---
title: Luke 12:5
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-12-5/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-12-5.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Luke 12:5
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Luke 12:5

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear the One who, after you have been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him!

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "But I will show you whom to fear: Fear the One who after killing has authority to throw into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear this One."

## JW Usage

Luke 12:5 is one of the central JW proof-texts for annihilationism. Because the NWT transliterates the Greek Geenna as "Gehenna" — the Hinnom Valley outside Jerusalem, used as a rubbish dump in Old Testament times — Watchtower commentary reads Jesus's warning as a threat of complete destruction, the symbolic counterpart of being thrown onto the burning trash heap and consumed. The dead are unconscious; Gehenna is non-existence; "everlasting punishment" elsewhere is reframed as "everlasting cutting-off." Hell as conscious eternal suffering is dismissed as a pagan import.

## Protestant Usage

The Gehenna-as-rubbish-dump reading does not fit what Jesus actually says. Mark 9:48 describes Gehenna as a place "where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched" — a rubbish-dump fire goes out; Jesus's fire does not. Matthew 25:46 puts "everlasting punishment" (kolasin aiōnion) and "everlasting life" (zōēn aiōnion) in grammatical parallel — same Greek adjective, same duration; if the life is everlasting, so is the punishment. Revelation 14:11 says "the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night." Read Luke 12:5 with Revelation 14:11 and Matthew 25:46, and the annihilation reading collapses. The verse is a warning Jesus gave because the threat is real, ongoing, and worth fearing.

## NWT Issue

The NWT transliterates Geenna as "Gehenna" rather than rendering it "hell" as standard English translations do (KJV, ESV, NASB, NIV). The transliteration is defensible on technical grounds — Gehenna literally is the Valley of Hinnom — but it carries doctrinal weight in the JW system because it lets Watchtower commentary recast the word as a synonym for the Hinnom rubbish dump rather than as the place of conscious post-mortem punishment that Jesus's hearers understood (cf. 2 Esdras 7:36, 4 Ezra 7, 1 Enoch 27, Sibylline Oracles 4 — Second Temple Jewish sources that already treated Gehenna as the eschatological place of fiery punishment by the first century AD). Standard translations render "hell" because the word is functioning theologically, not geographically.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Hell Is Real](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/hell-annihilationism.md) — Jesus on Eternal Punishment [Eschatology]