"Receive.... [or] Be Destroyed"

After alluding to and rescinding whatever offer or penalty she may have previously been given, Emma was commanded to receive Joseph's other wives—at least the ones "who are virtuous and pure before [God]" (52)—as well as Joseph himself—"and to none else" (v. 54). She is further told that if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed" (v. 54). The immediate interpretation of this might be to assume that such destruction refers to death; however, the next verses acknowledge the possibility that Emma might sill take up the original offer: "But if she will not abide this commandment, then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her, even he hath said" (v. 55). The logic here works against "destroyed" as "death": rather, as in previous verses (vv. 26, 41), the penalty of being destroyed was a spiritual curse. In succeeding Church administrations it was interpreted as excommunication. Thus, the revelation suggested that if Emma rejected her husband's polygamous marriages, she would yet live on, but without the benefits associated with being sealed to Joseph. In summary, Joseph Smith promised that he will be blessed and "give[n] unto him an hundred-fold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds" (v. 55) with or without Emma. She can either accept polygamy and participate in her husband's rewards or she can refuse and be left to make an afterlife without him. As in verse 44, the revelation in the context of verse 19 may imply that Emma would not be blocked from heaven, but only that it would be without Joseph—as she had not shed innocent blood. If so, she would still be turned over to the "buffetings of Satan" (v. 26) but eventually saved in the future kingdom (with some partner apparently). Alternatively, the revelation could imply that her sealing would be dissolved, a possibility in the binding-loosing speech incorporated from Matthew 16:19, perhaps negating any promises associated with it.