2 Nephi continues Nephi's first person record and carries it to its end. A substantial portion of the book, chapters 12 through 24 in the standard modern versification, reproduces material closely paralleling chapters of the biblical book of Isaiah, which Nephi presents as copied from the brass plates his family carried out of Jerusalem. Interwoven with this material is Nephi's own prophetic commentary, extending Isaiah's themes toward what he presents as a future restoration and a coming Messiah.
The book also narrates the death of Lehi, whose final blessings to his sons close out the patriarchal generation that opened the record, and it marks the point at which the family divides permanently: Nephi and those loyal to him separate from his elder brothers Laman and Lemuel, a rupture the text presents as the origin of the later Nephite and Lamanite peoples. 2 Nephi closes with some of the most doctrinally dense material in the small plates, addressing themes of agency, opposition and atonement that later Latter-day Saint theology draws on heavily.
Scholars who have compared Nephi's use of Isaiah against the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient witnesses have found the Book of Mormon's version tracks the later Masoretic textual tradition rather than any earlier variant, a point that features prominently in arguments about when and how this material entered the record.