Even after the prayers of the faithful that had brought Alma the Younger to this experience, more prayers were offered in his behalf to complete the process and bring him back to strength.
Textual: This verse is both similar and different. Similar to Saul’s experience, Alma is incapacitated for multiple days. The difference is that Saul was incapacitated for three days (Acts 9:9), and Alma the Younger for “two days and two nights.”
Once again, there is the possibility that the different symbol systems of the two worlds plays a part in the number of days they are incapacitated.
For Saul, the three days have at least two references; the days Jonah spent in the belly of the “great fish,” and the days Christ spent in the tomb before resurrection.
In Saul’s Old World context, and particularly so close to Christ’s resurrection, it makes great symbolic sense for Saul to be in darkness for three days, just as Jonah and Christ were in darkness for three days. When Saul emerges from darkness he was a new man – or a man reborn to a new spiritual life.
Alma underwent a similar spiritual transformation, but did it in two days and two nights, rather than the three days for Jonah and Christ. In the case of Alma the Younger, it may be that we are seeing an importance laid to the typically rhetorical “two days and two nights.” While that phrase in the Bible is simply an intensifier of the number of days, it may be in this case that they were meant to be seen separately so that the total “number” was four time periods that Alma the Younger spend in the “dark.”
For Mesoamerica, four was a particularly auspicious number. Four was the number of perfection. In a much later myth, an important demi-god, Mixcoatl, is born after only four days gestation, signaling his birth as a miracle. The miracle was not simply in the short time period, but the very specific notation of the four days. His was a magical, and “perfect” birth. (Leyenda de los soles. In: Codice Chimalpopoca. Ed. And tr. Feliciano Velazquez. Mexico: Imprenta Universitaria. 1945. 124).
In the Mesoamerican context, we have a late legend showing a “perfect” birth after four days. With Alma, he may also have had a “perfect rebirth” after a similar “four” time periods.
Internal Comparison: This verse has Alma under the influence of the spirit for two days and two nights. The companion description of Alma’s experience that comes in Alma 36:10 indicates that the experience was for three days and three nights. John W. Welch suggests that this difference in days may be easily explained:
“Even what superficially appears to be a difference is not. Alma 36:16 states that Alma was racked for three days and three nights. Mosiah 27:23, however, says that the priests fasted for two days and two nights. This is because, under Nephite practice, the fast would not have begun until the morning of the next day after the decision to fast (Helaman 9:10).” Welch, John W. “Three Accounts of Alma’s Conversion.” In: Reexploring the Book of Mormon. FARMS, 1992. p. 151).
This is a distinctly possible explanation, even though the single citation given does not clearly indicate a customary practice. Alma the Younger could easily have been weakened for nearly a whole day by the time he was laid before his father and a fast had begun. Does this negate the possibility of the numerical significance noted above?
The passage in Mosiah 27 is recorded by some third party, and edited by Mormon. The passage in Alma 36 is a quotation of Alma. There are two different sources for the information. The amount of time that passed can easily be the very same. The difference lies in the way the numbers are selected to describe the event. For Alma, he is being more precise in the passage of time. It is just possible that the first scribe selects the time period of the fasting precisely because it fits into his 2+2=4 scenario that leads to the “right” number.