The Inquisitive Christian

One interesting thing about working on this blog is that I catch things later on that I missed earlier. Hell and the devil are mentioned in previous chapters of the Book of Mormon, but it wasn’t until this book and chapter that I realized there are issues with these words and concepts in this context. This will be the primary issue addressed in this post. Other problematic themes in this chapter have already been addressed in previous posts. Other sections are simply not particularly noteworthy because they contain conditional prophecies that Joseph Smith easily fabricated, as evidenced by the conditions not being met and the prophecy not coming to fruition. I will give minimal attention to those portions. I will be using my NASB Hebrew-Greek Keyword Study Bible (AMG Publishers) to delve further into the concepts of hell and the devil.

The Second Book of Nephi

An account of the death of Lehi. Nephi’s brethren rebel against him. the Lord warns Nephi to depart into the wilderness. his journeyings in the wilderness, and so forth.

2 Nephi, Chapter 1

Lehi prophesies of a land of liberty. His seed will be scattered and smitten if they reject the Holy One of Israel. He exhorts his sons to put on the armor of righteousness. About 588-570 B.C.

1: “And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had made an end of teaching my brethren, our father, Lehi, also spake many things unto them, and rehearsed unto them, how great things the Lord had done for them in bringing them out of the land of Jerusalem.”

2: “And he spake unto them concerning their rebellion upon the waters, and the mercies of God in sparing their lives, that they were not swallowed up in the sea.”

3: “And he also spake unto them concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained- how merciful the Lord had been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem.”

In my previous post, “An Implausible Discovery,” I go into more detail about how there was only one promised land for the Israelites, not two. God clearly laid out the boundaries for this promised land, and it absolutely did not include the Americas.

4: “For behold, said he, I have seen a vision, in which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem we should have also perished.”

It is true that the Babylonian captivity and Destruction of Jerusalem took place around 586 B.C. This reported vision would be remarkable if the elusive gold plates were available for examination by scholars and were found to be ancient. As we all know, however, Joseph Smith claimed the plates were taken back to heaven. In light of the fact that no other source on earth records these events and no one else, not even the 11 witnesses, actually physically saw the plates, the only logical conclusion I am left to draw is the Book of Mormon is a fabrication from the mind of someone living in the 19th century. This verse, then, cannot be seen as some sort of divine revelation to Lehi, but as a piece of knowledge known to someone who wrote this book because it had already happened over a couple thousand years prior. For more information on the 11 witnesses, see this: Did the Eleven Witnesses Actually See the Gold Plates? – Mormonism Research Ministry

Verses 5-12 describe Lehi declaring this promised land has been set aside and consecrated for his descendants. He reports that as long they obey God’s commandments, God will keep it hidden from other nations, so they won’t overrun it. However, should they disobey God and abandon Him, other nations will arrive and overtake his descendants. He prophesies wars and bloodshed. In my previous post “The Great and Abominable Church Revisited,” I cite research that affirms there were indigenous tribes in the Americas thousands of years before the events in the books of Nephi were purported to have taken place. So, the assertion that God was keeping this continent hidden from everyone else because it was the promised land for Lehi and his descendants is quite silly.

13: “O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the deep sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.”

14: “Awake! And arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth.”

15: “But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.”

If the LDS church wishes for us to view the Book of Mormon as an adjunct to the Bible, then it is only proper to compare and contrast the word and concept of hell between the two. This is where we will see the shortcomings of the KJV with more modern translations. The KJV does use the word “hell” in the Old Testament, but more modern translations, based upon more numerous and better-quality ancient manuscripts, use the word “Sheol,” which carries more nuance. Per the Hebrew dictionary of my study Bible, Sheol is “A noun meaning the world of the dead, Sheol, the grave, death, the depths. The word describes the underworld but is most often translated as grave. Jacob described himself as going to the grave upon Joseph’s supposed death (Gen. 37:35; 42:38); Korah, Dathan, and Abiram went down into the ground, which becomes their grave, when God judges them (Num. 16:30,33)… The word means depths or Sheol. Job called the ways of the Almighty higher than heaven and lower than Sheol or the depths of the earth (Job 11:8). The psalmist could not escape the Lord even in the lowest depths of the earth, in contrast to the high heavens (Ps 139:8).” This dictionary also points out that Sheol can also be a place for the wicked and that the righteous were not left in the grave or Sheol (Ps 16:10) but were rescued from it (Ps 49:15-16). By Contrast, the Hebrew word for a literal grave where someone is buried (such as what appears in Ps 88:11 and many other places) is qeber. So, we can see there are differences between these two words and concepts. I promise I’m getting to my point.

On the surface, his use of these words doesn’t appear to be that big of a deal. Joseph Smith made a very bad decision, however, when he employed the phrase “eternal gulf of misery and woe.” Notice the definitions of the Hebrew words that I gave above. Pay very close to what they’re missing: a definition that includes a place of eternal torment. While the KJV uses the word hell, which is the English translation Smith would have had access to at the time, it goes to follow that he would also use that word. What he did not realize, however, is that he misused it in verses 13 and 15. The concept of hell as a place of eternal torment was not introduced until the New Testament.

In the New Testament, the word hell is used in modern translations. You will find its use in numerous verses in the New Testament, such as Matthew 10: 28: “And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 5:22 and 25:41,46 describe it as a place of eternal fire and punishment. These are only a few examples. The Greek word geenna means Gehenna, which is hell, a place of eternal torment and punishment for the wicked. This word has a fascinating history. Per my Greek dictionary, it was derived from the Hebrew word “gey hinnom,” or “Valley of Hinnom,” which was a narrow valley skirting Jerusalem on the south, running westward from the valley of Jehoshaphat under Mount Zion. It was in this valley that the Israelites built statues of Molech and engaged in the barbaric practice of infant sacrifice (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 16:3; Jer. 7:31). King Josiah broke up the statues and desecrated this place, as reported in 2 Kings 23:10, 14. After this, it became a receptacle for not just garbage and filth, but for carcasses of animals and some humans that were not buried. Fires were burned and constantly stoked to consume the filth and rot. I don’t even want to imagine the smell.

So, there are some things you know now. And now you know why Smith’s use of the word “hell” in this instance doesn’t make much sense. Verses 16 and 17 consist of Lehi telling his sons how much he worries about them not obeying God.

18: “Or, that a cursing should come upon you for the space of many generations; and ye are visited by the sword, and by famine, and are hated, and are led according to the will and captivity of the devil.”

Here, we will see another instance of Smith using a New Testament concept during an Old Testament time period. We will also see the difference between the KJV and modern translations. The word “devil” actually doesn’t appear in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament. The KJV uses this word, but not to describe a singular, cosmic foe of God and humanity. An example of this is Leviticus 17:7: “And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.” By contrast, the NASB states, “And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to demons with which they play the harlot…” The Hebrew word used here is “saiyr,” which means, per my dictionary, “a male goat, a buck. Occasionally, the word can be used figuratively to mean a hairy one.” At this point in Scripture, the Israelites were worshipping the goat as an idol. This same word is used in 2 Ch. 11:15. To translate this word as “demons,” then, denotes that the false idols they were worshipping were actually unholy entities.

The KJV uses the word “devils” again in Deut. 32:17: “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” The NASB again uses the word “demons” instead. In this instance, the Hebrew word is “shed,” which means “a demon, a devil. The primary or typical translation of this noun is demon or demons. This noun is used to describe the recipient of a sacrifice that was not given or directed toward God.” So, again, the instances when “devils” are used are not describing a singular foe.

The Old Testament, however, does use the word “satan,” but not always as a proper noun to describe what we know today as Satan. The Hebrew use of “satan” often appears after the article “the,” so it’s actually “the satan.” In this sense, it means “adversary, accuser,” and can actually include human opponents, as we see in 1 Sa 29:4, 2 Sa 19:22-23, when the Philistines feared David might have acted in opposition to them in battle. A very notable appearance of this word as a proper noun occurs 14 times in the book of Job, when he appears before God and accuses Job of not loving or serving God with integrity (Job 1:6-7, 2:1-7). In this instance, as well as in Zec 3:1-2 and 2 Sam 24:1, we see that a singular, evil, adversarial entity exists who opposes God, but we still don’t know much about him until the New Testament. I will point out that some scholars argue that the proper noun “Satan” never occurs in the Old Testament and English translations have it wrong, while others (including the committee responsible for publishing my study Bible) will support what I have just said here.

In the New Testament, “Devil” is used as a proper noun to describe a singular, specific evil being. It comes from the Greek word “diabolos,” which means “slanderous or false accuser.” The word Satan is also used as a proper noun to denote the same entity and the two are used interchangeably. He is mentioned so many times in the New Testament that it’s impossible for me to list all the references, but a few are Matt. 4:1, John 8:44, 2 Corinthians 11:14. We learn much more about him in the New Testament, and we also learn in Revelation 12:9 that he is who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden: “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

As you can see, while the concept of an adversarial entity was present in the Old Testament, he was not called the devil, and the concept of him as the ultimate evil and foe of God and humanity wasn’t fully developed until the New Testament.

Verses 19 and 20 repeat the conditional prophecy that if they keep God’s commandments, they’ll prosper; but if they don’t, they’ll be cut off and defeated. Obviously, lots of people came from other places to the Americas and did some pretty egregious things to the native populations, so we’re naturally expected to believe that this was a real prophecy that came true. In verses 21 and 22, Lehi again admonishes his sons to obey God.

23: “Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.”

“The armor of righteousness” is another phrase that doesn’t appear until the New Testament. The closest Old Testament reference to something similar is found in Isaiah 59:17: “And He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head; And he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle.” This verse, of course, is a prophecy describing Jesus. Putting on the armor of righteousness or the armor of God is specifically a Christian concept described in the New Testament as believers equipping themselves to face the trials of this world. You can read about this concept in more detail in 2 Cor. 6:7 and especially in Eph. 6:13-18.

Verses 24-30 are basically Lehi demanding his other sons be nice to Nephi and listen to him, or he won’t give them their blessing. 30-32 consists of Lehi specifically addressing Zoram, the former servant of Laban, who came with them to this new land. He tells him that his descendants will also be blessed alongside the descendants of Nephi, as long as they keep God’s commandments.

I hope you all had as much fun with that little linguistics adventure as I did. I will be continuing this journey another day after my little ADHD brain has a proper rest. Till next time.