Jacob’s discourse in 2 Nephi 9 is
one Book of Mormon passage often taken to be relevant to a Book of Mormon
soteriology. While it’s true that the material mentions the “infinite atonement,”
I take issue with that assertion. Jacob has previously referred to passages
from Isaiah (chapters 49, 50, 51, and 52). For Jacob’s midrashic development of
Isaiah’s themes, the most important passage is Isaiah 51:9-10, while in Jacob’s
citation says, “Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in
the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
Art thou not he who hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath
made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” (2 Nephi
8:9-10) Jacob is going to explicate the meaning of this passage from Isaiah.
So, this discussion of the infinite atonement must fit within that Isaianic
exegesis. And it all comes down not to what Isaiah means by referring to the
conquest of Rahab but to what Jacob makes out of the reference to the
primordial struggle between Deity and the sea creature to control the waters of
chaos at creation.
Jacob keeps returning to this
trope of Rahab, the dragon, Isaiah is appropriating the symbolism of
Mesopotamian religion to assert that the God of the Bible is the God of
creation, able to form the void into a created order. But Jacob has different
uses for this symbol. Jacob wants to teach his Nephite group about death and
redemption from death, so the symbol of Rahab the sea monster becomes a symbol
of death, and God’s conquest of Rahab symbolizes the overcoming of death through
the redemption of Christ. After quoting Isaiah 51 and the first two verses of
52, Jacob notes that “our flesh must waste away and die; nevertheless, in our
bodies we shall see God.” (2 Nephi 9:4) All humans must die. Only an “infinite
atonement” can reverse this inevitability. (2 Nephi 9:7) So the explicit quotation
from Isaiah citing Rahab, the sea monster, becomes to Jacob a symbol of death: “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.” (2 Nephi 9:10) I have
quoted verse 10 in full, but in verses 19-12 the words death or dead
are used twelve times and the word grave twice. There is an intense concentration
on the notion of death. But for Jacob, death isn’t the end of the matter. His
words from the verses reduce the stock so all the flavor remains but most of
the liquid evaporates. He begins these verses by stating, “O how great the
goodness of our God,” who prepares a way to escape death. (2 Nephi 9:10) Then
after the repetition of death, dead, and grave, Jacob
repeats the refrain: “O how great the plan of our God,” who makes a way to be
resurrected and redeemed. (2 Nephi 9:13)
Just in case we haven’t caught
the allusion to Rahab with the two previous iterations of the theme, Jacob
repeats the allusion one more time, coupling it with the Atonement: we are
delivered from death by the Atonement because Christ’s work “satisfieth the
demands of his justice upon all those who have not the law given to them, that
they are delivered from that awful monster, death and hell, and the devil, and
the lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.” (2 Nephi 9:26) That
word satisfieth vibrates very much like a satisfaction version of atonement.
Rahab is transformed through these series of citations, from Mesopotamian
mythology through the Isaiah passage and into Jacob’s trope, from the symbol of
chaos of death to be overcome at the far end of creation as the cosmos is
transformed, restored, and resurrected. As such, this chapter doesn’t tell us
much about soteriological views because it is about something else entirely.
Even though Jacob’s discourse uses the phrase “infinite atonement,” the chapter
does little to refer one soteriological theory over another. (Alan Goff, A
Stop to the Shedding of Blood: The Book of Mormon, Violence & The Sacred [Draper,
Utah: By Common Consent Press, 2025], 152-54)
