The early Hebrew understanding of the world of the dead appears to be tied to its Canaanite heritage. That inheritance may come from at least 1000 B.C. and conceives the realm of the dead as a place without distinction between righteous and wicked. The Psalms are difficult to date, and may retain ties to the pre-Deuteronomic religion of Israel. Various psalms indicate Sheol was associated with the fate of the wicked (Ps. 9:17, 31:17, 55:15). The sparse historical hints suggest that there was a movement away from an undifferentiated location of the dead to one that had a separation between the wicked from the righteous. Lehi appears to understand Sheol in this later form. In 1 Enoch 27:1–4 (a pseudepigraphical text known to precede 200 B.C. as a fragmented copy was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls), we also find that blasphemers were assigned to a flaming gorge. By the time of Isaiah the possibility of resurrection was also introduced into Hebrew thought (Isa. 26:19).
As Nephi begins this part of his exposition, he starts with living beings, not with the dead. Nephi’s gulf is between the wicked and the righteous regardless of their life or death. For Nephi, hell is the separation, not the place, and it can occur while one is living.