Commentaria in Isaiam
The Jews from this place think that “Topheth,” or Gehenna, was created by God on the second day of the world, because that day had only “yesterday,” that is, one day before it; but “yesterday” signifies all past time, as I showed on Hebrews 13:8; see what was said on Genesis 1:4, where I showed that hell was established immediately after the fall of the Angels on the first day of the world. “Yesterday” therefore signifies, first, that for the damned the torments and fires are always new and fresh, as if they had begun on yesterday; second, their eternity; because in eternity, being stable and immovable, the space of ages is the same as yesterday’s day; and therefore at any moment of eternity that fire of Gehenna will be as sharp as if it burned today and the burning had begun yesterday, says Sanchez.
Note here six conditions of Gehenna. The first is that it is “Topheth,” that is, a place of burning, and of the timbrel by which they are beaten. The second, that it is prepared for the wicked “from yesterday,” that is, from the beginning of the world. The third, that it is “deep,” because near the center of the earth; hence in Job 10:21 it is called “a land dark and covered with the mist of death.” See there St. Gregory. The fourth, that it is “wide”; both because it has an ample belly to take so many millions of men; and because it has an open and gaping mouth; hence hell is compared to a ravening beast, and to a mouth gaping with hunger and stretching wide its jaws to devour food or man. Hence it is said, Habacuc 2: “He hath enlarged his soul like hell”; and Isaias 5: “Therefore hath hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds.”
Doubtless hell insatiably opens its hollow jaws. Wherefore in Hebrew hell is called sheol, that is, asking; because, as is said in Proverbs 30:15–16:
“There are three things that are never satisfied, and a fourth that never saith: It is enough: hell, and the mouth of the womb, and the earth which is not satisfied with water; but the fire never saith: It is enough.” The fifth condition of hell follows, when he says:
The nourishment thereof, fire and much wood—by “wood,” which is the common fuel of fire, he understands by catachresis anything else, such as eternal sulphur, always burning and the same in number, as I said on Apocalypse 19. Again, the very bodies of the damned: for these are called wood, Luke 23:31; Ecclesiasticus 11:3. Calvin takes fire and the rest metaphorically for the punishment of God. For he denies that the damned in Gehenna are burned with fire, and therefore that the pain of the damned is anything other than that they continually apprehend that God is angry with them: by this apprehension, he says, they are tormented and racked. But Scripture and Christ everywhere threaten the damned with true fire: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire,” he himself says, Matthew 25:41. The same the Church teaches, St. Augustine and all the Fathers. See here how Calvin enervates matters of faith, taking from men the fear of God and of hell, while he makes it imaginary and fantastic. This is a fraud of the devil.
The breath of the Lord as a torrent of brimstone kindling it—“Topheth,” or Gehenna. This is the sixth condition of Gehenna. As then it is said of the Blessed, Psalm 35: “Thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure, for with thee is the fountain of life,” which perpetually for eternity distils to the Blessed the same life and joys always: so from God a torrent of sulphurous fire will burst forth, which with the same burning always will torment the damned for eternity.
Moreover, “the breath of the Lord” is a stormy blast divinely raised there to kindle the fire, as the wind stirs up a fire; or it is the divine power continually preserving the fire, by which that fire will burn perpetually without being consumed. This breath will so kindle Gehenna as if a torrent of burning sulphur were poured into it: what could be conceived more horrible to the mind?
“Hell is a lake without measure, deep without bottom, full of incomparable burning, full of intolerable stench; there misery, there darkness, there no order, there eternal horror; there no hope of good, no despair of evil,” says Hugh, book 4 On the Soul. “In a horrible manner there comes to the wretched a death without death, an end without end, a failing without failing; and failing knows not how to fail. Death destroys, and does not extinguish; pain racks, yet in no way drives away dread; flame burns, yet in no way drives out darkness,” says St. Gregory, book 9 of the Morals, chapter 30.
Morally, learn here how great are the torments of Gehenna, how eternal the fires. Always set them before your eyes when allurement solicits you to sin, when Venus, when companions do: put your finger in the fire, in a burning candle, for a few moments, and say to yourself: If so great is the torment of a candle burning for a moment, how great will be the torment of the fire of Gehenna burning for eternity? “I do not buy eternal repentance at so great a price”; I do not purchase a little honey with eternal gall, nay with fire. St. Gregory, book 4 of the Dialogues, relates that the hermit Peter, dead and presently restored to his body, narrated that he had seen the punishments of hell and countless places of flames, and had beheld in them certain powerful men of this world: and when he himself had been led to be plunged into them, suddenly an angel of shining aspect appeared, who forbade him to be plunged into the fire, saying: “Go back, and take most careful heed how you must live after this.” Reviving, he bound himself with such fasts and vigils that his manner of life would have spoken, even had his tongue been silent, that he had seen and feared the torments of hell. In the same place St. Gregory tells how the illustrious man Stephen, who died, was led to the torments of hell, and saw many things he had not believed when he heard of them; and when he was set before the judge, he heard: “I did not command this man to be brought, but Stephen the smith.” He was at once restored to his body, and Stephen the smith, who dwelt next to him, died the same hour.
St. Gregory goes on: A certain soldier, he says, returning to himself from death, asserted that he had seen these things: “There was a bridge, under which ran a black and dark river, exhaling a mist of intolerable stench. But beyond the bridge were pleasant and green meadows, adorned with sweet-smelling flowers of herbs, in which gatherings of men in white seemed to be: and such a fragrance of sweetness was in that place that its very fragrance satisfied those walking and dwelling there: there were mansions of various persons, each full of great light: there a house of wondrous power was being built, which seemed to be constructed of golden bricks, but whose it was could not be known. Upon the bank of the aforesaid river were some dwellings; but some a rising mist of stench covered, while others the stench rising from the river did not touch at all. Here, however, on the said bridge was a test: that whoever of the unjust wished to cross by it should slip into the stinking river; but the just, to whom no guilt was a hindrance, would come with secure and free step by it to the pleasant places.”
How Josaphat, converted by Barlaam, was led into paradise and hell, and what and how great things he saw there, by which he plainly overcame a most grievous temptation of lust, nay fell into sickness and failure of strength, Damascene relates in his History, chapter 30.
John Climacus, in the Ladder, relates that in visiting the monasteries he found a certain brother, who had charge of the kitchen, endowed with a singular grace of tears; and asking him whence he had obtained it, he heard from him that “he never thought he was serving men in the offices of the kitchen, but was doing good service to his brethren as to Apostles; and from the sight of the fire which he continually beheld, he turned over in his mind the vast fires of hell: which consideration was wont to draw abundant tears from his eyes.” So also our Father Francis Borgia, by meditation on hell, came to such contempt of himself and of the world, and when he burned with fever, said: “Hence judge, Francis, how great the flames must be.”
St. Gregory, Dialogues 4, chapter 30, asserts that a certain holy solitary saw Theodoric king of the Goths, at the hour in which he died, between Pope John and the Patrician Symmachus, whom he had unjustly put to death, ungirt, unshod, and with hands bound behind his back, cast into the cauldron of Vulcan, which is on the island of Lipari. To the same cauldron the soul of the tyrant Ebroin was being led by ship; a man blinded by Ebroin heard it from sailors, as Ado relates in his Chronicle, age 6.
St. Mary of Oignies saw her dead mother, saying that she was damned on account of the unjust goods she had possessed; and because, she said, I would not attend to what was done against God in my house and by my subjects. Hearing this, Mary at once conformed herself to the will of God, and blessed the just judgment of God, as Cardinal Vitry relates in book 3 of her Life, chapter 11.
“Remember thy last end, remember hell, and thou shalt never sin.” O Topheth! O Gehenna! how sharp! how wide! how long-lasting!