Nephi now moves from the description of the division to the Yahweh’s judgment of that division. This is the discussion that moves from the living to the ultimate fate of the soul before Yahweh. Nephi uses fire as a simile for Yahweh’s justice. This is a different connotation of the flames than the Christianized fires of hell that consume the wicked. Hell as a place of burnings is a later development that associated Sheol with Gehenna. (See also commentary accompanying 3 Nephi 12:21–22.) Bo Reicke, of the Universität Basel, Switzerland, discusses the development of hell as a place of burning:
Gehenna as a place of punishment, especially by fire, is anticipated in an Isaianic reference to a large topheth, or burning place, near Jerusalem, said to be lit by the Lord to punish the Assyrians and their king (Isa. 30:33). A further stage in the development of the relevant concepts is reached in the report concerning King Josiah’s cultic reform of 622 B.C.E., which implied a desecration of similar topheths in Judah, especially one found in the valley of Hinnom and dedicated to Molech for children (2 Kgs. 23:10; cf. 2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6). The elimination ordered by Josiah was not entirely successful, for somewhat later Jeremiah made repeated attacks on the topheth and said the valley of Hinnom would become a general burial place (Jer. 7:31, 19:11, 32:35).
On the basis of such passages and influenced by parallelism with Persian ideas of a judgment in fire, Jewish apocalypticism made the valley of Hinnom a place of punishment within an eschatological milieu. In a vision ascribed to Enoch a cavity was depicted, into which the faithful Jews, gathered on the holy mountain, would look down to see the righteous judgment of and eternal punishment of all godless and cursed people (1 Enoch 26:4, 27:2–3).
There is insufficient evidence to trace the precise timing that some of these concepts entered Hebrew thought, but I suggest, based on Nephi’s writings, that he represents a transitional period that links Isaiah’s place of burning and Jeremiah’s place of burial to the beginning of seeing flames as part of Sheol. Nephi accepts the image but not the later declaration of an actual location of fire.