“Deliver Up Its Dead”

Brant Gardner

Textual analysis: The separation of verse 11 and 12, which were part of a continuous paragraph in the 1830 edition, makes it a little more difficult to see the literary flow from one argument to another. Once again, Jacob uses parallelism to emphasize his point.

In verse 11 we have the phrase:

"this death, of which I have spoken, which is the temporal, shall deliver up its dead"

In verse 12 we have:

"This death of which I have spoken, which is the spiritual death, shall deliver up its dead"

Each of these has precisely the same elements, with the single change in the central phrase, which marks the particular structure. This similarity is intentional, and in this case must be representative of the language underlying the text. The parallel makes the point. In both cases, the effect of the atonement is to reverse one of these aspects of death.

It should be noted that there is a final clause which is also parallel. The final clause of the phrase in verse 11 defines temporal death as the grave. The final clause of verse 12 defines spiritual death as hell. Each of these explanatory phrases are a part of the overall complementary parallel.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

References