Altars were torn down, images were smashed, and the pieces scattered over the graves of those who had bowed down to them in worship. In his crusade Josiah singled out the valley of Ben Hinnom for particular attention. From being a place of idol worship he turned it into a public rubbish dump in which all the offal and filth of Jerusalem was poured. Later, the bodies of animals and even the corpses of criminals were flung there and left to rot or to be consumed by the fire that was kept constantly burning to dispose of the stinking mass of garbage. We can now see how this otherwise unimportant piece of land fits into the picture.
Fire is the word used most often in scripture to describe hell.
Gehenna is the place where the fire never ceases to burn. The word Gehenna is used twelve times in the New Testament with eleven of those by Jesus himself. The image of an eternal unceasing fire graphically depicts the agony and torment of hell. The descriptions of hell recorded in scripture are terrifying. They are meant to terrify us.