GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 9:48
Worms and Fire
At its zenith, the Granite City Steel Company in Granite City, Illinois, operated seven open-hearth furnaces for steel production. I worked on several of these furnaces during my seven years as a maintenance welder for the company. During that time, two furnaces had to be rebuilt—major projects in themselves. Each furnace contained a hearth that held two to three hundred tons of steel, melted using a combination of oil and oxygen. On one occasion, a furnace required repair to one of its supporting structures. The managers decided against shutting the furnace down and allowing it to cool, fearing that doing so might allow the roof to collapse. Instead, they built a metal shield around the damaged section, and a team of welders—wearing protective clothing and wooden clogs beneath their shoes—began the repair. Each welder could endure only a few minutes inside the metal-shielded area because of the extreme heat. That experience reminded me of Jesus’ statement: “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:48)
The sentence in Mark 9:48 is the third in a series of identical statements—the others appearing in verses 44 and 46. Because of their absence in early manuscripts, many scholars believe that a copyist either accidentally or deliberately inserted verses 44 and 46 during the copying process. Consequently, some modern biblical translations omit these verses from the text. Scholarly literature on this textual issue is extensive and readily accessible. Without commenting on the presence of worms in hell or on unquenchable fire similar to that in the open-hearth steel furnace, the focus of these short verses is on the fate of unbelievers and those who turn away from God. Jesus’ disciples would have been familiar with the Valley of Hinnom—also known as Gehenna—a foul and repulsive refuse dump south of Jerusalem. Jesus emphasized the dreadfulness of what awaited the unbeliever, comparing their fate to being cast into Gehenna, where worms thrived and there was a continuous smoldering fire—a destiny avoidable only through the grace of redemption offered by the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
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