isaiah 66:24, in accordance with a Massoretic direction, so that the reading in the Synagogue might" close with words of comfort." The same practice was followed in the reading of the "Twelve" (Minor) Prophets, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. see Ginsburg's Introduction, p. 850.