BRIMSTONE (burning stone or sulphur [θεῖ?ον, commonly derived from θεῖ?ος, ‘divine,’ either because sulphur was used for religious purification, or because lightning—the bolt of the gods—emits a sulphurous odour: others connect it with θύω, ‘agitate,’ cf. fumus, ‘smoke’]).—Its use in Scripture in the imagery of Divine judgment is founded on the story of the destruction of Sodom and the cities of the Plain (Genesis 19:24-28), a catastrophe to which the Gospels frequently refer (Luke 17:29, Luke 10:12, Mark 6:11, Matthew 10:15, Matthew 11:23-24). The story of this tragedy of Divine judgment casts its lurid light all down Scripture history, and has coloured Christian belief in its presentation of the Divine wrath. The imagery of ‘fire and brimstone’ appears in the prophets and the Psalms as an impressive metaphor of heaven’s most pitiless judgment, while the story itself is often recalled both in the OT and in the NT. In the Book of Revelation it is a notable feature in the description of the Apocalyptic riders (Revelation 9:17-18), that their breastplates are of fire and brimstone, and from the mouths of their horses proceed the same dread emblems of wrath; while no more impressive figure can be found to describe the final doom of the wicked in the end of the ages than that they shall be cast into the ‘lake of fire and brimstone,’ there to be ‘tormented day and night for ever and ever’ (Revelation 19:20, Revelation 20:10, Revelation 21:8).
J. Dick Fleming.