In the neighborhood where I grew up, there was a yard that had landscaping that baffled me.\u00a0 It was a grassy plain with a few small trees, and then about a half-dozen boulders scattered among the grass.\u00a0 The boulders were what baffled me\u2014they didn\u2019t seem to fit in with the landscaping around them and they certainly made mowing the lawn more complicated than it otherwise would have been.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they made sense to the person who put them there, but as far as I could see, it seemed like the homeowners had survived a meteor shower and then decided to live around the scattered meteorites rather than remove them from their yard.<\/p>\n
Up until recently, I felt much the same way about the Isaiah chapters in 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi.\u00a0 They seemed like meteorites dropped into the middle of the text, or perhaps strange filler episodes that didn\u2019t help move the plot forward.\u00a0 When I came across them, I generally acknowledged that they were Isaiah, skimmed over them and moved on without trying to understand how they fit into the rest of what Nephi was saying.\u00a0 Watching me read Isaiah in the Book of Mormon would have resembled watching my neighbors mow around the boulders in their yard.\u00a0 That may be a show of my own failings in approaching the scriptures, but I suspect that I\u2019m not alone in taking that approach.<\/p>\n
Lately, however, I\u2019ve been trying to figure out how the Isaiah chapters fit in with what\u2019s around them.\u00a0 It\u2019s an ongoing project, but I am starting to feel more like Isaiah was foundational to Lehi and Nephi\u2019s worldview.\u00a0 Nephi, after all, was willing to kill to get his hands on a copy of the book (along with other records that became part of the Hebrew Bible) because he believed that it was essential to preserving his culture and religion among his descendants (see 1 Nephi 4:13-16).\u00a0 Nephi notes that he turned to Isaiah and the Torah most frequently as the basis of his own teachings (1 Nephi 19:23), which is very apparent in the Book of Mormon as we have received it.\u00a0 As Terryl Givens put it: \u201cThe earliest writers in the Book of Mormon, Nephi and Jacob, ground their prophetic worldview in the writings of Isaiah.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n There seem to be two main topics that Nephi learned from Isaiah, the first of which was the exile and restoration of Israel.\u00a0 The text of Isaiah was written against a backdrop of conquest by powerful empires and the people of Israel and Judah hoping for God to intervene and return them to their homeland.\u00a0 As one Biblical scholar summarized it: \u201cThe book of Isaiah serves as a theological reflection upon Jerusalem\u2019s experience of threat, exile, and restoration.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Nephi loved to \u201cliken [Isaiah\u2019s] words unto my people,\u201d[3]<\/a> and he felt that Isaiah\u2019s reflections applied to his own family\u2019s exile from Jerusalem and eventual restoration to Zion. \u00a0He read the \u201cwords of the prophet\u201d to his people, \u201cwho are a remnant of the house of Israel, and branch who have been broken off,\u201d so that they \u201cmay have hope\u201d (1 Nephi 19:24).\u00a0 Immediately after the first block of Isaiah chapters in 1 Nephi, he comments on the tribes of Israel being scattered (including his own descendants) because \u201cthey harden their hearts\u201d against \u201cthe Holy One of Israel\u201d (1 Nephi 22:5).\u00a0 Yet, after that scattering, \u201cthe Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth\u201d to the descants of Lehi, the house of Israel, and Gentiles (1 Nephi 22:8-9).\u00a0 Nephi\u2019s understood Isaiah to be speaking both of his family\u2019s experiences and future as well of those of the House of Israel in general.<\/p>\n The marvelous work Nephi spoke of while interpreting Isaiah would involve fulfilling ancient covenants.\u00a0 As Nephi wrote: \u201c[The Lord God] will bring them again out of captivity, and they shall be gathered together to the lands of their inheritance; \u2026 and they shall know that the Lord is their Savior and their Redeemer, the Mighty One of Israel\u201d (1 Nephi 22:12).\u00a0 By referencing these two points, Nephi ties his interpretation of Isaiah to the promises God made to Abraham that He would \u201cgive to you, and to your offspring after you \u2026 all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding\u201d and that he would \u201cbe God to you and to your offspring after you.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 In doing so, Nephi is also likely referencing Isaiah\u2019s own reiteration of the covenant that \u201cthe Lord, they Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel\u201d made with Israel in 1 Nephi 20:17-21.[5]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, the hope Nephi had for his kin because of Isaiah\u2019s words was centered on promises of the Abrahamic Covenant being fulfilled.<\/p>\n The second main topic that Nephi draws on Isaiah to teach is the subject of the Messiah or Christ.\u00a0 Isaiah refers to a servant (or servants) of God throughout the text and repeatedly refers to God as \u201cthy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel\u201d (1 Nephi 20:17).\u00a0 On one level, the servant Isaiah seems to be referring to Israel as God\u2019s chosen people or specific individuals chosen to do a work like Cyrus (the Persian emperor who conquered Babylon and restored the Jews to their ancestral homeland). \u00a0Christians, however, have frequently interpreted these references to be prophesies of Jesus the Christ. \u00a0Handel\u2019s Messiah is an ample testimony of that fact, given approximately a third of the movements in the oratorio are based on texts in Isaiah (and yes, I fully expect a few readers to start humming the \u201cFor, Unto Us a Child is Born\u201d choral piece here).<\/p>\n Nephi, Lehi, and Jacob likewise understood the text of Isaiah to be referring to the Lamb of God that they had learned about through visions and revelations.\u00a0 Hence, Nephi delighted in the words of Isaiah because \u201che verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him\u201d (2 Nephi 11:2).\u00a0 It also explains why Nephi spent a considerable amount of time before and after copying Isaiah\u2019s text into his record saying that \u201cwe talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ\u201d (2 Nephi 25:26), and that the \u201cHoly One of Israel \u2026 shall execute judgement in righteousness\u201d (1 Nephi 22:21).<\/p>\n Both of these major subjects that Nephi drew on Isaiah to discuss are central to 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi.\u00a0 The core narrative of these books is about a group of Israelites that go into exile, but who will be given a land of promise.\u00a0 Eventually, Nephi prophesied, their descendants would participate in the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant and the restoration of all Israel through \u201cthe words of the book, which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust\u201d (2 Nephi 27:9).\u00a0 Also central to both the restoration of Israel and the writings of Nephi was the Holy One of Israel, who Nephi believed was the Christ.\u00a0 When viewed through this lens, Nephi\u2019s writings use Isaiah as part of their religious bedrock rather than Isaiah existing as random meteorites that ended up in Nephi\u2019s record.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 45.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Marvin A. Sweeney in Michael Coogan (ed.), The New Oxford Annotated Bible<\/em>, 4th<\/sup> ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 967.\u00a0 The book of Isaiah seems to have been written against the backdrop of three phases of Israelitish captivity and restoration.\u00a0 Isaiah chapters 1-39 deal with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria, chapters 40-55 with the Southern Kingdom\u2019s conquest by Babylon, and the remainder (chapters 56-66), with the Persian restoration of Jerusalem and Judah. \u00a0I recognize that the chronology of Isaiah in this regard is problematic to the Book of Mormon, since it indicates that Nephi was quoting materials that likely hadn\u2019t been written yet, but that\u2019s beyond the scope of this post.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> 2 Nephi 11:2, see also 1 Nephi 19:23.<\/p>\n