In what other way can this be explained short of Joseph Smith threatening homicide???

D&C 132:54- And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.

That Joseph Smith guy...such a loving & caring role-model of a husband.

Or so it seems to me...

If(and I think she did) Emma knew it was all a con, that would be one very scary scripture.

Joe was setting it up so God would be taking the rap when Emma was found dead.

I wouldn't blame her if she set him up by convincing him to turn himself in. She outsmarted him.

I agree. If she wasn't in on it, you could say he was just manipulating her. If she was in on it, he was threatening to kill her. I think she was in on it, and I can't imagine what she was thinking at this point. I would bet she was overjoyed when Joe was killed.

Have to love those convenient times the Lard says, for your ears only, exactly what you wanted him to say.

Ole Joey sure had MORE than his share of Convenient-Just-In-Time-Revelations, didn't he?

Or, so it seems to me (ending in the grand way of BeenThereDoneThatExmo).

Joseph Smith had instituted the blood atonement practice by then, and there's evidence that he ordered the murders of several opponents or apostates. Emma had already threatened to divorce Joseph and take their children with her. That would have been a public embarrassment for Joseph. Her opposition to polygamy may have factored into him not taking any more plural wives for the last few months of his life. He may have been looking for a way to reverse his ill-conceived "revelation on celestial marriage." Of course, William Marks said that Joseph had admitted that polygamy was false, and ordered him to excommunicate all practitioners, in order to rid the church of it.

We'll never know what Emma would have done if Joseph hadn't been killed, or if he would have actually had her knocked off. I'd speculate that that would have depended on how public she became with her opposition to polygamy. If he had lived, he might have tried to pay her off to stay quiet and leave town, and then made some public excuse for her absence.

Where can I find the evidence?

No. But Joseph thought that Emma was trying to murder him, however.

It could be argued that the threat is a reminder of hell fire rather than intended for this life. But I dont believe that - it means is what it says, and is a typical outburst from an out of control cult leader. The koran has a short chapter very similar to this called Al Lahab. Such threats are not hard to understand and as madalice said they must be very scary for those targeted in them.