Gehenna

Gehenna: Greek word from the Hebrew 'Geh Hinnom' meaning “Valley of Hinnom”

Often translated as ‘hell’ it refers to the fiery dump outside of Jerusalem where sulfur was burned day and night to consume waste matter from the city of Jerusalem, including even dead animals and the bodies of criminals. Earlier in Jewish history, it had been a place of false worship, including human sacrifice.

Anything thrown into Gehenna would be completely destroyed, never to return. Thus, Jesus use of the word would refer to a place, not of eternal torment, but total destruction

Well, could it be a symbol of eternal torment? God expressed repugnance for such practice, saying that it was “a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart” (Jeremiah 7:31), so it seems most unlikely that God’s Son, in discussing divine judgment, would make such idolatrous practice the basis for the symbolic meaning of Gehenna. It may be noted that God prophetically decreed that the Valley of Hinnom would serve as a place for mass disposal of dead bodies rather than for the torture of live victims. (Jeremiah 7:32, 33)

Given that the dead “are conscious of nothing at all” (Ecclesiastes 9:5), we may be certain that the term Gehenna is not used to denote a place of eternal torment.