Ether, hiding by day in a “cavity of a rock” (a cave), continued to record the destruction and eventual extinction of his people. Near the end of what may amount to the greatest civil war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, Coriantumr saw that nearly two million men, besides women and children, had been slain, and Ether pathetically recorded that Coriantumr “began to sorrow in his heart” and “he began to repent of the evil which he had done.” That reprehensible leader of men had indeed lost any vestige of the Spirit of the Lord, and “Satan had full power over the hearts of the people.” When all except Coriantumr were dead, Ether concluded his record on gold plates and hid them so that the people of Limhi could find them (compare Omni 1:20–22; Mosiah 8:5–18; 28:17–19).
Ether 14:15–17 gives us a glimpse of the horrors of this last great battle of annihilation in which even women and children were armed with weapons and fought for their very existence. The brutality of this culture is almost unimaginable. Brothers McConkie, Millet, and Top stated: “When we understand that even little children and nursing mothers along with all others were engaged in bloody hand-to-hand combat, we do not wonder why Ether recorded that at the end of each day’s warring ‘their howlings and lamentations … did rend the air exceedingly.’ This poignant, graphic image shows not only mourning for the death of young, strong soldiers but also anguished cries of pain and suffering for the inhumane destruction of entire families.”39
The unusual and graphic tale of Shiz’s death (Ether 15:29–32) has been discussed by modern medical authorities. “People have long wondered how Shiz could raise himself up, fall, and gasp for breath if his head had been cut off. Dr. M. Gary Hadfield, M.D., professor of pathology (neuropathology) at the Medical College of Virginia, [stated]: ‘Shiz’s death struggle illustrates the classic reflex posture that occurs in both humans and animals when the upper brain stem … is disconnected from the brain. The extensor muscles of the arms and legs contract, and this reflex action could cause Shiz to raise up on his hands… . The brain stem is located inside the base of the skull and is relatively small. It connects the brain proper, or cerebrum, with the spinal cord in the neck. Coriantumr was obviously too exhausted to do a clean job. His stroke evidently strayed a little too high. He must have cut off Shiz’s head through the base of the skull… . Significantly, this nervous system phenomenon (decerebrate rigidity) was first reported in 1898, long after the Book of Mormon was published.’ Thus, the account of the staggering death of Shiz is not a figment of dramatic imagination, but the Book of Mormon account is plausibly consistent with medical science. Moreover, linguistic analysis sustains the foregoing clinical analysis by confirming that the words smote off need not mean that Shiz’s head was completely severed by Coriantumr. In Judges 5, an equally gruesome account is given of Sisera’s death at the hands of Jael, the wife of Heber. The English translation of the relevant verses reads: ‘She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead. (Judges 5:26–27; emphasis added).’”40