Rhetoric: Alma is now clearly speaking of spiritual things, using references to the past and images that a modern audience recognizes as eschatological. An example is his rhetorical question: “Were the bands of death broken?” A modern audience assumes that he is referring to the resurrection, but this sermon precedes that event. In the context of his story, Alma is referring to the historical fact that the Limhites and Almaites escaped from their captors without great loss of life, a manifestation of Yahweh’s miraculous deliverance. But if the deliverance from death was literal, what about the “chains of hell?” Alma obviously sees heretical religious ideas as equally dangerous as physical bondage; perhaps these competing religious ideas are equivalent to the “chains of hell.” When Alma1’s people lived under the reign of King Noah, they would have been followers (if not believers) in that other religion, which would have resulted in the chains of hell in the afterlife, because it had no power to save. Finding the truth (belief in the Atoning Messiah), saved their souls. Thus, Alma repeats the two physically and spiritually dangerous conditions of Alma1’s people in their spiritual form. Alma1’s people were saved from both dangers.
Vocabulary: It is most probable that “chains of hell” is a phrase from the translator rather than a direct translation of a phrase from the plates. The phrase is metaphorical in its usage and requires the use of chains as a means of binding. At this point in Mesoamerican history there are no attested chains. Binding was done with rope, not metal chains.