Angels will come forth, and separate the wicked from among the righteous, and cast them into the fiery furnace: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Explanation of the meaning of the words: fiery furnace, fiery Gehenna, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth

Presenting to His listeners the future of sinners, Jesus Christ said that the sinners condemned by Him at the end of the world would be cast down

into the fiery furnace, where

Will

crying and gnashing of teeth. Should we literally understand the words —

the fiery furnace, or to consider that the punishment that awaits sinners is only likened to the torment in the fiery furnace? It seems to us that these words could be understood literally only if Jesus Christ had always expressed Himself in this way about the future that awaits sinners; however, it is known that on other occasions He expressed Himself somewhat differently: thus, in the Sermon on the Mount He compared the torments of sinners to being in the valley (Gehenna) of fire (Matt. 5:29); after that, speaking of the fate that would befall the Jews, He said that they

they will be cast out into outer darkness: and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and

many will come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 8:11-12). The burning in the fiery furnace was known to Jesus' listeners from the books of the Old Testament: thus, Judah, the son of Jacob, condemned his daughter-in-law Tamar to be burned (Gen. 38:24); David threw the inhabitants of the city of Rabbah, whom he had conquered, into the kilns (2 Samuel 12:31); Nebuchadnezzar ordered to throw into the fiery furnace Ananias, Mishael, and Azariah, who did not bow down to the golden image (Dan. 3:21). In general, among the peoples of the East, burning alive was one of the usual methods of capital punishment, and such a punishment was the most terrible and painful. That is why Jesus Christ, speaking of the terrible punishment of sinners in the future eternal life and wishing to visualize to His listeners their fate, pointed to the execution in the fiery furnace as a kind of semblance of what awaits them if they do not repent and are not reborn to a new life. Later, answering the Sadducees' question about the resurrection, Jesus likened to spirits, angels, people who will be resurrected for the Last Judgment, and at the same time explained that the bodies of the resurrected will not be the same sensual bodies as we are clothed with during our earthly life (Luke 20:27-36), and from this we can conclude that the sufferings of the condemned will be spiritual rather than sensual and bodily.

Having finished the conversation with the disciples with parables, Jesus asked them:

Did you understand all this? And when he was convinced from their answer that they now understood Him, he called them