Isaiah 66

The writer doesn’t say who got kicked out of what. One guess is that a family of Levite priests descended from Zadok—the Zadokites—stripped the other groups of their priestly duties, on a charge of idolatry (Ezekiel 44:10-16). Another guess is that the enemies doing the mocking weren’t followers of God. They were idol worshipers.

The term for “gulch” is wadi. It’s a dry streambed most of the time. But with heavy rains upstream, it can turn into a raging river downstream, where it might not have rained at all. In dry times, the wadi makes a good walking trail. Just watch the weather.

Location of Tarshish is unknown. It was the prophet Jonah’s destination when he tried to run away from God. Scholars often guess that it was a city in Spain or somewhere else at the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea from the Jewish homeland. Some say it was a Phoenician colony called Tartessus, in Spain. Phoenicians were native to what is now Lebanon, but their merchant ships sailed through the Mediterranean Sea.

Libya. For remaining cities in 66:19, see accompanying map. Location of some cities aren’t known.

This describes how some Jews came home after their 50-year exile in Babylon, today’s Iraq (Ezra 1:4).

The text doesn’t mention a trash heap. But some scholars say the writer’s mention of eternal worms and never-ending fire suggests the bodies have been thrown in the trash heap outside the city wall. Jerusalem in Roman times dumped garbage on the southeastern slopes, outside the city walls of a portion of Jerusalem known as the City of David. The trash dumped into the Kidron Valley. The garbage was excavated in 2013-2014. The landfill rose to 70 meters high (about 77 yards). Centuries earlier, the writer of this final chapter seemed to suggest that the memory of this clash between God and the rebels would always be there, every time the people threw out the garbage. There, the trash was in the Hinnom Valley, also known as Gehenna—the term Jesus used that is often interpreted into English as “hell.”

Some Jewish scholars say that among Jews, the idea of a place of eternal torment in what they call Gehenna comes from this verse. Jesus used the phrase “you will be liable to [or burn in] the fires of Gehenna” (Matthew 5:22). Gehenna is the Aramaic name for the Valley of Hinnom, which is located on the south side of Jerusalem.” It was, for a time, the constantly smoldering city dump. But in Old Testament times, some Jews sacrificed to idols there. King Manasseh (reigned 696-642 BC), Hezekiah’s son, sacrificed his own sons in the fire in Hinnom Valley (2 Chronicles 33:6). Later, in 586 BC, Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq leveled the Jewish cities including Jerusalem and erased the Jewish nation from the world map. Some Jews considered that as God’s judgment on their nation’s lingering idolatry. For the Jews, Hinnom Valley became a synonym for God’s judgment, much like 9/11, for Americans, refers to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York City. English Bible translators created the word “hell” to express the idea that “Gehenna” means more than a valley, but that it points to God’s judgment.