2 Nephi 9:11–12 Textual Variants

For the 1837 edition, the phrase “death and hell” was interpreted as equivalent to the grave and hell, thus distinguishing between the two different deaths (physical death and spiritual death). This interpretation is supported by the immediately following parallelism: “and hell must deliver up its captive spirits and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies”. Since there are two different deaths, the 1837 editor (probably Joseph Smith) decided to change the possessive pronoun its to their (although the change is not marked in 𝓟). Earlier in this passage, there are two occurrences of “its dead”, but for each of these two other cases, only a single death is being referred to:

• 2 Nephi 9:11–12
  • this death of which I have spoken which is the temporal shall deliver up its dead which death is the grave and this death of which I have spoken which is the spiritual death shall deliver up its dead which spiritual death is hell

But even earlier (in the preceding verse 10), Jacob refers to both the physical and spiritual deaths (“death and hell”) as a single monster:

• 2 Nephi 9:10
  • O how great the goodness of our God who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster yea that monster death and hell which I call the death of the body and also the death of the spirit

Thus the subsequent use in verse 12 of the pronoun its to refer to “death and hell” is completely acceptable:

• 2 Nephi 9:12
  • wherefore death and hell must deliver up its dead

Combining both verses 10 and 12, we could say that “the monster death and hell must deliver up its dead”. In other words, sometimes Jacob refers to “death and hell” as a unit and sometimes he splits up this unity by referring separately to the two deaths, physical death and spiritual death. Another way to interpret “death and hell” in 2 Nephi 9:12 is as a distributed plural, which means that the basic meaning of this clause is ‘death and hell must each deliver up its dead’. For further examples of the distributed plural in the Book of Mormon, see the discussion for the following verse (2 Nephi 9:13) regarding the clause “and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again”.