Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. This is repeated again, not only to assure the truth of the thing, but to raise the attention of the mind unto it, and fix an awful impression upon it: the Persic version renders it, "from whence thou shall never find redemption": there is no redemption from hell, as Origen and others have thought.

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched--See on Matthew 5:30; The "unquenchablesness" of this fire has already been brought before us (see on Matthew 3:12); and the awfully vivid idea of an undying worm, everlastingly consuming an unconsumable body, is taken from the closing words of the evangelical prophet (Isaiah 66:24), which seem to have furnished the later Jewish Church with its current phraseology on the subject of future punishment (see LIGHTFOOT).

Worm dieth not, . . . fire is not quenched. An expression borrowed from the last verse of Isaiah, and probably in current use among the Jews of our Savior's time, as applied to the state of future retribution.