The sight was horrible, the air was polluted and to preserve it in any manner of purity, it was necessary to keep fires continually burning there. The Jew s extreme loathsomeness of the place, the filth and putrefaction, the corruption of the atmosphere, and the lurid fires blazing by day and night, made it one of the most appalling symbols with which a Jew was acquainted.
Eternal punishment is likened unto setting fire to dry leaf.
The leaf is destroyed forever, it ceases to exist and the fire goes out although nothing could extinguish the fire before the leaf was fully consumed. Just as no one can actually understand the logic behind God s mercy in saving us through Christ dying on the cross, we probably can t understand God s justice with hell. The elder who runs off with another women will be punished more severely than any of the recent mass murder-rapists. It is not a matter of how bad they sinned but the degree they knew it was sin. It violates that there are in fact, as everyone recognizes, varying degrees of sin in a practical way.