“Gates of Hell”

Alan C. Miner

According to Larry Dahl, the word hell appears sixty-two times in the text of the Book of Mormon. Thirty-three times it stands alone, without modifiers or explanation of what it means, as in "And thus we see the end of him who perverteth the ways of the Lord; and thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell" (Alma 30:60).

Twenty-nine times the word hell is used with descriptive modifiers, for example, "depths of hell" (1 Nephi 12:16), "hell which hath not end" (1 Nephi 14:3-4), "awful hell" (1 Nephi 15:29, 35; Alma 19:29; 54:7), "sleep of hell" (2 Nephi 1:13), "gates of hell" (2 Nephi 4:32; 3 Nephi 11:39-40; 18:13), "pains of hell" (Jacob 3:11-12; Alma 14:6; 26:13; 36:13), "chains of hell" (Alma 5:7,9,10; 12:11; 13:30; 26:14), "child of hell" (Alma 11:23; 54:11), "powers of hell" (Alma 48:17), "everlasting hell" (Helaman 6:28), "hell fire" (3 Nephi 12:22; Mormon 8:17), and "endless hell" (Moroni 8:13).

Numerous times in the Book of Mormon other terms or phrases are used to mean hell, and these terms add to our understanding of what hell really is. For example, the reader should note Nephi's explanation--which he received from an angel (1 Nephi 12:16-18)--of the river of filthy water in his and his father's vision of the tree of life. . . . Other terms or phrases used in the Book of Mormon to refer to hell are "eternal gulf of misery and woe" (2 Nephi 1:13), "kingdom of the devil" (2 Nephi 2:29; 28:19; Alma 41:4), "spiritual death" (2 Nephi 9:12), "awful monster" (2 Nephi 9:10), "lake of fire and brimstone" (2 Nephi 9:19,26; 28:23), "misery and endless torment" (Mosiah 3:25; Mormon 8:21), "awful chains" (2 Nephi 28:22), "everlasting chains of death" (Alma 36:18), "slumber of death" (Jacob 3:11), "deep sleep" (Alma 5:7), "second death" (Alma 13:3), "place of filthiness" (1 Nephi 15:34), "endless night of darkness" (Alma 41:7), "misery which never dies" (Mormon 8:38), and "dregs of a bitter cup" (Alma 40:26). [Larry Dahl, "The Concept of Hell," in Doctrines of the Book of Mormon: The 1991 Sperry Symposium, pp. 42-44]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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