Jacob makes explicit that there are two aspects of the atonement, and even makes a poetic correlation between death and hell (as two terrible things) and the death of the body and the death of the spirit. Because of the clear parallelism between “death” and “death of the body,” the logical deduction is that Jacob equates “hell” with “the death of the spirit.”
The reference to hell as a monster may reflect Old World imagery. As discussed in 1 Nephi, Part 1: Context,Chapter 1, “The Historical Setting of 1 Nephi,” Lehi’s religious world retained more of the influence of the ancient forms of Israelite religion than does our current Bible. That earlier form of religion is most fully elaborated in the texts found at Ugarit, a Canaanite city. These texts describe a Semitic religion as it was from 1350 to 1150 B.C. The parallels to early Israelite religion are sufficiently strong that this body of literature serves as a more complete context in which we may see some references in the Bible. One of those contexts is the conflict between God and various monsters. The physical realms associated with God were heavenly, but the monsters inhabited the underworld. Because the underworld was conceived as a location of primal waters, these monsters are frequently associated with water or seas, or they become deified rivers or seas (Yamm is the Ugaritic deified Sea). The conflict between God and his sons and the monsters is structurally presented in the ways they are described, as Mark S. Smith, Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University explains:
Benevolent deities are often rendered anthropomorphically, whereas destructive divinities appear as monstrous in character. Moreover, theriomorphic representations reflect the dichotomy between deities and cosmic enemies. Whereas enemies are monstrous or undomesticated, the animals associated with benevolent deities (“attribute animals”) lie within the orbit of cultural domestication. The fundamental set of distinctions may be schematized in the following manner:
Benevolent Deities Destructive Divinities
Anthropomorphism Animal gods, monsters
Domesticated species Undomesticated species
emblematic of deities: emblematic of monsters:
bull, calf, bird, cow snake, serpent.
The Bible retains literary references to these ancient monstrous enemies of the heavenly host. They are frequently associated with water (signifying “the Deep” or the underworld) and are frequently seen as multi-headed:
Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. (Ps. 74:13–14)
By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. (Job 26:13)
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. (Rev. 13:1)
The oldest traceable elements of Semitic religion have creation stories modeled upon conflict between the heavenly hosts and the underworld hosts. The heavenly hosts (the sons of the Most High God) create by subduing the monsters of the underworld. The domestication of the sons of God (represented by their domestic “attribute animals”) overcomes the conflict of the untamed, undomesticated monsters.
The concept of creation through conflicting forces existed among the sons of heaven as well and was represented in the Semitic war in heaven. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 2:17.) The opposition between Yahweh and an adversary in the heavens is sufficiently parallel to the conflict with the underworld/untamed monsters that it is reasonable that the adversary in the heavens might become associated with the monsters. In biblical literature, the conflict role moves away from the monsters and toward the heavenly adversary. The evolutionary process made the monsters less real and more symbolic—they became metaphorical representations of the heavenly adversary—the Satan. Thus, a monster “belongs” with death and hell, as each of these images stands in opposition to Yahweh.