2 Nephi 19-20

READING ASSIGNMENT 10/22: 2 NEPHI 19-20


Have you ever gone for a long time without seeing the sun or feeling its warmth? If you have not, imagine that you had a constant shadow on you, with no access to the light and warmth of the sun (like being in a dark room all the time). Isaiah used a similar image to illustrate the spiritual condition of people who live without the light of Jesus Christ.

There are two lands mentioned in 2 Nephi 19:1–2. Read these verses, and mark the names of the two lands.

Over the centuries prior to the time Isaiah wrote these verses, multiple wars had been fought in an attempt to control the area now known as the Holy Land. Some referred to this area as “the land of the shadow of death” because so many had lost their lives there in battle. During New Testament times, Nazareth, Capernaum, Nain, and Cana were located in the regions formally known as the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali. These are cities where Jesus Christ spent much of His time, ministering to the people more than 500 years later. It is known today as the Galilee area.

Mark in 2 Nephi 19:2 what Isaiah said the people of this region would eventually see.

Isaiah’s statement that those who “walked in darkness” and dwelt in the “land of the shadow of death” had “seen a great light” was a prophecy about Jesus Christ’s mortal mission in this part of the world. The people who lived in the Galilee area were walking in spiritual darkness, but when Jesus Christ lived and ministered among them, they saw “a great light.”

Read 2 Nephi 19:6–7, and contemplate which of the Savior’s titles in verse 6 might have been especially meaningful to the people of Judah, given their circumstances. In your scripture study journal, write how one or more of these titles describes how you feel about the Savior.


  • What sentence is repeated in 2 Nephi 19:12, 17, 21 and 2 Nephi 20:4? Why is that significant?
  • Write the sentence in your study journal, and underline the word anger and the word hand. Under the word anger, write judgment, and under the word hand, write mercy. Read the sentence aloud, substituting the words judgment and mercy. (“For all this his [judgment] is not turned away, but his [mercy] is stretched out still.”)