BMC Team – Page 5 – Pearl of Great Price Central

November 20, 2020February 15, 2021

God Receives Zion unto Himself

Book of Moses Essay #30

Moses 7:18-19, 68-69

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Enoch succeeded in bringing a whole people to be sufficiently “pure in heart”¹ to fully live the final celestial law of consecration.² In Zion, the “City of Holiness,”³ the people “were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.”⁴ In contrast to Genesis 5:24 where Enoch is said to have been translated by himself, we are told in the Book of Moses that Enoch’s “people walked with God” and that they were eventually taken into heaven with him:

68 And all the days of Zion, in the days of Enoch, were three hundred and sixty-five years.

69 And Enoch and all his people walked with God,

and he dwelt in the midst of Zion;

and it came to pass that Zion was not,

for God received it up into his own bosom;

and from thence went forth the saying,

Zion is Fled.⁵

“All the Days of Zion”

The word “Zion,” which probably predates the arrival of the Israelites, may be related to the root ṣwn (so Arabic ṣâna), which means “protect,” “preserve,” “defend.”⁶ This is consistent with its description in Doctrine and Covenants 45:66 as “a land of peace, a city of refuge, a place of safety for the saints of the Most High God.”⁷

In contrast to typical biblical usage that associates “Zion” with the environs of Jerusalem, in Doctrine and Covenants 97:21 the Lord applies the name to a group of people: “for this is Zion—THE PURE IN HEART.” Draper et al. observe that in Moses 7:18 it was likewise the Lord “who conferred the name on His people, itself a sacred act.”⁸ The Lord called His people Zion because they kept the crowning covenant of consecration, “the law of the celestial kingdom.”⁹ In respecting this and all others of the Lord’s covenants, “they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.”¹⁰

In Isaiah 51:16 there is a precedent for the Lord’s definition of Zion as a people rather than a place. As part of a passage that evokes a new creation of heaven and earth,¹¹ God reaffirms his unwavering love by declaring the covenant formula in Isaiah 51:16: “I … say unto Zion, Thou art my people.”¹² To highlight the identification of Zion with a covenant-keeping people, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Manachem Mendel Schneerson, cited Isaiah 1:27: “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts [i.e., the Jewish people] with [interpreted as “through”] righteousness.”¹³ Interpreting the term “Zion” creatively through the lens of the Hebrew word “tziun” (= distinguishing sign, mark, or indication), he taught that the people referred to in Isaiah 51:16 were called “Zion” because “they are distinguished … in their observance” of God’s law. Continuing his teaching, he observes that when “a physical object has a ‘sign,’ the sign enables it to be returned to its owners [should it be lost].”

Doctrine and Covenants 88:22 explains: “he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory.”¹⁴ President George Q. Cannon taught:

As a people we are expecting the day to come when Jesus will descend in the clouds of Heaven; but before this day comes we must be prepared to receive him. The organization of society that exists in the heavens must exist on the earth; the same condition of society, so far as it is applicable to mortal beings, must exist here.¹⁵ ¹⁶

“Zion Was Not”

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that “when the world in general would not obey the commands of God, after walking with God, he translated Enoch and his church, and the Priesthood or government of heaven was taken away.”¹⁷ Analogues to the Book of Moses account where others besides Enoch ascended bodily with him appear in a Mandaean Enoch fragment¹⁸ and in late midrash.¹⁹

“God Received [Zion] Up into His Own Bosom”

The basic ideas behind the imagery of Abraham welcoming the righteous as shown in the figure above go back to at least Second Temple times.²⁰ In the Bible, the English word “bosom” corresponds to the Hebrew terms heq and hoq, and to the Greek kolpos. The Hebrew terms take one of three basic meanings:²¹ (1) “Lower, outer front of the body where loved ones (infants and animals) are pressed closely; … [also] lap”;²² (2) “Fold of the garment, above the belt where hands were placed and property kept”;²³ (3) the base of the temple altar.²⁴ Craig Keener further explores occurrences of the expression in a religious context:

Holding an object to one’s bosom declared the specialness of that object, and the image could be used to depict God’s relation with Torah.²⁵ … The image also represented a position of intimacy for people,²⁶ thus Jesus elsewhere in the gospel tradition used being in Abraham’s bosom as an image of intimacy and fellowship with Abraham.²⁷ Because the phrase often appears in man-woman or parent-child relations, and because the text [of John 1:18] speaks of “the Father,” the affectionate image may be that of a son on his father’s lap.²⁸ This gospel itself clarifies the role of intimacy for that disciple “whom Jesus loved” in their table-fellowship in [John 13:25]; [it is possible that the Greek text] may further emphasize the intimacy of the Father and Son, stressing “that Father and Son are mutually directed toward each other, in the manner customary at an Eastern table where two would lie next to each other while eating.”²⁹

In the Book of Moses, the term “bosom” is used six times in Moses 7,³⁰ and nowhere else. Each time it alludes to the “bosom of the Father,”³¹ expressing the close intimacy between God and those who dwell in His presence. Of perhaps most relevance for the fact that Enoch and his people are caught up into Lord’s bosom is that the foundation stone of the temple, the place of greatest holiness,³² is said in rabbinic readings of Ezekiel 43:14 to be “set in the bosom of the earth.”³³ Perhaps not unrelated to this temple imagery is the scriptural description of the bosom as a receptacle of the Holy Ghost that may “burn” to indicate that something is “right.”³⁴

“Zion Is Fled”

Hebrews 6:18 speaks in similar terms of those who seek safety through entering into the veil of the heavenly temple, referring to those “who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” Philip Alexander writes that Enoch’s receiving the title of Metatron was meant to “express the idea that Enoch was a metator [Latin ‘forerunner’] for the other adepts, showing them how they could escape from the wilderness of this world into the promised land of heaven.”³⁵ In similar fashion, Hebrews 6:19–20 presents Jesus as a “forerunner” who entered “into that within the veil” ahead of the rest of us.³⁶

Conclusion: Learning from Enoch

In a discussion of Latter-day Saint beliefs, Stephen Webb³⁷ concluded that Joseph Smith “knew more about theology and philosophy than it was reasonable for anyone in his position to know, as if he were dipping into the deep, collective unconsciousness of Christianity with a very long pen.” Specifically, in the case of Moses 6–7, the Prophet recovered an ancient account that manifests a deep understanding of what it means to become a “partaker of the divine nature”³⁸ in the footsteps of Enoch and his people.

Joseph Smith yearned that Enoch’s vision of eternity might be experienced by all the Saints, so they might be prepared and strengthened as they re-live the story of Enoch. While we read in the Book of Moses that “Zion … fled,”³⁹ the Prophet’s revelations instruct disciples of the latter days that they may still “flee unto Zion.”⁴⁰ The essential prerequisite for an eventual acceptance into that divine society is that they be filled with the same “pure love of Christ”⁴¹ that animated the ancient seer:

Let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated; and let love to God and man predominate and reign triumphant in every mind, that their hearts may become like unto Enoch’s of old, so that they may comprehend all things present, past, and future, and “come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”⁴² ⁴³

This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 116, 122–123, 143–144, 163–164, 459–464.

References

Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

———. “From son of Adam to second God: Transformations of the biblical Enoch.” In Biblical Figures Outside the Bible, edited by Michael E. Stone and Theodore A. Bergren, 87-122. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998.

Allison, Dale C., ed. Testament of Abraham. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 2003.

Anderson, H. “4 Maccabees.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Vol. 2, 531-64. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Barker, Margaret. “Isaiah.” In Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, edited by James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson, 489-542. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003.

Barnard, Jody A. The Mysticism of Hebrews: Exploring the Role of Jewish Apocalyptic Mysticism in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Wissenschafliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament: 2. Reihe 331, ed. Jörg Frey. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. Creation, Fall, and the Story of Adam and Eve. 2014 Updated ed. In God’s Image and Likeness 1. Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2014. www.templethemes.net.

———. Temple Themes in the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. 2014 update ed. Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2014. www.templethemes.net.

Braude, William G., and Israel J. Kapstein, eds. 1975. Pesikta De-Rab Kahana: R. Kahana’s Compilation of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2002.

Cannon, George Q. 1869. “The order of Enoch; socialistic experiments; the social problem (Discourse by Elder George Q. Cannon, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, April 6, 1869).” In Journal of Discourses. 26 vols. Vol. 13, 95-103. Liverpool and London, England: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1853-1886. Reprint, Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1966.

Danker, Frederick William, Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG). Third ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005.

Freedman, David Noel, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck. Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.

Ginzberg, Louis, ed. The Legends of the Jews. 7 vols. Translated by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909-1938. Reprint, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Givens, Terryl L., and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. Salt Lake City, UT: Ensign Peak, 2012.

Jellinek, Adolph, ed. Bet ha-Midrasch. Sammlung kleiner midraschim und vermischter Abhandlungen aus der ältern jüdischen Literatur. 6 vols. Vol. 4. Leipzig, Germany: C. W. Vollrath, 1857.

Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. 2 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003.

Larsen, David J. “Enoch and the City of Zion: Can an entire community ascend to heaven?” BYU Studies 53, no. 1 (2014): 25-37.

Lundquist, John M. The Temple: Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth. London, England: Thames and Hudson, 1993.

Migne, Jacques P. “Livre d’Adam.” In Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, ou, Collection de tous les livres Apocryphes relatifs a l’Ancien et au Nouveau Testament, pour la plupart, traduits en français, pour la première fois, sur les textes originaux, enrichie de préfaces, dissertations critiques, notes historiques, bibliographiques, géographiques et théologiques, edited by Jacques P. Migne. Migne, Jacques P. ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Troisième et Dernière Encyclopédie Théologique 23, 1-290. Paris, France: Migne, Jacques P., 1856. http://books.google.com/books?id=daUAAAAAMAAJ. (accessed October 17, 2012).

Nibley, Hugh W. 1973. “What is Zion? A distant view.” In Approaching Zion, edited by Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9, 25-62. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989.

Noah, Mordecai M., ed. 1840. The Book of Jasher. Translated by Moses Samuel. Salt Lake City, UT: Joseph Hyrum Parry, 1887. Reprint, New York City, NY: Cosimo Classics, 2005.

Osiek, Carolyn, ed. Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary. Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999.

Ostler, Blake T. Of God and Gods. Exploring Mormon Thought 3. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2008.

Ridderbos, Herman N. The Gospel According to John: A Theological Commentary. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997.

Schneerson, Manachem Mendel. Kuntres Shabos Chazon, 5748 (Sefer HaMaamarim Meluket II, p. 317ff.). In Sichos in English: The Largest Repostitory of the Teachings of Chabad-Lubavitch in English. http://www.sichos-in-english.org/books/anticipating-redemption-1/02.htm. (accessed April 24, 2020).

Shakespeare, William. 1599. “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 1100-34. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1974.

———. 1605. “The Tragedy of King Lear.” In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 1240-305. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1974.

Smith, Joseph, Jr. The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. 2nd ed. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2002.

———. 1938. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1969.

Starr, James. 2007. “Does 2 Peter 1:4 speak of deification?” In Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, edited by Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, 81-92. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.

VanderKam, James C., ed. The Book of Jubilees. Translated by James C. VanderKam. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 511, Scriptores Aethiopici 88, ed. Frederick McManus. Louvain, Belgium: E. Peeters, 1989.

Webb, Stephen H. Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Wintermute, O. S. “Apocalypse of Zehphaniah.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 497-515. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

———. “Jubilees.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Vol. 2, 35-142. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Zinner, Samuel. “‘Zion’ and ‘Jerusalem’ as Lady Wisdom in Moses 7 and Nephi’s Tree of Life Vision: Reverberations of Enoch and Asherah in Nineteenth Century America.” In Textual and Comparative Explorations in 1 & 2 Enoch, edited by Samuel Zinner. Ancient Scripture and Texts 1, 239-73. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014. Reprint, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 12 (2014): 281-323. http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/zion-and-jerusalem-as-lady-wisdom-in-moses-7-and-nephis-tree-of-life-vision/. (accessed December 2, 2017).

Notes on Figures

Figure 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unterlinden-Chapiteau_(1).jpg (accessed April 24, 2020). Public domain. This capital originally sat over the double arch of the nave in the church of the Abbey of Alspach.

Footnotes

¹ Doctrine and Covenants 97:21.

² See J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Overview Moses 5, pp. 342–351.

³ Moses 7:19.

⁴ Moses 7:18. S. Zinner, Zion and Jerusalem, p. 257 notes that this verse recalls passages in the Shepherd of Hermas (C. Osiek, Shepherd, Parable 9, 17[94]:4, p. 239):

All the peoples living under heaven, when they heard and believed, were called by the name [of the Son] of God. When they received the seal, they took on one way of thinking and one mind, one faith and one love.

The Earth Shall Rest

Book of Moses Essay #29

Moses 7:60-69

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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Having witnessed the abrupt end of the long-awaited coming of the Son of Man in His unexpected crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; and having now understood that His presence on earth would not halt the wickedness of the world, Enoch again “wept and cried unto the Lord, saying? … Wilt thou not come again upon the earth?”¹

In this Essay, we will see Enoch’s anguished hope fulfilled at last when the righteous would be gathered to a Holy City and God would make Zion His abode. As we will see, this prophetic expectation appears elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature and Jewish tradition.

A provisional proposal for the structuring of Moses 7:60–69 into seven sections is given in the appendix.

1. The Lord Will Fulfill His Oath

In answer to Enoch’s question about whether God will come again upon the earth, the Lord declares that He will “fulfill the oath” He made to Enoch “concerning the children of Noah”² —namely that He would “call upon”³ them. “In this light,” explain Draper, Brown, and Rhodes, “it becomes evident that the Second Coming will be the crowning moment among the Lord’s contacts with ‘the children of Noah.’”⁴ The Lord’s oath is made doubly sure by the use of His own name: “As I live, even so will I come in the last days, in the days of wickedness and vengeance.”⁵

Having sworn that He would return, the Lord at last addresses Enoch’s repeated, unanswered question with the solemn declaration that, indeed, the day would come when “the earth shall rest.”⁶

2. Great Tribulations Among the Children of Men and Preservation of the Lord’s People

Jarringly, the Lord immediately followed His welcome promise with a terrible warning of “great tribulations” that would take place “before that day.”⁷ The first and perhaps greatest tribulation is that “a veil of darkness [would] cover the earth.”⁸ This seems to indicate that communication between heaven and the “children of men” would be severed due to wickedness.⁹

As to the righteous, Elder Neal A. Maxwell comments:

God preserved and prepared Enoch’s people in the midst of awful and enveloping evil, and, reassuringly, he has promised His people in our own time that though “great tribulations shall be among the children of men, … my people will I preserve.”¹⁰ ¹¹

3. The Lord Will Gather the Righteous

The phrase: “And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of earth” recalls a similar phrase in Psalm 85:11. However, the sequence of the terms “truth” (‘emet) and “righteousness” (tsedaqah) is inverted, and, more importantly, different actions are indicated. In the Psalm, the personification of the divine traits is used to create a metaphor of peace and prosperity in the land, whereas in Moses 7:62, it depicts the coming forth of a united testimony from above and below of the Only Begotten—specifically of His resurrection and “the resurrection of all men.”

Moses 7:62	Psalm 85:11
And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead; yea, and also the resurrection of all men.	Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase.

Latter-day Saint interpreters understand the imagery of Moses 7:62 as referring to the restoration of the Gospel.¹² Heavenly messengers (perhaps meant to include the Savior, “the Righteous” Himself¹³) are to be sent “down out of heaven” and “truth” (referring to the Book of Mormon and perhaps other “hidden” books¹⁴) is to be sent “forth out of the earth.”¹⁵ The personification of “righteousness” in the Book of Moses is apt in light of the use of divine virtues as the names of heavenly messengers in 1 Enoch 40:8–9¹⁶. Likewise, as George Mitton observes, the Book of Mormon as a testimony of the risen Lord is equally fitting since “the symbol of its coming forth from the earth is reminiscent of the Lord’s resurrection.”¹⁷

How well does the Book of Moses’ mention of resurrection of the “Only Begotten” and of “all men” fit into the ancient Enoch literature? In a previous Essay,¹⁸ we have already discussed the use of the term “Only Begotten” in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Going further with respect to views at Qumran on the role of the Messiah (and perhaps, in addition Elijah and Ezekiel) as agents of the resurrection, we cite the Messianic Apocalypse, which closely parallels the Gospels’¹⁹ use of Isaiah 26 and 61 to describe the mission of Jesus. Among other things, the Messianic Apocalypse declares that “his Messiah … will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live.”²⁰ Benjamin Wold couples this passage with 4QPseudoEzekiel to argue that a personal, bodily resurrection in the last days is envisioned by the authors, not merely a temporary revivication or a symbolic restoration of Israel.²¹

Of course, in contrast to some other ancient religions, evidence for an early Israelite belief in a personal resurrection is controversial.²² Significantly, however, some of the earliest and most explicit of the extant descriptions of the resurrection in Jewish literature that do exist are found in the Enoch literature, in particular the Book of Parables which is so rich in its descriptions of the Son of Man:

And the righteous and the chosen will be saved on that day;

and the faces of the sinners and the unrighteous they will henceforth not see.

And the Lord of Spirits will dwell over them,

and with that Son of Man they will eat

and lie down and rise up forever and ever.

And the righteous and chosen will have arisen from the earth,

and have ceased to cast down their faces,

and have put on the garment of glory.

And this will be your garment, the garment of life from the Lord of Spirits;

and your garments will not wear out,

and your glory will not fade in the presence of the Lord of Spirits.²³

The description of the flood of righteousness and truth that will affect the gathering of the elect in the last days is in deliberate counterpoint to the account of the flood of water that brought about the destruction of the wicked in Noah’s day. Noah’s flood brought destruction, whereas this flood will bring salvation. The Prophet Joseph Smith explained:

Men and angels are to be co-workers in bringing to pass this great work, and Zion is to be prepared, even a new Jerusalem, for the elect that are to be gathered from the four quarters of the earth, and to be established an holy city, for the tabernacle of the Lord shall be with them.²⁴

The Lord told Enoch that His people would be gathered “unto a place which I shall prepare.”²⁵ Jewish tradition echoes these words. For example in 4 Ezra 13:35 we read: “Zion will come and be made manifest to all people, prepared and built, as you saw the mountain carved out without hands.”²⁶ Similarly, 2 Baruch 4:2–3 reads: “[I]t is that [city] which will be revealed, with me, that was already prepared from the moment that I decided to create Paradise.”²⁷

The nature of the gathering place of God’s elect as a “Holy City” is described in 1 Enoch’s Book of the Parables 45:5: “And my chosen ones I shall make to dwell on it, but those who commit sin and error will not set foot on it.”²⁸ Jewish tradition also describes a “New Jerusalem.”²⁹ According to the Testament of Levi 10:5: “For the house which the Lord shall choose shall be called Jerusalem, as the book of Enoch the Righteous maintains.”³⁰ This account may be citing 1 Enoch 90:28–29, which tells of how the old house (i.e., the old city of Jerusalem) is removed and replaced with a new house (i.e., New Jerusalem).³¹ Moreover, in one version of 2 Enoch, the seer calls the place of his ascent “the highest Jerusalem.”³²

4. The Lord and Enoch’s City will Receive the Righteous

N. T. Wright, the well-known Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar, described the uniting of heaven and earth as follows:

God made heaven and earth; at last he will remake both and join them together forever. And when we come to the picture of the actual end in Revelation 21–22, we find not ransomed souls making their way to a disembodied heaven but rather the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, uniting the two in a lasting embrace.³³

Again, the ancient Enoch literature echoes the themes of the Book of Moses. In the Book of Parables 45:4–5 we read: “On that day, I shall make my Chosen One dwell among them, and I shall transform heaven and make it a blessing and a light forever; and I shall transform the earth and make it a blessing. And my chosen ones I shall make to dwell on it.”³⁴

For a second time in this passage, Moses 7:63 shares similar imagery with Psalm 85—and this time 1 Enoch does the same. However, as in the previous instance, there is an important difference. In Psalm 85 and 1 Enoch, two divine attributes meet and kiss, whereas in Moses 7:63 it is Enoch’s city and the Lord Himself that fall upon the necks of the righteous and kiss them, as they would a returning prodigal.³⁵

Moses 7:63	Psalm 85:10	*1 Enoch* 11:2
And we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other.	Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.	Truth and peace will be united together.³⁶

Robert Alter, writing of Psalm 85, captures the commonality of spirit with Moses 7:63: “This bold metaphor focuses the sense of an era of perfect loving harmony. Rashi imagines a landscape in which all Israelites will kiss one another.”³⁷

5 and 6. The Earth Shall Rest, and Enoch Receives a Fulness of Joy

Differing with the Lord’s previous instruction to Enoch, He delivers His word as a monologue—there is no reply from Enoch this time, only an epilogue from the narrator. After having seen and heard “all things,” Enoch’s questions were answered and he “received a fulness of joy.”

In the next Essay, we will discuss ancient traditions that resonate with the Book of Moses account of how Enoch’s city was taken up “into [God’s] own bosom.”³⁸

This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 102, 157–162.

Appendix: A Provisional Proposal for Structuring Moses 6:60-69

The text below generally follows the OT1 manuscript as originally dictated, with spelling, grammar, and punctuation modernized. Different colors indicate different speakers: blue for God and black for the narrator. We are grateful to Noel Reynolds for sharing his expertise in structuring scripture, though any resulting faults are ours.

1. The Lord Will Fulfill His Oath

60 And the Lord said unto Enoch:

As I live,

even so will I come in the last days,

in the days of wickedness and vengeance,

to fulfil the oath

which I have made unto you

concerning the children of Noah;

61 And the day shall come

that the earth shall rest,

2. Great Tribulations Shall Be Among the Children of Men but the Lord’s People Will Be Preserved

but before that day

the heavens shall be darkened,

and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth;

and the heavens shall shake,

and also the earth

and great tribulations shall be among the children of men,

but my people will I preserve;

3. The Lord Will Gather the Righteous

62 And righteousness will I send down out of heaven;

and truth will I send forth out of the earth,

to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten;

his resurrection from the dead;

yea, and also the resurrection of all men;

and righteousness and truth will I cause

to sweep the earth as with the flood,

to gather out mine own elect

from the four quarters of the earth,

unto a place which I shall prepare,

an Holy City,

that my people may gird up their loins

and be looking forth for the time of my coming;

for there shall be my tabernacle,

and it shall be called Zion

a New Jerusalem.

4. The Lord and Enoch’s City Shall Receive the Righteous

63 And the Lord said unto Enoch:

Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there

and we will receive them into our bosom,

and they shall see us;

and we will fall upon their necks,

and they shall fall upon our necks,

and we will kiss each other;

5. The Lord Shall Abide in Zion and the Earth Shall Rest

64 And there shall be mine abode,

and it shall be Zion,

which shall come forth out of all the creations which I have made;,

and for the space of a thousand years

shall the earth rest.

6. Enoch Saw All Things and Received a Fulness of Joy

65 And it came to pass that Enoch saw

the day of the coming of the Son of Man,

in the last days, to dwell on the earth

in righteousness for the space of a thousand years;

66 But before that day

he saw great tribulation among the wicked;

and he also saw the sea, that it was troubled,

and men’s hearts failing them,

looking forth with fear for the judgments of the Almighty God,

which should come upon the wicked.

67 And the Lord showed Enoch

all things, even unto the end of the world;

and he saw the day of the righteous,

the hour of their redemption,

and received a fulness of joy;

7. God Receives Zion Up Into His Own Bosom

68 And all the days of Zion, in the days of Enoch, were three hundred and sixty-five years.

69 And Enoch and all his people walked with God,

and he dwelt in the midst of Zion;

and it came to pass that Zion was not,

for God received it up into his own bosom;

and from thence went forth the saying,

Zion is Fled.

References

Alter, Robert, ed. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. New York City, NY: W. W. Norton, 2019.

Andersen, F. I. “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 91-221. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Benson, Ezra Taft. The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson. Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1988.

Charlesworth, James H. “Conclusion: The origin and development of resurrection beliefs.” In Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Faith and Scholarship Colloquies 3, 218-31. New York City, NY: T & T Clark, 2006.

———. “Where does the concept of resurrection appear and how do we know that?” In Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Faith and Scholarship Colloquies 3, 1-21. New York City, NY: T & T Clark, 2006.

Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005.

Elledge, C. D. “Resurrection of the dead: Exploring our earliest evidence today.” In Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Faith and Scholarship Colloquies 3, 22-52. New York City, NY: T & T Clark, 2006.

Faulring, Scott H., Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004.

Givens, Terryl L., and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. Salt Lake City, UT: Ensign Peak, 2012.

Kee, Howard C. “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Vol. 1, 775-828. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Klijn, A. F. J. “2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 615-52. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Martinez, Florentino Garcia. “4QMessianic Apocalypse (4Q521).” In The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, edited by Florentino Garcia Martinez. 2nd ed. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson, 394-95. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996.

Maxwell, Neal A. 1975. Of One Heart: The Glory of the City of Enoch. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1980.

Metzger, Bruce M. “The Fourth Book of Ezra.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 2, 517-59. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Mitton, George L. “The Book of Mormon as a resurrected book and a type of Christ.” In Remembrance and Return: Essays in Honor of Louis C. Midgley, edited by Ted Vaggalis and Daniel C. Peterson, 121-46. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2020.

Nibley, Hugh W. The Prophetic Book of Mormon. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 8. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989.

Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.

Nickelsburg, George W. E., and James C. VanderKam, eds. 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 37-82. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.

Paulien, Jon. “The resurrection and the Old Testament: A fresh look in light of recent research.” Journal of The Adventist Theological Society 24, no. 1 (2013): 3-24. http://archive.atsjats.org/Paulien_-__Resurrection.pdf. (accessed May 24, 2020).

Rashi. c. 1105. Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms. Translated by Mayer I. Gruber. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism 18. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2007.

Reeves, John C., and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 2 vols. Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Smith, Joseph, Jr. “To the Elders of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 2:2, November, 1835, 209-12.

———. “To the Elders of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 2:3, December, 1835, 225-30.

———. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2007.

Smith, Joseph, Jr., Karen Lynn Davidson, David J. Whittaker, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen. Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844. The Joseph Smith Papers, Histories 1, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Press, 2012.

Smith, Joseph, Jr. 1938. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1969.

Tvedtnes, John A. The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University FARMS, 2000.

Wold, Benjamin. “Agency and raising the dead in 4QPseudo-Ezekiel and 4Q521 2 ii.” Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschafte und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche 103, no. 1 (2012): 1-19.

Wright, Nicholas Thomas. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God 3. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.

———. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York City, NY: HarperOne, 2008.

Notes on Figures

Figure 1. With kind permission of the artist.

Footnotes

¹ Moses 7:59, 60.

² Moses 7:60.

³ Moses 7:51.

⁴ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 145.

⁵ Moses 7:60. Cf. Ibid., p. 145. God’s use of an oath with two immutable parts recalls the divine promise described in Hebrews 6:16–20.

⁶ Moses 7:61.

⁷ Moses 7:61.

⁸ Moses 7:61.

⁹ Moses 7:61. We make this interpretation of “veil of darkness” being spiritual in nature based on similar phrases elsewhere in scripture, e.g., Moses 7:56 (“the heavens were veiled”) and D&C 38:8 (“the veil of darkness shall soon be rent”), which imply that this veil will cut off direct communication from heaven. Cf. D&C 110:1: “The veil was taken from our minds.” See also a phrase added to the end of Genesis 9:26 in the JST: “and a veil of darkness shall cover him” (S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT1, p. 118; OT2, p. 632. See also J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Genesis 9:26, p. 323).

¹⁰ N. A. Maxwell, One Heart, p. v.

¹¹ Moses 7:61.

¹² E. T. Benson, Teachings 1988, October 198.6, p. 105 quoted Moses 7:62 with specific reference to the Book of Mormon.

¹³ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 146:

Because one of the titles for the Savior is “the Righteous” (Moses 7:45, 47), this prophesied event may well refer to the coming of the Savior in the latter days, perhaps to the youthful Joseph Smith, thereby anticipating the restoration of the Gospel. It seems also to refer to renewed revelation in the last days.

¹⁴ For examples, see J. A. Tvedtnes, Hidden Books; H. W. Nibley, Prophetic, pp. 274ff; G. L. Mitton, Book of Mormon As a Resurrected Book.

¹⁵ Moses 7:62. Cf. R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 146. Joseph Smith himself wrote, commenting on the parable of the mustard seed (J. Smith, Jr., To the Elders, p. 227, emphasis added. Reprinted in J. Smith, Jr., Teachings, December 1835, p. 98; J. Smith, Jr., Teachings 2007, p. 301):

Let us now take the Book of Mormon, which a man took and hid in his field; securing it by his faith, to spring up in the last days, or in due time; let us behold it coming froth out of the ground, which is indeed accounted the least of all seeds, but behold it branching forth; yea, even towering, with lofty branches, and God-like majesty, until it becomes the greatest of all herbs; and it is truth, and it has sprouted and come forth out of the earth; and righteousness begins to look down from heaven; and God is sending down his powers, gifts and angels, to lodge in the branches thereof.

Later, referring to the publication of the Book of Mormon, the Prophet wrote (J. Smith, Jr. et al., Histories, 1832-1844, History Drafts, 1838–Circa 1841, Draft 2, p. 386, emphasis added):

It had now come to pass that, Truth had sprung out of the earth; and Righteousness had looked down from Heaven, so we feared not our opponents, knowing that we had both Truth and righteousness on our side.

¹⁶ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 40:8–9, p. 130. See Nickelsburg’s comments on p. 134 n. 9.

¹⁷ G. L. Mitton, Book of Mormon As a Resurrected Book, p. 131.

¹⁸ See Essay #15.

¹⁹ Matthew 11:1–6; Luke 7:18–23.

²⁰ F. G. Martinez, 4QMessianic Apocalypse (4Q521), Fragment 2, column ii, p. 394. James Charlesworth calls this “an obvious reference to the resurrection of the dead” (J. H. Charlesworth, Concept of Resurrection, p. 15). Confirming that this is a permanent resurrection rather than a temporary revivification is a later fragment of the same text that refers to “the heavens welcoming the righteous, and the presence of angels” (C. D. Elledge, Earliest Evidence, p. 33. Cf. F. G. Martinez, 4QMessianic Apocalypse (4Q521), Fragment 5, column ii, p. 395).

²¹ B. Wold, Agency and Raising the Dead.

²² See, e.g., J. H. Charlesworth, Resurrection Beliefs, p. 223, who writes: “In the history of the theologies of Israel, resurrection belief is clearly found only in very late literature. The patriarchs and those in the monarchy, as well as those who lived in ancient Palestine before the sixth-century BCE Babylonian exile, did not imagine that the dead would be raised.”

However, N. T. Wright (N. T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, pp. 85–128) and others (e.g., J. Paulien, Resurrection and the OT) see a much earlier idea of a personal resurrection present earlier in Hosea, Isaiah, and elsewhere.

An example of late Jewish legendry attesting to the idea of a personal resurrection and of interest here because of its parallels with the story of Enoch’s encounter with the Angel of Death is given in the “Tale of R. Joshua ben Levi.” We quote here from its account of a visit to the “fifth chamber opposite the fifth gate” in the post-mortal Garden of Eden (J. C. Reeves et al., Enoch from Antiquity 1, pp. 206-207):

Elijah of blessed memory would take the head of the Messiah and let it rest in his lap. He would say to him: “Be quiet! For the appointed time is close!” The ancestors of the world and of the tribes and Moses and Aaron and David and Solomon and each and every king of Israel and from the lineage of David would come to him every Monday, Thursday, Sabbath, and festival day and weep with him and encourage him and say to him: “Be quiet and rely on your Creator, for the appointed time is close!” And also Qorah and his congregation, and Dathan and Abiram, and Absalom would come to him every Wednesday and ask him: “How long until the appointed time for miraculous events? How long before you turn to resurrect us and you turn to bring us up from the depths of the earth?” He would say to them: “Go to your ancestors!” And when they would hear this, they would never ask the ancestors. When I entered before the Messiah b. David, he asked me and said to me: “How does Israel fare in the world from which you came?” I said to him: “They hope for you ( to come) every day, constantly.” He at once raised his voice in weeping.

²³ G. W. E. Nickelsburg et al., 1 Enoch 2, 62:13–16, pp. 254–255. George Nickelsburg and James VanderKam see this passage as a “compelling” reference to resurrection (ibid., p. 268).

²⁴ J. Smith, Jr., To the Elders, p. 209. Reprinted in J. Smith, Jr., Teachings, November 1835, p. 84.

²⁵ Moses 7:62.

²⁶ B. M. Metzger, 4 Ezra, 13:35, p. 552, emphasis added.

²⁷ A. F. J. Klijn, 2 Baruch, 4:2–3, p. 622, emphasis added.

²⁸ G. W. E. Nickelsburg et al., 1 Enoch 2, 45:5, p. 148.

²⁹ Moses 7:62. See Hebrews 11:16; 12:22–24; Revelation 3:12; 21:2; 3 Nephi 20:22; 21:23–24; Ether 13:2–10; D&C 42:67; 133:56.

³⁰ H. C. Kee, Testaments, Levi 10:5, p. 792.

³¹ See G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 90:28–29, p. 402. See also pp. 404–405 n. 28–36. Cf. Hebrews 9:8.

³² F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 55:2 [J], p. 55.

³³ N. T. Wright, Surprised, p. 19.

³⁴ G. W. E. Nickelsburg et al., 1 Enoch 2, 45:4–5, p. 148.

³⁵ Terryl and Fiona Givens comment (T. L. Givens et al., God Who Weeps, p. 106):

The beauty and power of this image is in its concreteness. God and His people, the living and the departed, heaven and earth, embrace. The immense distance between the spiritual and the mundane collapses, and we find holiness in the ordinary. Luke’s tale of the prodigal son turns out to be not symbolic foreshadowing, but literal foretaste, of a greater reunion. As the evangelist told the story, when the son ‘was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him’ (Luke 15:20).”

³⁶ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 11:2, p. 216.

³⁷ R. Alter, Hebrew Bible, Psalm 85:[12], justice and peace have kissed, 3:206. “Rashi construes biblical Hebrew ṣedeq ‘JUSTICE’ in the sense of Rabbinic Hebrew ṣĕdāqāh ‘charity’” (Rashi, Psalms, p. 554 n. 12), and comments (ibid., p. 553å):

The charity [haṣṣĕdāqāh] which Israel used to perform and the WELL-BEING from the Holy One Blessed be He will kiss each other, which is to say that the end result of charity is well-being [i.e., šālôm, translated in the KJB as “peace”].

³⁸ Moses 7:69.

November 6, 2020February 15, 2021

The Weeping Voice of Enoch

Book of Moses Essay #28

Moses 7:28-43

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Jacob Rennaker, and David J. Larsen

Download MP3 here

The tradition of a weeping prophet is perhaps best exemplified by Jeremiah who cried out in sorrow:

Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!¹

In another place, he wrote:

Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.²

Less well-known is the ancient Jewish tradition of Enoch as a weeping prophet. In the pseudepigraphal book of 1 Enoch, his words are very near to those of Jeremiah:

O that my eyes were a [fountain]³ of water, that I might weep over you; I would pour out my tears as a cloud of water, and I would rest from the grief of my heart.⁴

We find the pseudepigraphal Enoch, like Enoch in the Book of Moses, weeping in response to visions of mankind’s wickedness. Following the second of these visions in 1 Enoch, he is recorded as saying:

And after that I wept bitterly, and my tears did not cease until I could no longer endure it, but they were running down because of what I had seen. … I wept because of it, and I was disturbed because I had seen the vision.⁵

In the Apocalypse of Paul, the apostle meets Enoch, “the scribe of righteousness”⁶ “within the gate of Paradise,” and, after having been cheerfully embraced and kissed,⁷ sees the prophet weep, and says to him, “‘Brother, why do you weep?’ And again sighing and lamenting he said, ‘We are hurt by men, and they grieve us greatly; for many are the good things which the Lord has prepared, and great is his promise, but many do not perceive them.’”⁸ A similar motif of Enoch weeping over the generations of mankind can be found in the pseudepigraphal book of 2 Enoch.⁹ “There is, to say the least,” writes Hugh Nibley “no gloating in heaven over the fate of the wicked world. [And it] is Enoch who leads the weeping.”¹⁰

It is surprising that so little has been done to compare modern revelation with ancient sources bearing on the weeping of Enoch.¹¹ Mere coincidence is an insufficient explanation for Joseph Smith’s association of weeping with Enoch, as it is a motif that occurs nowhere in scripture or other sources where the Prophet might have seen it,¹² and similar accounts of weeping are not associated with comparable figures in his translations and revelations.¹³

Besides Moses 7:41 and 49, we find two additional descriptions of Enoch’s weeping. The first instance is to be found in the words of a divinely-given song, recorded in Joseph Smith’s Revelation Book 2, where Enoch is said to have “gazed upon nature and the corruption of man, and mourned their sad fate, and wept.”¹⁴ The second instance is in Old Testament Manuscript 2 of the Joseph Smith Translation, where the revelatory account was corrected to say that it was Enoch rather than God who wept.

Figure 2. “the God of heaven wept” (Moses 7:28) as written by Emma Smith.

Figure 3. “Enoch … wept” (Moses 7:28) as written by John Whitmer and corrected by Sidney Rigdon.

Did God or Enoch Weep in Moses 7:28?

The Prophet’s first dictation of Moses 7:28 follows the description of Old Testament Manuscript 1 (OT1), where it is God who weeps:

the g God of heaven looked upon the residue of the peop[le a]nd he wept¹⁵

and a subsequent revision, correcting the text so it reads that Enoch wept:

the God of Heaven look=ed upon the residue of the people & wept¹⁶

The first dictation above is the one that has been retained in the current canonical version of the Book of Moses. In line with narrative considerations discussed in a previous Essay,¹⁷ we think that it makes more sense in the context of the overall passage to understand Enoch as having deferred his weeping until Moses 7:41, after God completes his speech. Thus, for this and other reasons outlined elsewhere,¹⁸ we take the OT1 version of Moses 7:28, where the text states that God wept, to be the best reading of the verse, unless and until better arguments for the OT2 reading come along.¹⁹

Within the theme of the weeping Enoch, there are several
specific sub-themes that are common in both the Book of Moses and in ancient
literature:

· Weeping in similitude of God

· Weeping because the Divine withdraws from the earth

· Weeping because of the insulting words of the wicked

· Weeping followed by heavenly vision

We will discuss each of these in turn.

Weeping in Similitude of God

In the Midrash Rabbah on Lamentations, Enoch is portrayed as weeping in likeness of God when the Israelite temple was destroyed:

At that time the Holy One, blessed be He, wept and said, “Woe is Me! What have I done? I caused my Shekhinah to dwell below on earth for the sake of Israel; but now that they have sinned, I have returned to My former habitation…” At that time Metatron [who is Enoch in his glorified state] came, fell upon his face, and spake before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Sovereign of the Universe, let me weep, but do Thou not weep.” He replied to him: “if thou lettest Me not weep now, I will repair to a place which thou hast not permission to enter, and will weep there,” as it is said, “But if ye will not hear it, My soul shall weep in secret for pride.”²⁰ ²¹

The dialogue between God and Enoch in this passage is reminiscent of the one in Moses 7:28–41:

28 And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?
29 And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity? …

Enoch, seeing God weep, was astonished at witnessing the emotional display of the holy, eternal God. In the Book of Moses account, God, in response, proceeds to show Enoch the wickedness of the people of the Earth and how much they will suffer in consequence. After seeing a vision of the misery that would come upon God’s children, Enoch will commiserate with God, weeping inconsolably.²²

Speaking of prophets in general, Abraham Heschel explains that “what convulsed the prophet’s whole being was God. His condition was a state of suffering in sympathy with the divine pathos.”²³ This view of prophets stands in stark contrast to the Philo of Alexandria’s parallel description of the relationship between the high priest and God in De Specialibus Legibus. In this passage, Philo is commenting upon the law in Leviticus 21:10–12 which prohibits the high priest from mourning for (or even approaching) the bodies of deceased parents, consistent with Greek philosophical conceptions.²⁴

Philo’s view of a dispassionate, yet mediating high priest is not only at odds with the portrayal of Jesus as high priest presented in Hebrews 4:15 (“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”),²⁵ but also with Heschel’s perspective of mediating prophets as those who have entered into “a fellowship with the feelings of God.”²⁶ As in the case of Enoch, a model of divine sympathy calls into question teachings regarding divine apathy.

This theme of shared sorrow between God and prophet is explored at length by theologian Terence Fretheim.²⁷ According to Fretheim, “The prophet’s life was reflective of the divine life. This became increasingly apparent to Israel. God is seen to be present not only in what the prophet has to say, but in the word as embodied in the prophet’s life. To hear and see the prophet was to hear and see God, a God who was suffering on behalf of the people.”²⁸ To a certain extent, so close was the association between God and prophet that the prophet’s very presence could serve as a sort of “ongoing theophany,”²⁹ providing Israel with a very visible and tangible representation of God’s concern.³⁰

Fretheim argues that the prophet’s “sympathy with the divine pathos” was not the result of contemplating the divine, but rather a result of the prophet’s participation in the divine council. He writes:

[T]he fact that the prophets are said to be a part of this council indicates something of the intimate relationship they had with God. The prophet was somehow drawn up into the very presence of God; even more, the prophet was in some sense admitted into the history of God. The prophet becomes a party to the divine story; the heart and mind of God pass over into that of the prophet to such an extent that the prophet becomes a veritable embodiment of God.³¹

In the case of Enoch, the prophet enters into the presence of God³² and witnesses the weeping of God and a heavenly host over the wickedness of humanity.³³ As a result of this participation in the heavenly council, Enoch becomes divinely sensitized to the plight of the human race and begins to weep himself.³⁴

Weeping Because the Divine Withdrawal from the Earth.

A full chorus of weeping that begins with the Messiah and expands to include the heavens and its angelic hosts is eloquently described in a Jewish mystical text called the Zohar:

Then the Messiah lifts up his voice and weeps, and the whole Garden of Eden quakes, and all the righteous and saints who are there break out in crying and lamentation with him. When the crying and weeping resound for the second time, the whole firmament above the Garden begins to shake, and the cry echoes from five hundred myriads of supernal hosts until it reaches the highest Throne.³⁵

The reason for this weeping “of all the workmanship of [God’s] hands”³⁶ is the loss of the temple—the withdrawal of the divine presence from the earth. In Jewish tradition, this withdrawal is portrayed as having occurred in a series of poignant stages. This is vividly illustrated in Ezekiel 9-11. Because of the priests’ wickedness within the temple precincts, the “glory of the God of Israel” moves from its resting place within the temple compound to the threshold of the temple,³⁷ where it remains for a time. Finally, after surveying the extent of the wicked priests’ actions within the temple, Ezekiel sees the “glory of Yahweh” leave the temple, continue east through the city of Jerusalem, and finally come to rest upon the Mount of Olives.³⁸

This departure of the God of Israel from the great city of Jerusalem was especially significant from the perspectives of the nations who surrounded Israel. According to the Hebrew Bible scholar Margaret Odell, “In ancient Near Eastern thought, a city could not be destroyed unless its god had abandoned it.”³⁹ With the presence of God removed from the city, it now lay exposed and vulnerable to attack, a condition that was exploited by the Babylonians.

The withdrawal of the divine presence from the temple is a fitting analogue to the taking up of Enoch’s Zion from the earth. Whereas in the above passages, where God withdraws his presence, or his glory, due to the wickedness of the people, the Book of Moses⁴⁰ has God removing the righteous city of Zion in its entirety from among the wicked nations that surround it.

The differences in the two pericopes may actually have more in common than is immediately apparent. In Jewish literature there is a significant correspondence between Zion and the Shekhinah (Divine Presence). Zion is often personified as the Bride of God.⁴¹ The word “Shekhinah” is a feminine noun in Hebrew, is often associated with the female personified Wisdom, and is likewise described in later Jewish writings as the Bride of God. The idea of Zion being taken up and the Shekhinah being withdrawn are parallel motifs.

Weeping Because of the Insulting Words of the Wicked

Pheme Perkins correctly argues that:

speech is much more carefully controlled and monitored in a traditional, hierarchical society than it is in modern democracies. We can hardly recapture the sense of horror at blasphemy that ancient society felt because for us words do not have the same power that they do in traditional societies. Words appear to have considerably less consequences than actions. In traditional societies, the word is a form of action.⁴²

Consistent with this idea, a Manichaean text describes an Enoch who weeps because of the harsh words of the wicked:

I am Enoch the righteous. My sorrow was great, and a torrent of tears [streamed] from my eyes because I heard the insult which the wicked ones uttered.⁴³

Elsewhere, Enoch is said to have prophesied a future judgment upon such “ungodly sinners” who have “uttered hard speeches… against [the Lord].”⁴⁴

Rabbi Eliezer gives examples of such insults:

We don’t need Your drops of rain, neither do we need to walk in Your ways.⁴⁵

Having been told by Noah that all mankind would be destroyed by the Flood if they did not repent, these same “sons of God” are said to have defiantly replied:

If this is the case, we will stop human reproduction and multiplying, and thus put an end to the lineage of the sons of men ourselves.⁴⁶

Similarly, in Moses 8:21, we find these examples of truculent boasting in the mouths of the antediluvians:

Behold, we are the sons of God; have we not taken unto ourselves the daughters of men? And are we not eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage? And our wives bear unto us children, and the same are mighty men, which are like unto men of old, men of great renown.

An ancient exegetical tradition cited by John Reeves associates the speech of Job in 21:7–15 “to events transpiring during the final years of the antediluvian era”⁴⁷ rather than to the time of Job. Likewise, in 3 Enoch these verses are directly linked, not to Job, but to Enoch himself.⁴⁸ In defiance of the Lord’s entreaty to “love one another, and… choose me, their Father,”⁴⁹ the wicked are depicted as “say[ing] unto God”:

14 … Depart from us: for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.
15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him?⁵⁰

Reeves characterizes these words as “a blasphemous rejection of divine governance and guidance… wherein the wicked members of the Flood generation verbally reject God.”⁵¹

Weeping Followed by Heavenly Vision

In the Cologne Mani Codex, Enoch’s tearful sorrow was directly followed by an angelophany:

While the tears were still in my eyes and the prayer was yet on my lips, I beheld approaching me s[even] angels descending from heaven. [Upon seeing] them I was so moved by fear that my knees began knocking.⁵²

A description of a similar set of events is found in 2 Enoch:

… in the first month, on the assigned day of the first month, I was in my house alone, weeping and grieving with my eyes. When I had lain down on my bed, I fell asleep. And two huge men appeared to me, the like of which I had never seen on earth.⁵³

The same sequence of events, Enoch’s weeping and grieving followed by a heavenly vision, can be found in modern revelation within the song of Revelation Book 2 mentioned earlier:

Enoch… gazed upon nature and the corruption of man, and mourned their sad fate, and wept, and cried out with a loud voice, and heaved forth his sighs: “Omnipotence! Omnipotence! O may I see Thee!” And with His finger He touched his eyes⁵⁴ and he saw heaven. He gazed on eternity and sang an angelic song.⁵⁵

Noting that this pattern is not confined to Enoch, Reeves⁵⁶ writes: “Prayer coordinated with weeping that leads to an angelophany is also a sequence prominent in [other] apocalyptic traditions.”⁵⁷

Conclusions

Ancient and modern Saints know that all mortal sorrow will be done away at the end time when God shall “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth.”⁵⁸ God said to Noah that in that day: “thy posterity shall embrace the truth, and look upward, then shall Zion look downward, and all the heavens shall shake with gladness, and the earth shall tremble with joy.”⁵⁹ Describing the human dimension of the great at-one-ment of the heavenly and earthly Zion, when tears of joy shall replace tears of mourning, is the account of Enoch himself where we read, “Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other.”⁶⁰

This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Jacob Rennaker, and David J. Larsen. “Revisiting the forgotten voices of weeping in Moses 7: A comparison with ancient texts.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 2 (2012): 41–71.

References

Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Andersen, F. I. “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 91-221. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Black, Jeremy A. “The new year ceremonies in ancient Babylon: ‘Taking Bel by the hand’ and a cultic picnic.” Religion 11, no. 1 (1981): 39-59. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WWN-4MMD1NR-5&_user=9634938&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F1981&_rdoc=5&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_origin=browse&_zone=rslt_list_item&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%237135%231981%23999889998%23639866%23FLP%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=7135&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=10&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&searchtype=a. (accessed September 16, 2010).

Bowen, Matthew L. E-mail message to Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, February 26, 2020.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Jacob Rennaker, and David J. Larsen. “Revisiting the forgotten voices of weeping in Moses 7: A comparison with ancient texts.” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 2 (2012): 41-71. www.templethemes.net.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and Ryan Dahle. “Textual criticism and the Book of Moses: A response to Colby Townsend’s “Returning to the sources”.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2020): in press. www.templethemes.net.

Cameron, Ron, and Arthur J. Dewey, eds. The Cologne Mani Codex (P. Colon. inv. nr. 4780) ‘Concerning the Origin of His Body’. Texts and Translations 15, Early Christian Literature 3, ed. Birger A. Pearson. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979.

Collins, John J. “Sibylline Oracles.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 2, 317-472. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Dahl, Larry E. “The vision of the glories.” In The Doctrine and Covenants, edited by Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson. Studies in Scripture 1, 279-308. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989.

Elliott, J. K. “The Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli).” In The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, edited by J. K. Elliott, 616-44. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Faulring, Scott H., and Kent P. Jackson, eds. Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible Electronic Library (JSTEL) CD-ROM. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University. Religious Studies Center, Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2011.

Freedman, H., and Maurice Simon, eds. 1939. Midrash Rabbah 3rd ed. 10 vols. London, England: Soncino Press, 1983.

Fretheim, Terence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984.

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962. The Prophets. Two Volumes in One ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.

Klijn, A. F. J. “2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 615-52. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Lichtheim, Miriam, ed. 1973-1980. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. 3 vols. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2006.

MacRae, George W., William R. Murdock, and Douglas M. Parrott. “The Apocalypse of Paul (V, 2).” In The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James M. Robinson. 3rd, Completely Revised ed, 256-59. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.

Neusner, Jacob, ed. The Mishnah: A New Translation. London, England: Yale University Press, 1988.

Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.

Odell, Margaret. Ezekiel. Smyth and Helwys Bible Commenary. Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2005.

Ouaknin, Marc-Alain, and Éric Smilévitch, eds. 1983. Chapitres de Rabbi Éliézer (Pirqé de Rabbi Éliézer): Midrach sur Genèse, Exode, Nombres, Esther. Les Dix Paroles, ed. Charles Mopsik. Lagrasse, France: Éditions Verdier, 1992.

Perkins, Pheme. First and Second Peter, James, and Jude. Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1995.

Peterson, Daniel C. “On the motif of the weeping God in Moses 7.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 285-317. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.

Philo. b. 20 BCE. “The special laws, 1 (De specialibus legibus, 1).” In The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, edited by C. D. Yonge. New Updated ed. Translated by C. D. Yonge, 534-67. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006.

Reeves, John C. Heralds of that Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 41, ed. James M. Robinson and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996.

Sanders, E. P. “Testament of Abraham.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Vol. 1, 871-902. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Sharp, Daniel, and Matthew L. Bowen. “Scripture note — ‘For this cause did King Benjamin keep them’: King Benjamin or King Mosiah?” Religious Educator 18, no. 1 (2017): 81-87. https://rsc.byu.edu/sites/default/files/pub_content/pdf/Scripture_Note%E2%80%94For_This_Cause_Did_King_Benjam%E2%80%8Bin_Keep_Them_King_Benjamin_or_King_Mosiah.pdf. (accessed February 26, 2020).

Smith, Joseph, Jr., Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper. Manuscript Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition. The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Press, 2009.

———. Manuscript Revelation Books. The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations 1, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Press, 2011.

Sparks, Kenton L. Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005.

Sperling, Harry, Maurice Simon, and Paul P. Levertoff, eds. The Zohar: An English Translation. 5 vols. London, England: The Soncino Press, 1984.

Tang, Alex. 2006. A meditation on Rembrandt’s Jeremiah. In Random Musings from a Doctor’s Chair. http://draltang01.blogspot.com/2006/12/meditation-on-rembrandts-jeremiah.html. (accessed April 30, 2013).

Walker, Charles Lowell. Diary of Charles Lowell Walker. 2 vols, ed. A. Karl Larson and Katharine Miles Larson. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1980.

Williams, Frederick Granger. “Singing the word of God: Five hymns by President Frederick G. Williams.” BYU Studies 48, no. 1 (2009): 57-88.

———. The Life of Dr. Frederick G. Williams, Counselor to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2012.

Witherington, Ben, III. Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007.

Notes on Figures

Figure 1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Lamenting_the_Destruction_of_Jerusalem (accessed April 15, 2020). Public domain. Alex Tang describes the painting as follows (A. Tang, A meditation on Rembrandt’s Jeremiah):

This oil on panel painting is one of the finest works of Rembrandt’s Leiden period. For many years it was incorrectly identified but it certainly shows Jeremiah, who had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (Jeremiah 32:28–35), lamenting over the destruction of the city. In the distance on the left a man at the top of the steps holds clenched fists to his eyes—this was the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, who was blinded by Nebuchadnezzar. The prominent burning domed building in the background is probably Solomon’s Temple.
Jeremiah’s pose, his head supported by his hand, is a traditional attitude of melancholy: his elbow rests on a large book which is inscribed ‘Bibel’ on the edge of the pages, probably a much later addition to the painting. The book is presumably meant to be his own book of Jeremiah or the book of Lamentations. Rembrandt is a master of light in art. The lighting of the figure is particularly effective with the foreground and the [left] side of the prophet’s face in shadow and his robe outlined against the rock. Jeremiah’s [gaze] rested on a few pieces of gold and silver vessels which he must have managed to salvage from the burning temple.

In Lamentations, we read of how Jeremiah’s sorrows were assuaged by hope: “For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies” (Lamentations 3:31–32. See also Jeremiah 32:36–44; 33:4–26).

Figure 2. S. H. Faulring et al., JST Electronic Library, OT 1–16—Moses 7:10b-28a, Genesis 7:12b-35a. Copyright Community of Christ, 2011. All rights reserved. Cf. J. Smith, Jr., Old Testament 1, p. 16, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/old-testament-revision-1/18 (accessed February 19, 2020).

Figure 3. Ibid., OT 2–21 — Moses 7:15b-29b, Genesis 7:19b-35b. Copyright Community of Christ, 2011. All rights reserved. Cf. J. Smith, Jr., Old Testament 2, p. 21, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/old-testament-revision-2/26 (accessed February 19, 2020).

Footnotes

¹ Jeremiah 9:1. Cf. Isaiah 22:4: “Therefore said I, Look away from me; I will weep bitterly, labour not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people.”

² Jeremiah 14:17.

³ The text reads dammana [cloud], which Nickelsburg takes to be a corruption in the Aramaic (ibid., pp. 463-464). Nibley takes the motif of the “weeping” of clouds in this verse to plausibly be a parallel to Moses 7:28 (H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 199). On the other hand, Nibley’s translation of 1 Enoch 100:11–13 as describing a weeping of the heavens is surely a misreading (ibid., p. 198; cf. (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 100:11-13, pp. 503).

⁴ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 95:1, p. 460.

⁵ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 90:41-42, p. 402.

⁶ Another instance of Enoch as a compassionate, “righteous scribe” appears in the Testament of Abraham. The archangel Michael opens to Abraham a vivid view of the heavenly judgment scene, whereupon Abraham asks (E. P. Sanders, Testament of Abraham, 11:1-10 [Recension B], p. 900):

“Lord, who is this judge? And who is the other one who brings the charges of sins?” And Michael said to Abraham, “Do you see the judge? This is Abel, who first bore witness, and God brought him here to judge. And the one who produces (the evidence) is the teacher of heaven and earth and the scribe of righteousness, Enoch. For the Lord sent them here in order that they might record the sins and the righteous deeds of each person.” And Abraham said, “And how can Enoch bear the weight of the souls, since he has not seen death? Or how can he give the sentence of all the souls?” And Michael said, “If he were to give sentence concerning them, it would not be accepted. But it is not Enoch’s business to give sentence; rather, the Lord is the one who gives sentence, and it is this one’s (Enoch’s) task only to write. For Enoch prayed to the Lord saying, ‘Lord, I do not want to give the sentence of the souls, lest I become oppressive to someone.’ And the Lord said to Enoch, ‘I shall command you to write the sins of a soul that makes atonement, and it will enter into life. And if the soul has not made atonement and repented, you will find its sins (already) written, and it will be cast into punishment.’”

Here, Abraham voices the concern that a relatively mortal Enoch (one who “has not seen death”) would not have the capacity to “bear the weight of the souls” who were being judged. However, Enoch exhibits his capacity for compassion and sympathy by taking into account the feelings of those being judged, fearing that he might “become oppressive to someone” should he judge amiss.

⁷ Following this encounter and embrace, Paul is told by an angel (J. K. Elliott, Apocalypse of Paul, 20, p. 628): “‘Whatever I now show you here, and whatever you shall hear, tell no one on earth.’ And he led me and showed me; and there I heard words which it is not lawful for a man to speak [2 Corinthians 12:4].” In the version of the Apocalypse of Paul found at Nag Hammadi, Paul’s encounter at the entrance to the seventh heaven is told differently (G. W. MacRae et al., Paul, 22:23-23:30, p. 259). At that entrance, Paul is challenged with a series of questions from Enoch. In answer to Enoch’s final question, Paul is instructed: “‘Give him [the] sign that you have, and [he will] open for you.’ And then I gave [him] the sign.” Whereupon “the [seventh] heaven opened.”

⁸ J. K. Elliott, Apocalypse of Paul, 20, p. 628.

⁹ F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 41:1 [J], p. 166: “[And] I saw all those from the age of my ancestors, with Adam and Eve. And I sighed and burst into tears.”

¹⁰ H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 5.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 5-7, 14, 68, 189, 192, 205 addresses this topic, citing a handful of ancient parallels. D. C. Peterson, Weeping God, p. 296 cites part of the passage from Midrash Rabbah included later in this article, but his focus is on the weeping of God rather than that of Enoch. The present article draws on a 2012 publication: J. M. Bradshaw et al., Revisiting.

¹² Richard Laurence first translated the book of Enoch into English in 1821, but it is very unlikely that Joseph Smith would have encountered this work. Revised editions were published in 1833, 1838, and 1842, but these appeared subsequent to the book of Moses account, which was received in 1830.

¹³ An exception is, of course, Jesus Christ, who is recorded as having wept both in the New Testament (John 11:35) and in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 17:21–22; cf. Jacob 5:41). In 2 Nephi 4:26, Nephi once asks “why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow… ?”

¹⁴ J. Smith, Jr. et al., Manuscript Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition, Revelation Book 2, 48 [verso], 27 February 1833, pp. 508-509, spelling and punctuation modernized. The preface to the entry in the revelation book says that it was “sung by the gift of tongues and translated.” An expanded and versified version of this song that omits the weeping of Enoch was published in Evening and Morning Star, (Independence, MO and Kirtland, OH, 1832–1834; repr., Basel Switzerland: Eugene Wagner, 2 vols., 1969), 1:12, May 1833. It has been argued by a descendant of Frederick G. Williams that both the original and versified version of this song should be attributed to his ancestor and namesake. See F. G. Williams, Life, pp. 221-251; F. G. Williams, Singing, pp. 57–88. The editors of the relevant volume of the Joseph Smith Papers note: “An undated broadside of the hymn states that it was ‘sung in tongues’ by David W. Patten and ‘interpreted’ by Sidney Rigdon. (“Mysteries of God.” Church History Library.) This item was never canonized” J. Smith, Jr. et al., Manuscript Revelation Books, p. 377 n. 65.

¹⁵ S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT 1–16—Moses 7:10b-28a, OT 1–17—Moses 7:28b-7:43, p. 106.

¹⁶ Ibid., OT2–21—Moses 7:15b-29a, OT2–22—Moses 7:29b-41a, p. 618.

¹⁷ Essay #25.

¹⁸ J. M. Bradshaw et al., Textual Criticism.

¹⁹ Though we admit it may seem more logical to operate on the assumption that the latest revisions of Joseph Smith’s translations and revelations are always the “best” versions, we have found in our experience that the earliest readings sometimes seem to be superior. After extensive discussion of a relevant example in the Book of Mormon, Matthew Bowen concludes: “We see abundant evidence in ancient New Testament manuscripts of scribes, clerks, and editors attempting to correct what they think are mistakes in the text, only to make the text worse with their corrections.[Joseph Smith and his associates sometimes] did similar things with the Book of Mormon text and with his early revelations” (M. L. Bowen, February 26 2020). For a good example of this in the Book of Mormon, see D. Sharp et al., Scripture Note — “For This Cause” For a discussion of the relative merits of the OT1 and OT2 manuscripts of the Book of Moses, see J. M. Bradshaw et al., Textual Criticism.

²⁰ H. Freedman et al., Midrash, Lamentations 24, p. 41.

²¹ Jeremiah 13:17.

²² Cf. Noah’s expression of grief in J. J. Collins, Sibylline Oracles, 1:190-191, p. 339: “how much will I lament, how much will I weep in my wooden house, how many tears will I mingle with the waves?”

²³ A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:118, cf. 1:80–85, 91–92, 105–127; 2:101–103.

²⁴ Philo writes as follows (Philo, Specialibus 1, 1:113-116, pp. 165, 167, emphasis added):

[T]he high priest is precluded from all outward mourning and surely with good reason. For the services of the other priests can be performed by deputy, so that if some are in mourning none of the customary rites need suffer. But no one else is allowed to perform the functions of a high priest and therefore he must always continue undefiled, never coming in contact with a corpse, so that he may be ready to offer his prayers and sacrifices at the proper time without hinderance on behalf of the nation.
Further, since he is dedicated to God and has been made captain of the sacred regiment, he ought to be estranged from all the ties of birth and not be so overcome by affection to parents or children or brothers as to neglect or postpone any one of the religious duties which it were well to perform without any delay. He forbids him also either to rend his garments for his dead, even the nearest and dearest, or to take from his head the insignia of the priesthood, or on any account to leave the sacred precincts under the pretext of mourning. Thus, showing reverence both to the place and to the personal ornaments with which he is decked, he will have his feeling of pity under control and continue throughout free from sorrow.
For the law desires him to be endued with a nature higher than the merely human and to approximate to the Divine, on the border-line, we may truly say, between the two, that men may have a mediator through whom they may propitiate God and God a servitor to employ in extending the abundance of His boons to men.

²⁵ J. Neusner, Mishnah, 1:4-1:6, p. 266 describes weeping as part of the rituals of the high priest on Yom Kippur:

1:4 A. All seven days they did not hold back food or drink from him.

B. [But] on the eve of the Day of Atonement at dusk they did not let him eat much,

C. for food brings on sleep.

1:5 A. The elders of the court handed him over to the elders of the priesthood,

B. who brought him up to the upper chamber of Abtinas.

C. And they imposed an oath on him and took their leave and went along.

D. [This is what] they said to him, “My lord, high priest: We are agents of the court, and you are our agent and agent of the court.

E. “We abjure you by Him who caused his name to rest upon this house, that you will not vary in any way from all which we have instructed you.”

F. He turns aside and weeps.

G. And they turn aside and weep.

1:6 A. If he was a sage, he expounds [the relevant Scriptures].

B. And if not, disciples of sages expound for him.

K. L. Sparks, Ancient Texts, p. 167. has noted that certain aspects of the Israelite Day of Atonement rite “seem to mimic” events of the Mesopotamian akītu festival. The Babylonian king, as part of the ceremonies of the akītu festival, was required to submit to a royal ordeal involving an initial period of suffering and ritual death. Once this phase was complete, the king washed his hands and entered the temple for the rites of (re)investiture, as described in Black’s reconstruction of events. Note the importance of the weeping of the king at this juncture (J. A. Black, New Year, pp. 44-45):

The šešgallu, who is in the sanctuary, comes out and divests the king of his staff of office, ring, mace, and crown. These insignia he takes into the sanctuary and places on a seat. Coming out again, he strikes the king across the face. He now leads him into the sanctuary and pulling him by the ears, forces him to kneel before the god. The king utters the formula:
I have not sinned, Lord of the lands,
I have not been negligent of your godhead.
I have not destroyed Babylon,
I have not ordered her to be dispersed.
I have not made Esagil quake,
I have not forgotten its rites.
I have not struck the privileged citizens in the faces,
I have not humiliated them.
I have paid attention to Babylon,
I have not destroyed her walls…

He leaves the sanctuary. The šešgallu replies to this with an assurance of Bel’s favor and indulgence towards the king: “He will destroy your enemies, defeat your adversaries,” and the king regains the customary composure of his expression and is reinvested with his insignia, fetched by the šešgallu from within the sanctuary. Once more he strikes the king across the face, for an omen: if the king’s tears flow, Bel is favorably disposed; if not, he is angry.

²⁶ A. J. Heschel, Prophets, p. 31. More generally, this attitude opposes Alma’s description of the distinctive traits of any who are desirous to be called God’s covenant people in Mosiah 18:8–9 (“willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; … willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort”; cf. D&C 42:45). This covenantal sympathy turns out later to be a sort of imitatio dei, as God states, “I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions” (Mosiah 24:13–14, emphasis added). Note also the emphasis in both Mosiah 18:9 and 24:14 on standing “as witnesses” of God through this sympathetic interaction.

²⁷ See T. Fretheim, Suffering, especially chapter 10, “Prophet, Theophany, and the Suffering of God” (pp. 149–166).

²⁸ Ibid.., p. 149.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 151.

³⁰ Some of Israel’s neighbors also held this view. Humanity’s capacity to weep as the gods did is alluded to in the Middle Egyptian Coffin Text 1130. It reads, “I have created the gods from my sweat, and the people from the tears of my eye” (M. Lichtheim, Readings, p. 132). In making this association between the creation of humanity and the tears of the god, the author is playing on the Egyptian words for “people” (rmṯ) and “tears” (rmyt), suggesting a link between the two terms (cf. H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 43, citing Hornung). Nibley cites a very close association with our Book of Moses text in a manuscript, where, in a mention of the Ugaritic Enoch, it is asked: “Who is Krt that he should weep? Or shed tears, the Good one, the Lad of El?” (cited in ibid., p. 42). With respect to Enoch as a “lad,” see Essay #3.

³¹ T. Fretheim, Suffering, p. 150.

³² Moses 7:20.

³³ Moses 7:28-31, 37, 40.

³⁴ Moses 7:41, 44.

³⁵ H. Sperling et al., Zohar, Shemoth 8a, 3:22. See also the mention of the “two tears of the Holy One …, namely two measures of chastisement, which comes from both of those tears” (ibid., Shemoth 19b, 3:62).

³⁶ Moses 7:40.

³⁷ Ezekiel 9:3.

³⁸ Ezekiel 11:23.

³⁹ M. Odell, Ezekiel, p. 119.

⁴⁰ Moses 7:21, 23, 27, 31.

⁴¹ Revelation 21:2.

⁴² P. Perkins, First and Second, p. 154, cited in B. Witherington, III, Letters, Jude 14-16, p. 624.

⁴³ J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 183. Cf. R. Cameron et al., CMC, 58:6-20, p. 45.

⁴⁴ Jude 1:15, citing G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 1:9, p. 142. See also 1 Enoch 5:4, 27:2, 101:3. 2 Peter 2:5 labels this same generation as “ungodly.”

⁴⁵ M.-A. Ouaknin et al., Rabbi Éliézer, 22, p. 134.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 22, p. 136.

⁴⁷ J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 187. For a list of ancient sources, see ibid., p. 183, p. 200 n. 17.

⁴⁸ P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 4:3, p. 258: “When the generation of the Flood sinned and turned to evil deeds, and said to God, ‘Go away! We do not choose to learn your ways’ [cf. Job 21:14], the Holy One, blessed be he, took me [Enoch] from their midst to be a witness against them in the heavenly height to all who should come into the world, so that they should not say, ‘The Merciful One is cruel! …’”

⁴⁹ Moses 7:33. Cf. Isaiah 1:2-3, where Isaiah “pleads with us to understand the plight of a father whom his children have abandoned” (A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:80). For more on this theme, see Essay #25.

⁵⁰ Job 21:14–15. Cf. Exodus 5:2, Malachi 3:13–15, Mosiah 11:27, Moses 5:16.

⁵¹ J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 188.

⁵² Ibid., p. 183.

⁵³ F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, A (short version), 1:2-4, pp. 105, 107.

⁵⁴ See also Moses 6:35–36, where Enoch is asked to anoint his eyes with clay prior to receiving a vision (cf. John 9:6–7). When the Lord spoke with Abraham face to face, He first put His hand upon the latter’s eyes to prepare him for his vision of the universe (see Abraham 3:11–12). Joseph Smith was reportedly so touched at the beginning of the First Vision, and perhaps prior to receiving D&C 76.

With respect to the First Vision, Charles Lowell Walker recorded the following (C. L. Walker, Diary, 2 February 1893, 2:755-756, punctuation and capitalization modernized):

Br. John Alger said while speaking of the Prophet Joseph, that when he, John, was a small boy he heard the Prophet Joseph relate his vision of seeing the Father and the Son. [He said t]hat God touched his eyes with his finger and said “Joseph, this is my beloved Son hear him.” As soon as the Lord had touched his eyes with his finger, he immediately saw the Savior. After meeting, a few of us questioned him about the matter and he told us at the bottom of the meeting house steps that he was in the house of Father Smith in Kirtland when Joseph made this declaration, and that Joseph while speaking of it put his finger to his right eye, suiting the action with the words so as to illustrate and at the same time impress the occurrence on the minds of those unto whom he was speaking. We enjoyed the conversation very much, as it was something that we had never seen in church history or heard of before.

Whether meant literally or figuratively, Joseph said that his eyes were also touched prior to his receiving the vision of the three degrees of glory:

… the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings, and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about.
And we beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father, and received of his fulness. (see D&C 76:19-20.)

As in the First Vision, the initial result of the “touch” that opened Joseph Smith’s eyes was that he beheld the Savior in His glory. The statement that they “received of his fulness” is also remarkable. Here are the corresponding verses in the poetic rendition of D&C 76:

15. I marvel’d at these resurrections, indeed!
For it came unto me by the spirit direct:—
And while I did meditate what it all meant,
The Lord touch’d the eyes of my own intellect:—
16. Hosanna forever! they open’d anon,
And the glory of God shone around where I was;
And there was the Son, at the Father’s right hand,
In a fulness of glory, and holy applause.

See J. Smith, Jr. (or W. W. Phelps), A Vision, 1 February 1843, stanzas 15–16, p. 82, reprinted in L. E. Dahl, Vision, p. 297, emphasis added. Thanks to Bryce Haymond for pointing out this reference.

⁵⁵ J. Smith, Jr. et al., Manuscript Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition, Revelation Book 2, 48 [verso], 27 February 1833, pp. 508-509, spelling and punctuation modernized.

⁵⁶ J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 189, citing 4 Ezra 5:13, 20; 6:35; 2 Apoc. Bar. 6:2–8:3; 9:2–10:1; 3 Apoc. Bar. 1:1–3; and Daniel 10:2–5. He also observes that weeping is a component of ritual mourning (see Deuteronomy 21:13).

⁵⁷ The two accounts of Enoch mentioned previously can be profitably compared to the experience of Lehi who, “because of the things which he saw and heard he did quake and tremble exceedingly,” and “he cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit” (1 Nephi 1:6-7). Whereupon the heavens were the opened to him (see 1 Nephi 1:8). See also, e.g., Baruch’s weeping for the loss of the temple (A. F. J. Klijn, 2 Baruch, 35:2, p. 632, quoting Jeremiah 9:1), which was also followed by a vision.

⁵⁸ Ephesians 1:10.

⁵⁹ JST Genesis 9:22.

⁶⁰ Moses 7:6

October 30, 2020February 15, 2021

The Weeping Voice of the Heavens

Book of Moses Essay #27

Moses 7:28-29, 40, 42-43

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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Describing the literal and figurative weeping of the heavens at the time of Enoch, Hugh Nibley writes:¹

One of nature’s ironies is that not enough water usually leads to too much. Enoch’s world was plagued by flood as well as drought; we are regaled by the picture of lowering heavens ceaselessly dumping dismal avalanches of rain and snow upon the earth. The constant weeping of Enoch and all the saints is matched in the powerful imagery of the weeping heavens and the earth veiled in darkness under the blackest of skies: In the book of Enoch the same imagery is applied to the meridian and the fulness of times as well as the Adamic age.

In this Essay, we will survey examples of the weeping of the heavens from the time of Creation through the time of Noah.

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Creation

Providing a plausible echo of the imagery of the weeping of the heavens in Enoch’s account is an ancient Jewish theme that is always associated with the second day of Creation, when the heavenly and earthly waters were separated by the firmament. According to David Lieber:²

The Midrash pictures the lower waters weeping at being separated from the upper waters, suggesting that there is something poignant in the creative process when things once united are separated.

So painful was the command of God for the waters to separate that they were seen as having actually rebelled.³ As Heschel recounts:⁴

On the second day of creation, the Holy and Blessed One said: “Let there be an expanse (raki’a) in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water. God made the expanse, and it separated the water that was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse.”⁵ God said to the waters: “Divide yourselves into two halves; one half shall go up, and the other half shall go down”; but the waters presumptuously all went upward. Said to them the Holy and Blessed One: “I told you that only half should go upward, and all of you went upward?” Said the waters: “We shall not descend!” Thus did they brazenly confront their Creator. … What did the Holy and Blessed One do? God extended His little finger, and they tore into two parts, and God took half of them down against their will. Thus it is written: “God said, ‘let there be an expanse’”⁶ (raki’a)—do not read “expanse” (raki’a) but “tear” (keri’a).”

Heschel makes it clear “that the waters rebelled against their Creator not out of competitiveness or jealousy but rather out of protest against the partition made by the Holy and Blessed One between the upper and lower realms.”⁷

Avivah Zornberg has the lower waters complaining:⁸ “We want to be in the presence of the King.” This statement is made meaningful in the understanding that the partition that divided the upper and lower divisions of the waters was an allusion to the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from other precincts in the temple. Because of their separation, the lower waters no longer enjoyed the glory of the direct presence of God.⁹

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Enoch

Jewish tradition records that the weeping of the heavens at the time of Enoch included not only the figurative drenching of the world in rain, but also the literal weeping of God, the angels, and the patriarchs. For example, in 3 Enoch, Enoch is led on a tour of heaven where he sees the righteous who have ascended to heaven pray to the Holy One:¹⁰ “Lord of the Universe, how long will you sit upon your throne, as a mourner sits in the days of his mourning, with your right hand behind you, and not redeem your sons?” Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the rest of the righteous wonder when God will show his compassion and save his children, with the same “right hand” by which he created the heavens and the earth.

God answers the petitioners, explaining that He cannot save His people “in their sins”¹¹ : “Since these wicked ones have sinned thus and thus, and have transgressed thus and thus before me, how can I deliver my sons from among the nations of the world, reveal my kingdom in the world before the eyes of the gentiles and deliver my great right hand which has been brought low by them?”¹²

Metatron (Enoch) then calls out for the book of remembrance to be read, in which the wicked deeds of the people were recorded, with every letter of the law having been violated from A to Z.¹³ “At once, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob began to weep. … [And] Michael, the Prince of Israel, cried out and lamented in a loud voice, saying: ‘Lord, why do you stand aside?’”¹⁴

Summing up the scene, Elder Neal A. Maxwell observed:¹⁵ “When Enoch saw the heavens weep, they reflected the same drenching and wrenching feelings of the Father.” Sadly, mankind was heedless and the suffering was needless.

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Noah

Even though the heavens are usually conceived of as being far above the earth, Jewish sages knew them as being very near. In one story, Simeon ben Zoma is recorded as having said:¹⁶

I was pondering the creation of the universe and I have concluded that there was scarcely a handbreadth’s division between the upper and lower waters. For we read in Scripture, “The spirit of God hovered over the waters.”¹⁷ Now Scripture also says: “Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, hovering over his young.”¹⁸ Just as an eagle, when it flies over its nest, barely touches the nest, so there is barely a handbreadth’s distance separating the upper and lower waters.”

Given the creation setting of this motif, it is not surprising that the Book of Moses associates the weeping of the heavens with the story of the Flood, which, in essence, recounts the destruction and the re-creation of the earth.¹⁹

To appreciate the complex symbolism in the stories of the Creation and the Flood with respect to the separation and uniting of the waters, one must see the imagery of the Ark as it would have been seen through ancient eyes.²⁰ Briefly, in the story of the Ark’s bird-like “hovering” motions upon the waters, we are made to understand that, figuratively speaking, the very sky has fallen. As a consequence, the “habitable and culture-orientated world lying between the heavens above and the underworld below, and separating them”²¹ by “a handbreadth’s distance,”²² has utterly disappeared.²³

New life, of which the Ark was a portent, cannot come into being without some measure of pain and destruction, as Enoch’s account reminds us when it compares the elements of mortal birth to those involved in spiritual rebirth.²⁴ Like human birth, the re-breaking of the waters when the earth was created anew involved pain—and the action of tearing:²⁵ “The tear in the waters was necessary to create space in which life could develop, and the tear of birth is necessary for the baby to begin an independent life.” The weeping of the heavens witnessed by Enoch as a prelude to the Flood, and the rains that attended the Flood itself were inevitable accompaniments to the pain of the birthing of a new telestial earth, separated for a second time from heaven.

Figure 2. Boleslaw Parasion, 1950–: Noah’s Ark

The sculpture above is drawn from former mission president Walter Whipple’s large collection of Polish folk art. It “depicts a thoughtful God guiding the Ark with his hands.”²⁶

Although the Bible does not mention explicitly God’s role during the Flood at the time of Noah, the scene shown in the sculpture is described in 1 Enoch 67:2:²⁷ “I will put my hand upon [the Ark] and protect it.” George Nickelsburg conjectures that “God’s placing a protective hand on the Ark corresponds either to Genesis 7:16 (“and YHWH shut him in”), or to the covering of the Ark mentioned in Genesis 6:16; 8:13, or both.”²⁸

However, we discover a better parallel to 1 Enoch than anything in Genesis in the Grand Vision of Enoch found in Moses 7:43: “Enoch saw that Noah built an ark; and that the Lord smiled upon it, and held it in his own hand.” The language of the Lord smiling upon the Ark is reminiscent of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:25 (“The Lord make his face shine upon thee”) but the passage finds an even greater resonance in 3 Nephi 19:25 when Jesus visited his disciples and “his countenance did smile upon them, and the light of his countenance did shine upon them.”

In this connection, some ancient interpreters saw in the mention of a tsohar in the Ark an allusion to a shining stone that was said to have hung from its rafters in order to lighten the darkness within.²⁹ Readers of the Book of Mormon will not miss the similarity to the story of the shining stones divinely provided to the brother of Jared to provide light for their barges.³⁰

While the heavens wept for the destruction of the earth, the light of the Lord smiled upon the Ark as a portent of a new Creation. And not only can God hold the Ark “in his own hand,”³¹ He has already told Enoch that He can “stretch forth [his] hands and hold all the creations which [he has] made.”³² In passages resonating with this Book of Moses imagery, Jewish mystical tradition envisions Enoch as protectively holding the cosmos in his hands in a joint effort with God Himself.³³

References

Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Dant, Doris R. “Polish religious folk art: Gospel echoes from a disparate clime.” BYU Studies 37, no. 2 (1997-1998): 88-112.

Freedman, H., and Maurice Simon, eds. 1939. Midrash Rabbah 3rd ed. 10 vols. London, England: Soncino Press, 1983.

Gardner, Brant A. Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary of the Book of Mormon. 6 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007.

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962, 1965, 1995. Heavenly Torah as Refracted Through the Generations. 3 in 1 vols. Translated by Gordon Tucker. New York City, NY: Continuum International, 2007.

Lieber, David L., ed. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. New York City, NY: The Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, produced by The Jewish Publication Society, 2001.

Maxwell, Neal A. Moving in His Majesty and Power. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2004.

Neusner, Jacob, ed. Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation. 3 vols. Vol. 1: Parashiyyot One through Thirty-Three on Genesis 1:1 to 8:14. Brown Judaic Studies 104, ed. Jacob Neusner. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985.

Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.

———. “The Babylonian Background.” In Lehi in the Desert, The World of the Jaredites, There Were Jaredites, edited by John W. Welch, Darrell L. Matthews and Stephen R. Callister. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 5, 350-79. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1988.

———. 1957. An Approach to the Book of Mormon. 3rd ed. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 6. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1988.

———. 1989-1990. Teachings of the Book of Mormon. 4 vols. Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004.

Orlov, Andrei A. “Adoil outside the cosmos: God before and after creation in the Enochic tradition.” In Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, edited by April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson. Gnostica: Tests and Interpretations, eds. Garry Trompf, Iaian Gardner and Jason BeDuhn, 30-57. Bristol, CT: Acumen, 2013.

Reeves, John C., and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 2 vols. Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Wolski, Nathan, ed. The Zohar, Pritzker Edition. Vol. 10. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.

Wyatt, Nicolas. “The darkness of Genesis 1:2.” In The Mythic Mind: Essays on Cosmology and Religion in Ugaritic and Old Testament Literature, edited by Nicholas Wyatt, 92-101. London, England: Equinox, 2005.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. Genesis: The Beginning of Desire. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1995.

Notes on Figures

Figure 1. Moses 7:28. Image from https://wallpaperaccess.com/rain-cloud (accessed April 15, 2020). Photo ID: 701643. Public domain.

Figure 2. Item photographed is from the collection of Walter Whipple, with permission. With thanks to Jennifer Hurlbut and Marny Parkin of BYU Studies Quarterly.

Footnotes

¹ H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 198.

² D. L. Lieber, Etz Hayim, p. 5.

³ N. Wolski, Zohar 10, pp. 54.55 recounts that the firmament was created so that the “waters flowing from Hell would [not] mingle with other waters, injuring [God’s] creatures.”

⁴ A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 124, citing Midrash Konen, Otzar Midrashim, 254.

⁵ Genesis 1:6–7.

⁶ Genesis 1:6.

⁷ A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 125.

⁸ A. G. Zornberg, Genesis, pp. 5–6.

⁹ Note Louis Ginzberg’s reconstruction of Jewish tradition about the days of Creation (L. Ginzberg, Legends, 1:51):

God told the angels: On the first day of Creation, I shall make the heavens and stretch them out; so will Israel raise up the Tabernacle as the dwelling place of my Glory (see Exodus 40:17–19). On the second day I shall put a division between the terrestrial waters and the heavenly waters, so will [Moses] hang up a veil in the Tabernacle to divide the Holy Place and the Most Holy (see Exodus 40:20–21).

¹⁰ P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 44:7, p. 295.

¹¹ See Alma 11:36–37. Some late Islamic Enoch accounts focus specifically on the deeds of the giants. For example, in Ṣaḥā’if Idrīs and Sunan Idrīs it is said that “they shed blood to the point that their deeds made the earth and the heavens weep”(J. C. Reeves et al., Enoch from Antiquity 1, pp. 327-328). By way of contrast, the Jewish Bereshit Rabbati reports that Shemḥazai, the father of prominent giants, also lamented. However, it was not for the wickedness of his sons but rather for the fact that his sons might starve if the world were destroyed: “for each of them would eat one thousand camels, one thousand horses, and one thoustand of every kind of cattle (daily)” (ibid., pp. 182-183).

¹² P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 44:8, p. 295.

¹³ Ibid., 44:9, pp. 295–296.

¹⁴ Ibid., 44:10, p. 296.

¹⁵ N. A. Maxwell, Moving, p. 17.

¹⁶ A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 125, citing Tosefta Hagigah 2:6; PT Hagigah 2:1 (77a-b); BT Hagigah 15a; J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, 2:4, p. 25.

¹⁷ Genesis 1:2.

¹⁸ Deuteronomy 32:11.

¹⁹ See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, p. 277.

²⁰ See ibid., p. 256.

²¹ N. Wyatt, Darkness, p. 93.

²² A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 125, citing Tosefta Hagigah 2:6; PT Hagigah 2:1 (77a-b); BT Hagigah 15a; J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, 2:4, p. 25.

²³ Cf. 2 Peter 3:6: “the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”

²⁴ Moses 6:59–60. See Essays #16 and #21.

²⁵ A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 124 n. 46.

²⁶ D. R. Dant, Polish, p. 91.

²⁷ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 67:2, p. 273.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 288 n. 2a-c.

²⁹ See, e.g., H. Freedman et al., Midrash, 31:11, Genesis 6:16, 1:244; M.-A. Ouaknin et al., Rabbi Éliézer, 23, pp. 139-140. Cf. H. W. Nibley, Babylonian Background, pp. 359-364; H. W. Nibley, Approach, pp. 336-337, 343-348; H. W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, 4:288-289; B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 6:195-199.

³⁰ Ether 3:1-6, 6:3.

³¹ Moses 7:43.

³² Moses 7:36, emphasis added.

³³ Thanks to Matthew L. Bowen for this suggestion. In A. A. Orlov, Adoil Outside the Cosmos, p. 45, we read:

It is intriguing that Enoch-Metatron’s governance of the wolrd includes not only administrative functions but also the duty of the physical sustenance of the world. Moshe Idel refers to the treatise The Seventy Names of Metatron where the angel and God seize the world in their hands. This motif of the Deity and his vice-regent grasping the universe in their cosmic hands invokes the conceptual developments found in the Shiur Qomah and Hekhalot materials, where Enoch-Metatron possesses a cosmic corporeality comparable to the physicque of the Deity and is depicted as the measurement of the divine Body.

October 23, 2020February 15, 2021

The Complaining Voice of the Earth

Book of Moses Essay #26

Moses 7:48-49, 54, 61, 64

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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In a previous Essay,¹ we observed that three distinct parties weep for the wickedness of mankind: God,² the heavens,³ and Enoch himself.⁴ In addition, a fourth party, the earth, complains and mourns—though she doesn’t specifically “weep”—for her children.⁵ In the present article, we discuss affinities in the ancient Enoch literature and in the laments of Jeremiah to the complaint of the earth in Moses 7:48–49.

Valuable articles by Andrew Skinner⁶ and Daniel Peterson,⁷ following Hugh Nibley’s lead,⁸ discuss interesting parallels to these verses in ancient sources. Peterson follows J. J. M. Roberts in citing examples of Sumerian laments of the mother goddess and showing how a similar motif appears in Jeremiah in the guise of the personified city as the mother of her people⁹ by way of analogy to the role of the mourning earth as “the mother of men”¹⁰ in the Book of Moses. Roberts illustrates this by citing Jeremiah 10:19–21:¹¹

Woe is me because my hurt!

My wound is grievous.

But I said, “Truly this is my punishment,

and I must bear it.

My tent is plundered and all my cords are broken;

my children have gone out from me, and they are no more;

there is no one to spread my tent again,

and to set up my curtains.

For the shepherds were stupid,

And did not inquire of Yahweh;

Therefore they did not prosper,

And all their flock is scattered.”

Emphasizing the appropriateness of a Sumerian-Akkadian milieu for this concept in Moses 7, Skinner¹² cites S. H. Langdon as follows:¹³

The Sumerian Earth-mother is repeatedly referred to in Sumerian and Babylonian names as the mother of mankind … This mythological doctrine is thoroughly accepted in Babylonian religion. … In early Akkadian, this mythology is already firmly established among the Semites.

Although the motif of a complaining earth is not found anywhere in the Bible, it does turn up in 1 Enoch and in the Qumran Book of Giants.¹⁴ In 1 Enoch we find the following references:

· 1 Enoch 7:4–6; 8:4:¹⁵ And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and beasts and creeping
things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought accusation against the lawless ones .… (And) as men were perishing, the cry went up to heaven.

· 1 Enoch 9:2, 10:¹⁶ And entering in, they said to one another, “The earth, devoid (of inhabitants), raises¹⁷ the voice of their cries to the gates of heaven … And now behold, the spirits of the souls of the men who have died make suit; and their groan has come up to the gates of heaven; and it does not cease to come forth from before the iniquities that
have come upon the earth.

· 1 Enoch 87:1:¹⁸ And again I saw them, and they began to gore one another and devour one another, and the earth began to cry out.

In the Book of the Giants 4Q203, Frag. 8:6–12 we read:¹⁹

6. ‘Let it be known to you th[at ] [

7. your activity and (that) of [your] wive[s ]

8. those (giants) [and their] son[s and] the [w]ives o[f ]

9. through your fornication on the earth, and it (the earth) has [risen up ag]ainst y[ou

and is crying out]

10. and raising accusation against you [and ag]ainst the activity of your sons[

11. the corruption which you have committed on it (the earth) vacat [

12. has reached Raphael. …

Consistent with other comparisons that have been made between the accounts of Enoch in the Book of Moses, the Qumran Book of Giants, and 1 Enoch, Skinner finds that resemblances to the Qumran Enoch text are more compelling than those found in 1 Enoch. First, he notes that the nature of the wickedness in the Book of Giants is described as “fornication,”²⁰ which corresponds semantically to the term “filthiness” used in the Book of Moses.²¹ By way of contrast, the wickedness being complained of in 1 Enoch is the crimes of murder and violence.

Second, Skinner notes that in both the Qumran Book of Giants fragment and “Moses 7 the earth itself complains of and decries the wickedness of the people, while the [first two] 1 Enoch texts emphasize the cries of men ascending to heaven” ²² by means of the earth.²³

Skinner also notes that in the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses, “the ultimate motivation behind the earth’s cry for redress against the intense wickedness on her surface” is a plea “for a cleansing of and sanctification from the pervasive wickedness by means of a heavenly personage and heavenly powers. In the Book of Moses the earth importunes,²⁴ ‘When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which has gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?’”²⁵ Likewise, in the Book of Giants, the earth complains about how the wicked have corrupted it through licentiousness and anticipates a destruction that will cleanse it from wickedness.²⁶

Conclusions

From a literary standpoint, the complaint of the earth is moving poetry. O. Glade Hunsaker gives two examples:²⁷

Enoch hears and describes the personified soul of the earth alliteratively as the “mother of men” agonizing from the bowels of the earth²⁸ that she is “weary” of “wickedness.” [When the earth began her speech, she commenced with “Wo, wo,” prefiguring the latter echo.] The tension of the drama resolves itself as the voice uses assonance in pleading for “righteousness” to “abide” for a season.

But it is more than poetry, of course. It is also history—and prophecy. Moses 7:61, 64 happily proclaim that “the day shall come that the earth shall rest … for the space of a thousand years” and then woefully inform us that before that relief finally is given, the earth will again suffer great filthiness just before the Lord returns:

The heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth;²⁹ and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve.³⁰

References

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014.

Hunsaker, O. Glade. “Pearl of Great Price, Literature.” In Encyclopedia of Mormonism, edited by Daniel H. Ludlow. 4 vols. Vol. 3, 1072. New York City, NY: Macmillan, 1992. http://www.lib.byu.edu/Macmillan/. (accessed November 26, 2007).

Langdon, Stephen H. “Semitic.” In The Mythology of All Races. Vol. 5, 12-13. New York City, NY: Cooper Square, 1964.

Maxwell, Neal A. 1975. Of One Heart: The Glory of the City of Enoch. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1980.

Mika’el, Bakhayla. ca. 1400. “The book of the mysteries of the heavens and the earth.” In The Book of the Mysteries of the Heavens and the Earth and Other Works of Bakhayla Mika’el (Zosimas), edited by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1-96. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1934. Reprint, Berwick, ME: Ibis Press, 2004.

Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.

Parry, Donald W., and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader Second ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.

Roberts, J. J. M. 1992. “The motif of the weeping God in Jeremiah and its background in the lament tradition of the ancient Near East.” In The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays, edited by J. J. M. Roberts, 132-42. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.

Skinner, Andrew C. “Joseph Smith vindicated again: Enoch, Moses 7:48, and apocryphal sources.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 365-81. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.

Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. New York City, NY: Harper-Collins, 1996.

Notes on Figures

Figure 1. NASA / Goddard / MODIS Land Rapid Response, 28 December 2012. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/80085/dust-over-the-arabian-sea. Public Domain.

Footnotes

¹ See Essay #25.

² Moses 7:28–29.

³ Moses 7:28, 37, 40.

⁴ Moses 7:41, 49.

⁵ Moses 7:48–49.

⁶ A. C. Skinner, Vindicated.

⁷ D. C. Peterson, Weeping God.

⁸ H. W. Nibley, Enoch, pp. 11–14, 74–75, 205–206.

⁹ J. J. M. Roberts, Motif of the Weeping God, p. 133.

¹⁰ Moses 7:48.

¹¹ J. J. M. Roberts, Motif of the Weeping God, p. 133.

¹² A. C. Skinner, Vindicated, p. 376.

¹³ S. H. Langdon, Semitic.

¹⁴ It also turns up in later texts, e.g., B. Mika’el, Mysteries, p. 29: “[e]ven the earth complained and uttered lamentations.”

¹⁵ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 7:4–6, 8:4, pp. 182, 188, emphasis added.

¹⁶ Ibid., 9:2, 10, p. 202, emphasis added.

¹⁷ Or, more literally, “cries the voice of their cries” (A. C. Skinner, Vindicated, p. 375).

¹⁸ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 87:1, p. 364, emphasis added.

¹⁹ D. W. Parry et al., DSSR (2013), p. 945.

²⁰ Or “licentiousness” in the translation of M. Wise et al., DSS, 4Q203 Frag. 8:9, p. 294. Aramaic znwtkwn.

²¹ A. C. Skinner, Vindicated, p. 377 argues that “filthiness, immorality, and idolatry are closely associated with each other in Semitic-based biblical culture. See, for example, Ezra 6:21; 9:11; Ezekiel 16:36; 24:13; Revelation 17:4.”

²² Ibid., p. 377.

²³ Nickelsburg relates this accusation to Genesis 4:10–11, and cites “an Aramaic technical term for bringing suit in court” (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 187 n. 6), recalling the context of Isaiah 1 discussed in Essay #25.

²⁴ Moses 7:48.

²⁵ A. C. Skinner, Vindicated, pp. 377–378.

²⁶ Cf., e.g., Job 21:17, 30; Proverbs 10:29; Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:4.

²⁷ O. G. Hunsaker, Literature.

²⁸ Compare Jeremiah 4:19.

²⁹ Compare Moses 7:56 (“the heavens were veiled”) and D&C 38:8 (“the veil of darkness shall soon be rent”), which imply that this veil will cut off direct communication from heaven. Cf. D&C 110:1: “The veil was taken from our minds.” See also a phrase added to the end of Genesis 9:26 in the JST: “and a veil of darkness shall cover him” (S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, pp. 118, 632. See also J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Genesis 9:26, p. 323).

³⁰ Elder Neal A. Maxwell commented (N. A. Maxwell, One Heart, p. v): “God preserved and prepared Enoch’s people in the midst of awful and enveloping evil, and, reassuringly, he has promised his people in our own time that though ‘great tribulations shall be among the children of men, … my people will I preserve.’”

October 16, 2020February 15, 2021

A Chorus of Weeping

Book of Moses Essay #25

Moses 7:18-49

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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Within the Book of Moses, the stories of rescue and exaltation in the accounts of Noah and Enoch share a common motif of water. On one hand, Noah’s waters are the waters of destruction, the floods of an all-consuming deluge that cleanses the earth as a prelude to a new creation.¹ On the other hand, Enoch’s waters are the waters of sorrow, the bitter tears that precede the terrible annihilating storm. Indeed, in the vision of Enoch found in Joseph Smith’s revelations, not one but three distinct parties weep for the wickedness of mankind: God,² the heavens,³ and Enoch himself.⁴ In addition, a fourth party, the earth, complains and mourns—though does not specifically “weep”—for her children.⁵

The present Essay gives a general overview of the “chorus of weeping” described in the first part of what has been called Enoch’s “Grand Vision.”⁶ Subsequent Essays will discuss affinities in the ancient Enoch literature and in the laments of Jeremiah to the detailed descriptions of the individual members of this chorus we read about in Moses 7.

Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 as Models for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Vision

The structure of the first part of Enoch’s Grand Vision is a beautiful example of a general model best exemplified in two classic chapters of the Old Testament: Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32. Before discussing these two chapters as models for Enoch’s vision, we will give some general background on them and their relationship to each other.

Ronald Bergey describes Isaiah 1 as “a case of early intertextuality” with Deuteronomy 32.⁷ Evidence indicates that both of these texts are very old. Despite controversy about the dating of other chapters in Isaiah, the first chapter is regarded by most contemporary scholars as belonging to “major collections of judgment speeches authentic to the prophet Isaiah ben Amoz.”⁸ As for the Song of Moses (Shirat Ha’azinu) that is found in Deuteronomy 32:1–43, it is thought to be “an independent composition, older than the rest of Deuteronomy,”⁹ “perhaps considerably older.”¹⁰

Referring to controversies about the genre of Isaiah 1, John F. Hobbins wisely cautions against pigeon-holing prophetic speeches into rigid categories:¹¹

In my view, the greatest stumbling block to understanding is created by the false expectation that prophetic speech will adhere to any conventions beyond its own in a sustained and predictable fashion. To the contrary, prophetic discourse exploits whatever genres and topoi serve its purposes without reproducing them in full or slavishly following them. In [Isaiah] 1:2–20, notions of a deity calling on heaven and earth to witness a grievance against a client nation; of a relationship of privilege and obligation established by a deity on a nation’s behalf, whereby he is understood as father and they as sons; of procedures a parent might follow when faced with a wayward and defiant son; … and of conceivable resolutions to a quarrel between two parties, are all exploited for rhetorical ends.¹²

Below we will give an overview of the structure for the first part of Enoch’s Grand Vision contained in Moses 7:18–41 (see Appendix for a provisional version of the full structure), highlighting themes similar to some of those mentioned by Hobbins above in his outline of Isaiah 1, including:

· God’s call for heaven and earth to witness His grievance

· The relationship of privilege and obligation entailed by a Father and His children

· The actions God will take in view of the wayward and defiant state of His children

· God’s proposal for a merciful resolution of their troubles

Analogues to each of these themes will be seen in the summary below. In our discussion, we will draw liberally from the analyses of Hobbins and others to demonstrate how Enoch’s grand vision, like Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 1, artfully combines seemingly contradictory aspects of God’s “justice” and “mercy” within a single passage.

1. Zion Is Blessed, But the Residue of the People Is Cursed

The passage opens with a statement by Enoch that serves as a prologue to and catalyst for the vision. Rejoicing in the happy fate of his people, Enoch exulted: “Surely Zion shall dwell in safety forever.”¹³ God’s reply was a gentle rebuke, affirming Enoch’s hopes for Zion while reminding him that His Fatherly care extends beyond the righteous to those who suffer because of their wickedness: “Zion have I blessed, but the residue of the people have I cursed.”¹⁴ With “all the nations of the earth … before him,”¹⁵ Enoch witnessed that “the power of Satan was upon all the face of the earth”¹⁶ “generation upon generation.”¹⁷ Though “many … were caught up by the powers of heaven into Zion,” ¹⁸ after the testimony of angels, “Satan … had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness.”¹⁹

2. The Heavens Weep for the Residue of the People—God’s Children and Enoch’s Brethren

The opening verses of Moses 7:28–41 recall the opening verse of Isaiah 1:1 and Deuteronomy 32:1, where the heavens and the earth are called upon to witness the Lord’s lament. However, in this case the heavens are not passive observers, but rather active participants who weep with God in His sorrow.

In the form the passage was originally dictated in OT1, the momentum of the previous narrative is carried forward as it steadily builds up to an almost unbearable intensity of sorrow. The weeping “God of heaven”²⁰ leads out in a heavenly “chorus”²¹ that eventually comes to include “all the workmanship of [His] hands”²² —at which point Enoch, the protagonist of the account, also joins in, with full heart and soul.

In a few verses that precede Moses 7:28, we see additional support for the logic of the OT1 narrative that has God weeping and Enoch bearing record. Note the significant sequence when angels descend “out of heaven” to warn the earth,²³ followed by angels that come down “out of heaven” to bear testimony of the Godhead.²⁴ In parallel to this sequence, we are then told that the “God of heaven” weeps, while Enoch bears record.²⁵ Such references seem to be anticipated in the statement of God in Moses 6:63: “All things are created and made to bear record of me.”

2a. Enoch’s question: “How is it that thou canst weep?” Enoch is dumbfounded when he sees God weep. Mirroring a pattern found elsewhere in scripture,²⁶ Enoch’s initial, indirect inquiry (“How is it that the heavens weep?”²⁷) is immediately followed with a more pointed version of the question: “How is it that thou canst weep?”²⁸

Despite the plural “heavens” that are mentioned in OT1’s initial description of the addressee of Enoch’s question, any ambiguity about whether the “thou” in the question (“How is it that thou canst weep?”) refers to the “heavens” or to “God” is resolved not only by the singular “thou” but also by his description of his interlocutor as being not only “holy and from all eternity to all eternity” but also as the Creator of the heavens and the earth.²⁹

Note also that the answer to Enoch’s question comes directly from God. Since God’s answer is given with no intervening explanation, it is evident that the reader is meant to understand that God and the members of His heavenly retinue are perfectly conjoined as one in their sorrow, as Terryl Givens rightly observed.

Remarkably, other accounts from the ancient Near East also describe how the heavens (or, more precisely, the heavenly host) joined the chief divinity in weeping over impending destruction. For example, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which scholars have linked to the Enoch account in the Book of Giants,³⁰ the goddess Ishtar laments her support for the destruction of humanity, portrayed as her children, by means of a cataclysmic flood:³¹

The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth,

Belet-ili wailed, whose voice is so sweet:

“The olden times have turned to clay,

because I spoke evil in the gods’ assembly,

How could I speak evil in the gods’ assembly,

And declare a war to destroy my people?

“It is I who give birth, these people are mine!

And now, like fish, they fill the ocean!”

In response, the heavenly host join in a chorus of weeping over the dire situation:³²

The Anunnaki gods were weeping with
her,

wet-faced with sorrow, they were weeping [with her,]

their lips were parched and stricken with fever.

2b. The Lord’s judgment: “I will send in the floods upon them.” Book of Moses parallels to the general model of Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 continue in this section: Having called all Creation together to witness His suffering, the Lord now explains His grievance and describes the “punishment for defection.”³³

The Lord’s compassion for the victims of wickedness compels Him to put an end to the machinations of those who have stubbornly-persisted in “hat[ing] their own blood,” being wholly “without affection” for both God and man.³⁴ As Abraham Heschel expresses it with respect to Isaiah 1:³⁵

The destructiveness of God’s power is not due to God’s hostility to man, but to His concern for righteousness, to His intolerance of injustice. The human mind seems to have no sense for the true dimension of man’s cruelty to man. God’s anger is fierce because man’s cruelty is infernal.

In marked contrast to the descriptions found in the pseudepigraphal 1 Enoch, where the wicked Watchers are condemned for eternity without possibility of reprieve,³⁶ the God of the Book of Moses, while condemning the sin, is moved by mercy for the sinner. He sorrows for the (self-induced) suffering of the wicked (v. 37) and provides a way for their salvation by offering the gift of the atonement of Christ (v. 39) and its accompanying invitation to “all men, everywhere” (v. 52) to repent and be made whole. Sadly, because of the “agency” God irrevocably gave humankind in the beginning (v. 32), He realizes that there is nothing he can do to help them unless they freely choose love over hate (v. 33). The needlessness of their suffering brings God great sorrow.³⁷

In all this the Book of Moses, like Isaiah 1:2–9, “echoes Deuteronomy 32:1–35 measure for measure.”³⁸ As Hobbins describes it:³⁹

First comes the call to heaven and earth to witness the indictment of Israel on charges of disloyalty; then, the playing off of Yahweh’s love for the people, the love of a father for his children, against the people’s insensate disobedience. … The tone is one of exasperation.

God’s reminder to the people in Moses 7:33 that He is “their Father” is consistent with similar descriptions in Isaiah 1⁴⁰ and Deuteronomy 32.⁴¹ The pointed emphasis on God’s filial relationship to humankind is significant in light of Bergey’s observation that such “father-son imagery” is “rare in the prophets and elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures.”⁴² According to Heschel, Isaiah “pleads with us to understand the plight of a father whom his children have abandoned.”⁴³

Importantly, the defiant defection of the people does not lessen God’s love, nor does it slacken His patient, painstaking effort to bring them to their senses. As Heschel observes:⁴⁴

There is sorrow in God’s anger. It is an instrument of purification and its exercise will not last forever.

2c. The Lord’s lament: “Misery shall be their doom.” Further demonstrating that God’s foremost concern is over the misery of His children, He quickly abandons the theme of judgment, and launches into a stanza of lament. Hobbins aptly captured the pathos⁴⁵ of the corresponding passage in Isaiah 1 as follows:⁴⁶

The nation’s malaise [is described] as though the nation were an injured and uncared-for body, with the implication that, if not for estrangement, it would be cared for by the one committed to do so. The tone is accusatory and plaintive at the same time, a return to the text’s emotional point of departure.

The Book of Moses passage ends poignantly with God’s recital of the tragic fate of his rebellious children, followed by a rhetorical question:⁴⁷

But behold, their sins

shall be upon the heads of their fathers;

Satan shall be their father,

and misery shall be their doom;

and the whole heavens shall weep over them,

even all the workmanship of mine hands;

wherefore should not the heavens weep,

seeing these shall suffer?

2d. The Lord’s mercy: “Inasmuch as they will repent.” Describing the next part of the pattern in Isaiah 1, Hobbins writes:⁴⁸ “Yahweh’s decision not to blot the people out entirely, despite the defection, is then recounted.” Similarly, in Moses 7:38–39, God explains that His “Chosen” will suffer for the sins of the penitent and release them from “prison,” “inasmuch as they will repent.”⁴⁹

Enoch’s question about the weeping of the heavens in verse 29 had formed the opening of a powerful inclusio whose closing bookend is finally found in verse 40. Having concluded His answer to Enoch, God now reiterates his solidarity with the sorrowing of the heavens (“Wherefore, for this shall the heavens weep”), while in eloquent brevity He acknowledges the overflow of that bitter cup to the earth and its creatures (“yea, and all the workmanship of my hands”).

3. Enoch Weeps and His Heart Swells “Wide as Eternity”

Only now does the realization of the depth of God’s empathy finally draw out Enoch’s full response as “his heart swelled wide as eternity”—in other words, as wide as God’s heart.⁵⁰ Now Enoch unites his own voice with the heavenly chorus of weeping in a grand finale.⁵¹

Note that in the OT2 revision of Moses 7:28, in contrast to the OT1 dictation that appears in the canonized version of the Book of Moses, Enoch weeps prematurely, thus defusing the deliberate forestalling of the dramatic moment of Enoch’s sympathetic resonance with the heavens until after God’s poignant speech.⁵²

Beyond the beautiful literary unity and the striking echoes of the narrative structure to two notable Old Testament exemplars, what do we find of interest in this passage? These verses provide an overwhelming witness of the depth of God’s love as the central theme of the chapter, where “justice, love, and mercy meet in harmony divine.”⁵³

Daniel C. Peterson⁵⁴ has discussed at length the resemblance between the composition of this chorus of weeping and three similar voices within the laments of the book of Jeremiah: the feminine voice of the mother of the people (corresponding in the Book of Moses to the voice of the earth), the voice of the people (corresponding to Enoch), and the voice of God Himself. We will describe each of these three voices in turn, plus the weeping voice of the heavens, in the next few Essays.⁵⁵

This article is adapted from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and Ryan Dahle. “Textual criticism and the Book of Moses: A response to Colby Townsend’s ‘Returning to the sources’.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2020): in press. www.templethemes.net.

Notes on Figures

Figure 1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Michelangelo_Buonarroti_027.jpg (accessed April 6, 2020). Public domain. For more on the background of this painting see J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, caption for Figure M7-6, p. 112.

Footnotes

¹ One reader has remarked as follows:

It seems like water is always associated with death and destruction. What is important is what comes after the water whether the water is a flood, rain, or immersion. So we have the example of baptism (already covered in Moses 6), the rebirth of the earth after Noah’s cleansing flood and even the fertility and growth that is associated with the aftermath of the storms brought by the Aztec deity Tlaloc. So different types of water events that all represent trials and all that can have positive outcomes.
The questions is what is the outcome from the weeping? An increase of empathy or compassion?
In an unfinished and unpublished paper Hugh Nibley wrote: “Why then did the world have to be a vale of tears? For learning and for testing: to be without experience of the whole spectrum of suffering would leave one woefully unequipped to deal with the throngs of anguished spirits and sinful inhabitants that to our certain knowledge swarm around us. If our mission is to save others, we must know what they must be saved from” (As quoted in G. Gillum, Observations, Entry for 3 Dec 1997).

² Moses 7:28–29. See Essay #28.

³ Moses 7:28, 37, 40. See Essay #27.

⁴ Moses 7:41, 49. See Essay #28.

⁵ Moses 7:48–49, 54, 61, 64. See Essay #26.

⁶ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 122.

⁷ R. Bergey, Song of Moses.

⁸ Ibid., p. 37.

⁹ J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, Excursus 30, p. 510.

¹⁰ Ibid., Excursus 30, p. 513.

¹¹ J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 10.

¹² Hobbins goes on to mention significant resemblances elsewhere in the Old Testament ibid., p. 10):

In terms of deployment of topoi and themes, Isaiah 1:2–20 compares well, if not in every detail, with Deuteronomy 32:1–43, Hosea 4:1–19, and Micah 6:1–16. Its affinities with Micah 1:2–3:12, Amos 5:18–27, and Psalm 50 deserve note. It also shares language and themes with texts now integral to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

¹³ Moses 7:20.

¹⁴ Moses 7:20.

¹⁵ Moses 7:23.

¹⁶ Moses 7:24.

¹⁷ Moses 7:24.

¹⁸ Moses 7:27.

¹⁹ Moses 7:26.

²⁰ Moses 7:28.

²¹ For an extensive discussion of this “chorus” of weeping and its resemblances to Jeremiah and other ancient accounts in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Revisiting.

²² Moses 7:40.

²³ Moses 7:25.

²⁴ Moses 7:27.

²⁵ Moses 7:28. With regard to Enoch’s bearing record of God’s weeping, note the emphasis in both Mosiah 18:9 and 24:14 on standing “as witnesses” of God through similar sympathetic interaction.

²⁶ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 128 give instances of the indirect approach:

in Abraham’s appeal to the Lord not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah before his nephew Lot and family escaped (see Genesis 18:23–32), and in Jared’s requests through his brother that they keep their language and, later and most important, that the Lord lead their families to a promised land (see Ether 1:34, 38).

²⁷ Moses 7:28.

²⁸ Moses 7:29.

²⁹ Moses 7:29–30.

³⁰ E.g., M. Goff, Gilgamesh the Giant; A. Lemaire, Nabonide et Gilgamesh.

³¹ A. George, Gilgamesh, 11:117–124, p. 92.

³² Ibid., 11:125–127, p. 92.

³³ J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 11.

³⁴ The Lord’s “test of affection” described in the Book of Moses Enoch account is echoed in 2 Enoch 30:14–15, where the Lord instructs Adam: “And I said to him, ‘This is good for you, but that is bad,’ so that I should come to know whether he has love toward me or abhorrence, and so that it might become plain who among his race loves me” (F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 30:14 [J], p. 152).

Significantly, the hard words described in Job 21:7-15 seem to have been directly witnessed, not by Job, but by Enoch himself (P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 4:3, p. 258): “When the generation of the Flood sinned and turned to evil deeds, and said to God, ‘Go away! We do not choose to learn your ways’ [cf. Job 21:14], the Holy One, blessed be he, took me [Enoch] from their midst to be a witness against them in the heavenly height to all who should come into the world, so that they should not say, ‘The Merciful One is cruel!’” See J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 187. For a list of ancient sources, see ibid., pp. 183, 200n17.

In defiance of the Lord’s entreaty to “love one another, and … choose me, their Father” (Moses 7:33), the wicked are depicted as “say[ing] unto God, … Depart from us: for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him?” (Job 21:14–15. Cf. Exodus 5:2; Malachi 3:13–15; Mosiah 11:27; Moses 5:16). Reeves characterizes these words as “a blasphemous rejection of divine governance and guidance … wherein the wicked members of the Flood generation verbally reject God” (ibid., p. 188). Enoch is said to have prophesied a future judgment upon such “ungodly sinners” who have “uttered hard speeches … against [the Lord]” (Jude 1:15, G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 1:9, p. 142. See also 5:4, p. 150; 27:2, p. 317; 101:3, p. 503. 2 Peter 2:5 labels this same generation as “ungodly”).

³⁵ A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:80.

³⁶ Jed Woodworth eloquently summarizes this contrast (J. L. Woodworth, Enoch, pp. 191–192):

What is the fate of those who perish in the flood? In [1 Enoch], there is one fate only: everlasting punishment. Those who are destroyed in the flood are beyond redemption. For God to be reconciled, sinners must suffer forever. Enoch has nothing to say because God has no merciful side to appeal to. In Joseph Smith, however, punishment has an end. The merciful side of God allows Enoch to speak and be heard. God and Enoch speak a common language: mercy. “Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look,” God says to Enoch after the flood (Moses 7:44). There is hope for the wicked yet (Moses 7:37–38):
I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them. And that which I have chosen hath pled before my face. Wherefore, he suffereth for their sins; inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my Chosen shall return unto me, and until that day they shall be in torment.
The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch 45–47] and in Joseph Smith function in different ways. In Joseph Smith, the Chosen One will come to earth at the meridian of time to rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. After the Messiah’s death and resurrection, “as many of the spirits as were in prison came forth, and stood on the right hand of God” (Moses 7:57. Compare 1 Peter 3:20). The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch] does not come down to earth and is peripheral to the text; he presides over the “elect” around God’s throne (R. Laurence, Book of Enoch, 45:3–5, pp. 49–50, 56:3, p. 64) but does not rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. “In the day of trouble evil shall [still] be heaped upon sinners” (ibid., 49:2, pp. 55–56. Cf. 49:3–4, p. 54), he tells Enoch [in that account].

Similar in attitude to the Book of Moses and somewhat different in tone from 1 Enoch, the Book of Giants records Enoch’s hope for them if they repent (F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q203), 8:14–15, p. 261): “set loose what you hold captive … and pray” (D. W. Parry et al., DSSR (2013), 4Q203, 8:14–15, p. 481). For discussions of hints in Mani’s Book of Giants that some of the wicked repented and were saved as the result of Enoch’s preaching, see M. Goff, Sons of the Watchers, pp. 124–127; G. Kósa, Book of Giants Tradition, pp. 173–175.

³⁷ See Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s discussion of this passage (N. A. Maxwell, That Ye May, pp. 29, 81):

Enoch saw the God of Heaven weep over needless human suffering. …
God’s empathy is not to be defined by man’s lack of empathy or by our sometimes stupid and cruel use of moral agency!
All of us should be very careful, therefore, about seeming to lecture God on suffering. God actually weeps over the suffering of His children. Enoch saw it! He questioned God about those divine tears-especially in view of God’s omnipotence and His omniscience. Why cry over one people on one planet—especially in view of how far God’s vast creations stretch out?
The Lord rehearsed for Enoch that humanity and this earthly habitat are “the workmanship of [God’s] own hands,” and, further, that He gave us our knowledge and our agency. Most strikingly, the Lord then focused on the fact that the human family should love one another and should choose God as their Father. The two great commandments! Then the Lord lamented, yet “they are without affection, and they hate their own blood.”

³⁸ See the comparison of key words in R. Bergey, Song of Moses.

³⁹ J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 11, 13.

⁴⁰ See the Lord’s declaration to the people: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. … children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord” (vv. 2, 4).

⁴¹ See the explicit description of God as a “father” (vv. 6–7) to His “children” (vv. 5, 8, 20)—His “sons” (vv. 8, 19) and “daughters” (v. 19).

⁴² R. Bergey, Song of Moses, p. 39.

⁴³ A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:80. For an example that depicts the anguish of the rejected father but—in contrast to Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 1, and Moses 7 — without tendering any hope of forgiveness, see S. Agourides, Sedrach, 6:1–6, p. 610:

And God said unto him: “Be it known to you, that everything which I commanded man to do was within his reach. I made him wise [cf. Moses 7:32] and the heir of heaven and earth, and I subordinated everything under him and every living thing flees from him and from his face. Having received my gifts, however, he became an alien, an adulterer and sinner. Tell me, what sort of a father would give an inheritance to his son, and having received the money (the son) goes away leaving his father and becomes an alien and in the service of aliens [cf. Luke 15:11–15]. The father then, seeing that the son has forsaken him (and gone away), darkens his heart and going away, he retrieves his wealth and banishes his son from his glory, because he forsook his father. How is it that I, the wondrous and jealous God, have given everything to him, but he, having received them, became an adulterer and sinner?”

⁴⁴ A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:83.

⁴⁵ In the older sense of the term described in ibid., pp. 269–272 (“the ancient classical ideas of pathos [that] included all conditions of feeling and will in which man is dependent on the outer world”), not its more recent and limited sense of “painful emotion” (p. 272) and the modern notion that the “sublime” and the “pathetic” “have nothing to do with each other” (p. 270).

⁴⁶ J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, pp. 13–14.

⁴⁷ Moses 7:37. Somewhat of a more sympathetic variant to Hobbins’ description of the passage as “a leading question and exclamation that recall by way of context and choice of terminology the status of the addressees as punished and disobedient children” (ibid., p. 13).

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 11.

⁴⁹ Moses 7:38–39.

⁵⁰ T. L. Givens et al., God Who Weeps, pp. 24–25.

⁵¹ Moses 7:41.

⁵² Compare S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT1, Moses 7:28, pp. 105–106 to ibid., OT2, Moses 7:28, p. 618. In the present Essay, the narrative drama of OT1 is described only in summary fashion. Additional examples of where the reading of OT2 is inferior to OT1 could be given.

For example, the replacement of “bosom” by “presence” in OT2 breaks the connection to a meaningful string of six uses of the term “bosom” in varying contexts within the chapter (Moses 7:24, 30, 31, 47, 63, 69). See a summary discussion of this key term in J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, pp. 143–144). Moses 7 is the only chapter in the Book of Moses in which the word “bosom” appears. It shows up in a key part of the culminating verse of the chapter, when God receives Zion “up into his own bosom” (Moses 7:69). For more on the term “bosom” and its role in this chapter, see Essay #30.

Moreover, Elder Maxwell notes the importance of the seemingly inconsequential three-letter word “yet,” which is omitted in OT2 (N. A. Maxwell, That Ye May, p. 205, emphasis in original):

Notice, however, what reassured and assuaged Enoch most about Jesus amid His creations: “And yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever.”

The omission of this tiny adverb greatly weakens the strength of the phrase.

⁵³ Hymns (1985), Hymns (1985)#195, How Great the Wisdom and the Love.

⁵⁴ D. C. Peterson, Weeping God, building on the analysis of Jeremiah found in J. J. M. Roberts, Motif of the Weeping God. Peterson also discusses analogues in the Mesopotamian lament literature.

⁵⁵ See Essays #26–28.

⁵⁶ OT1 reads “hath.”

⁵⁷ OT1: “the powers of Satan was.”

⁵⁸ Taking God’s weeping as a form of divine speech.

⁵⁹ OT1: “her”; OT2 revision by Sidney Rigdon: “their.”

⁶⁰ The 2013 Latter-day Saint canonized version reads: “unto the Lord.”

⁶¹ OT1 reads (S. H. Faulring et al., JST Electronic Library, Moses 7:28–29 OT1):

the g God of heaven looked upon the residue of the peop[le a]nd he wept and Enock bore record of it saying how is it the heavens weep and Shed fourth her tears as the rain upon the Mountains and Enock said unto the heavens how is it that thou canst weep seeing thou art holy and from all eternity to all eternity

OT2 reads (ibid., Moses 7:28–29 OT2):

~~the God of Heaven~~ <Enock> look=ed upon the residue of the people & wept. And ~~Enoch bore record of it Saying how is it the heavens weep~~ the heavens wept also> & shed forth h[er] tears upon the Mountains And Enoch S†aid unto the heavens how is it that thou canst weep Seeing Thou art holy & from all eternity to all eternity

The symbol “†” that is shown between the “S” and the “a” in the transcription of OT2 Moses 7:28 above signals a change from lowercase to uppercase in the manuscript.

⁶² OT2 has: “serve me their God.”

⁶³ OT1: “hand.”

⁶⁴ OT2: “master.”

⁶⁵ Following OT2. OT1 reads: “that which.”

⁶⁶ OT1 reads “heaven.

October 9, 2020February 15, 2021

Enoch, the Prophet and Seer: The End of the Wicked and the Beginnings of Zion

Book of Moses Essay #24

Moses 7:12-18

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

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This Essay relates the end of the end for the wicked, and the beginning of the beginning for the people of God who start to lay the foundation of Zion. Similar events are well-attested in the ancient Enoch literature.

“The Earth Trembled and the Mountains Fled”

The Book of Moses records that when Enoch had finished prophesying to the people, “the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, … and the rivers of water turned out of their course.” ¹ The pattern whereby the voice of warning is immediately followed by the voice of the elements is also described in Doctrine and Covenants 88:89–90:

For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, … and also the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.

In a previous Essay,² we described ancient and modern witnesses to Enoch’s turning of rivers “out of their course.”³ In this section, we will describe similar ancient witnesses to the shattering seismic events that came “according to [the] command”⁴ of Enoch.

Whereas most of the prophecies of destruction in 1 Enoch describe events of the “latter days,”⁵ its Epistle of Enoch is also addressed to the “double audience”⁶ of Enoch’s living posterity, called his “sons.”⁷ Echoing the themes of Moses 6:46–47, Enoch reminds the sinners that their actions are recorded in a heavenly book of remembrance,⁸ telling them that “from the angels inquiry will be made into your deeds in heaven.”⁹ Then, Enoch asks them:¹⁰

When [the Most High] hurls against you the flood of the fire of your burning,
where will you flee and be saved?
And when he utters his voice against you with a mighty sound,
will you not be shaken and frightened?
The heavens and all the luminaries will be shaken with great fear;
and all the earth will be shaken and will tremble and be thrown into confusion.
All the angels will fulfill what was commanded them;
and all the sons of earth will seek to hide themselves from the presence of the Great Glory,
and they will be shaken and tremble.
And you, sinners, will be cursed forever;
You will have no peace.

Note that the passage from the Epistle cited above not only echoes the “trembling of the earth” in Moses 7:13 but also the shaking of the heavens in Moses 7:61. The shaking and trembling of the elements reverberates sympathetically to the shaking and trembling of the wicked, an ancient motif found in the Book of Moses that we have discussed in a previous Essay.¹¹ The “curse upon all people that fought against God” in Moses 7:15 is consistent with the declaration in the Epistle that the sinners “will be cursed forever.”

Pouring Out and Drawing Back of the Waters

Hugh Nibley has summarized Jewish traditions that tell of the perturbation of the waters of the earth before and after Enoch’s time:¹²

The really spectacular show in the Enoch literature is the behavior of the seas. Like the alternating drought and flood from the skies, there is either too much sea or not enough. Before “the floods came and swallowed them up,”¹³ the sea first drew back in places, leaving its coastal beds high and dry in anticipation of the great tsunami (sea wave) which came with the earthquake.

Although the biblical flood of Noah has received greater attention, Jewish tradition also remembers an earlier flood¹⁴ covering a large portion of the ancient world in the days of Enosh, Enoch’s great-grandfather:¹⁵

When people began to call their idols by the name of the Lord, the ocean rose from Akho to Jaffa and flooded a third of the world. Then said the Lord: You have prepared a new thing for yourselves and called it by my name; now I want to do something new and tell you my name. Is it not written? “He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name.”¹⁶

Figure 2. Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797): An eruption of Vesuvius seen from Portici, ca. 1774-1776

The Decisive Battle

“The land which came up out of the depth of the sea.” An unexpected detail in Moses 7 is a mention of “the land which came up out of the depth of the sea”¹⁷ There are hints in Jewish tradition that volcanic activity could have been behind this event. According to one such text, among the “four things [that] changed in the world at the time of Enoch” was that “the mountains that had previously been plowed and sown were made rocky.”¹⁸

“Wars and bloodshed.”¹⁹ Moses 7:16 gives us the brief notice that “from that time forth there were wars and bloodshed among them.” Unfortunately, the extant fragments of the Aramaic Book of Giants likewise preserve only a few words about what must have been a long series of bloody battles. In one fragment, the leader of Enoch’s adversaries is said to have lamented: “I went up against all flesh, and I made war against them; but I did not [prevail, and I am not] able to stand firm against them. … And they were not [defeated, for they] are stronger than I.”²⁰

Attributing the brevity of the Aramaic witness of these battles to “the sparsity of the preserved remains,” John Reeves goes on to describe how “the Manichaean remnants of the Book of Giants preserve extensive testimony regarding this conflict.”²¹ For example, here is an extract from a Manichaean Book of Giants fragment that gives a more detailed account of the final combat:²²

[The angels] took and imprisoned all the [rebellious Watchers] that were in the heavens. And the angels themselves descended from the heaven to the earth. And (when) the two hundred demons saw those angels, they were much afraid and worried. … they went to fight. And those two hundred demons fought a hard battle with the [four angels], until [the angels used] fire, naphtha, and brimstone.

As angels from heaven and the very elements of earth joined to defend the people of Enoch, the battles entered a new phase. Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes explained:²³

Heretofore we have found reference to “enemies” who “came to battle” against the people of God.”²⁴ The account in Moses 7:15 [i.e., “the people that fought against God”] makes it clear that battling against God’s people [had become] the same as battling against God Himself.

The End of the Wicked and the Beginnings of Zion

Doctrine and Covenants 88:91 describes the human consequences that inevitably follow destruction of such devastating extent:

And all things shall be in commotion; and surely men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

Similarly, we read in the Book of Moses that “the fear of the Lord was upon all nations”²⁵ and that “the giants of the land … stood afar off.”²⁶ Elder Neal A. Maxwell commented:²⁷

The gospel glow shining about a righteous individual or a righteous people usually attracts persecution. But this is not the only accompanying sign. Enoch could tell us something about this phenomenon; those in his ancient Zion were resented by some who “stood afar off.” Latter-day Saints are not yet a fully worthy people, but even now there is building a visible ring of resentment around Zion today.

Figure 3. ‘Cheonhado’ map of the square earth and the round cosmos, Seoul, Korea, ca. 1800. In the central area is an internal continent surrounded by an internal sea, which is in turn surrounded by an external continent and an external sea. The names of real places are shown exclusively within the internal continent, while the names that appear elsewhere describe mythological locations “where immortals live.”

Elder Maxwell’s idea of Zion (or perhaps more precisely the temple of Zion or, for that matter, any temple) as a “center place”²⁸ radiating holiness to the world, with increasingly strident “rings of resentment” formed by the wicked corresponding in strength to degrees of distance from the divine nucleus, is a general concept that might resonate in many ancient cultures. Though symbolic representations of a “hierocentric”²⁹ universe vary in significant details, many ancient maps and diagrams in various cultures around the world are constructed around a sacred center.

This sacred center not infrequently coincides with the location of a mountain.³⁰ For example, with respect to the structure of the Korean map shown above, Mark E. Lewis notes “there is a progressive decline as one moves away from the center.”³¹ Typically, in the ancient world, such movement away from the center is represented as being in an eastward direction. Correspondingly, there is an increase in sacredness as one travels (or returns) toward the center, generally in a westward direction.³² Note the large medallion with the name of China that is shown near the middle of the map—just east of Mount K’un-lun,³³ anciently revered as the sacred center of the universe where heaven and earth meet and from which four great rivers emanate.

Though we are not suggesting that Cheonhado maps such as the one above and the Sogdian fragments of the Book of Giants have any necessary relationship, there is some evidence of “weak and distant influence”³⁴ in the resemblance of the symbolic geography of Mount K’un-lun to that of Mount Mēru. Of relevance for the present article is that Mount Mēru—the sacred mountain of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—is mentioned in the Manichaean Book of Giants as the place of resort for the righteous. When seen in the light of hierocentric maps of the world, certain details relating to the layout of sacred, symbolic geography in both ancient Enoch accounts and the Book of Moses take on greater meaning. Though the symbolic geography tells us little— or, more likely, nothing—about the physical geography of the story, knowing something about it helps unravel the significance of events in this section of the narrative.

Figure 4. “In the conception of the universe in the book of [1 Enoch], the sun emerges fromt eh six eastern gates, moves in the six months between the winter and summer solstices, and sets in the western gates. The seven great mountains are based on the ancient Babylonian conception of the universe. Adapted from Milik’s reconstruction.” Among other differences from the Cheonhado map that make it more similar to the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses and different from 1 Enoch, this reconstruction lacks the significant feature of one or more sacred mountains in the center.

For example, in answer to Mahijah’s question in Moses 6:41, Enoch replied:

I came out from the land of Cainan, the land of my fathers, a land of righteousness unto this day.

Amplifying the Book of Moses description of Enoch’s home as a “land of righteousness,” the leader of the gibborim in the Book of the Giants stated that his “opponents”³⁵ “reside in the heavens and live with the holy ones.”³⁶

In line with the presumed hierocentric, symbolic geography of Enoch’s world, we are not surprised to read the significant detail that his missionary journey in the Book of Moses took him away from the “sacred center”—in other words, he went out “from the land of Cainan,”³⁷ “a land of righteousness”³⁸ in the west, to the land of the wicked presumably near the western edge of “the sea east.”³⁹ Remarkably, the Book of Moses description of Enoch’s journey and vision “by the sea east” recalls the direction of his voyage in 1 Enoch 20–36, where the text seems to imply that he continued his travels even further east—to the “ends of the earth” (“from the west edge of the earth to its east edge” ⁴⁰). Significantly, 1 Enoch also records a vision that Enoch received “by the waters of Dan,”⁴¹ arguably a “sea east.”⁴²

Figure 5. Camille Flammarion (1842–1925): Flammarion Engraving, 1888. “The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption … translates to ‘A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and earth meet’” In line with the idea that the Garden of Eden is at the eastern end of the earth, note the prominent tree just behind the man.

Though the mountain at the center of the symbolic geography of the world represents the most sacred place on earth, its “east edge,”⁴³ the dawn horizon,⁴⁴ the location of the boundary where the round dome of heaven meets the square plane of earth,⁴⁵ is not only where visions of God are situated in the relevant literature, but also the place from which actual heavenly ascents were thought to occur in many ancient cultures.⁴⁶ Enoch describes his journey as being to “the ends of the earth, on which the heaven rests, and the gates of heaven open,”⁴⁷ and gives a brief account of its great beasts⁴⁸ and birds with beautiful voices.⁴⁹ Likewise, descriptions of Methuselah’s journey to the end of the earth,⁵⁰ where Enoch’s “dwelling is with the angels,”⁵¹ “can be plausibly understood as [allusions] to the [Garden of] Eden.”⁵²

In a fragment of the Manichaean Book of Giants, one of Mahaway’s journey to visit Enoch⁵³ “is clearly from the west to the east and back again.”⁵⁴ Among his other qualifications to make this voyage to the eastern end of the earth,⁵⁵ he seems to be “the only giant with wings.”⁵⁶ Just as Enoch, who flew east with the angels, used “this mode of transportation …to visit areas that normally humans cannot reach,”⁵⁷ so also:⁵⁸

the flight of Mahaway should be understood in a similar way. [He] is able to reach Eden because he can fly over a desolate desert that would be, following this logic, impossible to cross on foot. This underscores the extraordinary and difficult nature of [his] voyage. Asking Mahaway to undertake such an arduous journey highlights how seriously [the gibborim] wanted an interpretation to the two visions of ’Ohyah and Hahyah.

Once Enoch’s presence has been “veiled” after his heavenly ascent,⁵⁹ Jens Wilkens observes that “only Enoch’s voice is mentioned.”⁶⁰ In explanation of this state of affairs, Wilkens mentions a Uyghur fragment of the Book of Giants where a speaker (likely Mahaway referring to Enoch) says, “But I did not see him in person.”⁶¹ From the combined evidence, it seems that we are meant to understand that the scene of Mahaway’s voice-to-voice (not face-to-face) visit with Enoch “takes place in the sky”⁶² rather than on earth on this occasion. Presumably, Mahaway can speak with Enoch through the “veil,” but is not permitted to see Enoch in his transfigured state in the divine realm.

There is evidence of both supporters and detractors of Enoch among the gibborim. For example, a Sogdian fragment of the Book of Giants tells us that a righteous faction “are glad at seeing the apostle,” who is obviously Enoch, and “assembled before him.”⁶³ But those who are called “tyrants and criminals” are “afraid.”⁶⁴

According to the Manichaean Book of Giants, angels ultimately led the wicked to their eventual destruction in the east—away from the “sacred center”—while the righteous went westward to inhabit cities near the foot of the holy mountain that had been prepared for them “in the beginning”:⁶⁵

And they led one half of them eastwards, and the other half westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains, towards the foot of the Sumēru [= “good Mēru] mountain, into thirty-two towns which the Living Spirit had prepared for them in the beginning.

In the highly symbolic account of the geographical history of the two opposing groups, the Book of Giants describes the righteous dwelling “westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains.” Significantly, this imagery recalls Moses 7:17, which relates that the righteous “were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.” Where in all the ancient Enoch tradition do we find the remarkably similar story of the gathering of Enoch’s converts to a community of refuge in the mountains? Only in the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses.

In a later Essay,⁶⁶ we will describe the rise of this holy place of refuge, whose residents the Lord called “Zion.”⁶⁷

Conclusions

Though the glory of God’s presence no longer fills the whole earth as it did at the creation of Adam and Eve, it has not been completely withdrawn. In a movement similar to the divine concealment that the Lurianic kabbalah terms “contraction,”⁶⁸ the fulness of God’s glory is, as it were, concentrated in a series of “center places”—temples—which continue to represent in microcosm the image of what will someday again become the model for a fully renewed Creation, happy in the divine rest of a perpetual Sabbath.⁶⁹ Until that day, according to Jon Levenson, the temple remains “to space what the Sabbath is to time, a recollection of the protological dimension bounded by mundane reality. It is the higher world in which the worshiper wishes he could dwell forever. … The temple is the moral center of the universe, the source from which holiness and a terrifying justice radiate” ⁷⁰ to the dark and fallen world that surrounds it.

Fittingly, just as the first book of the Bible, Genesis, recounts the story of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden, its last book, Revelation, prophesies a permanent return to Eden for the sanctified.⁷¹ In that day, the veil that separates man and the rest of fallen creation from God will be swept away, and all shall be “done in earth, as it is in heaven.”⁷² In the original Garden of Eden, “there was no need for a temple—because Adam and Eve enjoyed the continual presence of God”—likewise, in John’s vision “there was no temple in the Holy City, ‘for its temple is the Lord God.’”⁷³ To reenter the renewed⁷⁴ “Garden” at that happy day will be to return to the original spiritual state of immortality and innocence through forgiveness of sin, and to know the oneness that existed at the dawn of Creation, before the creative processes of division and separation began.⁷⁵ The premortal glory of the righteous shall then be “added upon”⁷⁶ as they receive a fulness of the blessings of sanctification, “coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”⁷⁷

This is the glory that the people of Enoch began to enjoy as they laid the foundations of Zion.

This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 46, 70, 97, 105, 133–136.

Appendix 1: The Battle of the Angels and the “Giants” in the Manichaean Book of Giants

Below, we give an annotated version of Henning’s translation of text G (Sogdian):⁷⁸

… they [i.e., the angels] took and imprisoned all the helpers [i.e., the rebellious Watchers⁷⁹] that were in the heavens. And the angels⁸⁰ themselves descended from the heaven to the earth. And (when) the two hundred demons saw those angels, they were much afraid and worried. They assumed the shape of men and hid themselves [i.e., in disguise⁸¹]. Thereupon the angels forcibly removed the men from the demons, (10) laid them aside, and put watchers over them . … the giants . … were sons … with each other in bodily union . … with each other self- … and the . … that had been born to them, they forcibly removed them from the demons. And they led one half of them (20) eastwards, and the other half westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains, towards the foot of the Sumeru mountain [i.e., the mountain in the Himalayas⁸²], into thirty- two [or thirty-six in other texts⁸³] towns which the Living Spirit had prepared for them in the beginning. And one calls (that place) Aryānwaižan [i.e., “Homeland of the Aryans⁸⁴]. And those men are (or: were) . … in the first arts and crafts. (30) . … they made … the angels … and to the demons … they went to fight. And those two hundred demons fought a hard battle with the [four angels], until [the angels used] fire, naphtha, and brimstone.⁸⁵

Appendix 2: The Journey of Mahaway to Enoch in the Manichaean Book of Giants

Below we give an annotated version of Jens Wilken’s English translation of the Mainz 317 fragment (Old Uyghur):⁸⁶

[Mahaway said:] (01) “Fire was rising.⁸⁷ (01–02) And furth[ermore I saw] that the sun was rising. (02–03) [Its] palace wa[s] revolving without being carried over.⁸⁸ (04–05) Then, from heaven above came a voice [of an archangel?⁸⁹]. (05–06) It called me and said: (06–07) “You, son of Virōgdād [i.e., Mahaway⁹⁰], the order for you is exactly this: (07–08) You [h]ave seen more than enough! (08–09) Do not die prematurely now! Return quickly [from] here!” (09–11) And then, besides this, I heard the voice of the apostle Enoch from the south. (11–12) But I did no[t] see him in person. (12–13) Then, very affectionately, he called out my name. (13–14) And down from [heaven] (the voice) s[aid]: (14–16) “[O son] of [Virōgdād], now … (17) Ow[n] […] [small lacuna] (18) [W]hy? (18–19) The door of the enclosed [s]un will open up. (19–20) The [sp]lendor and heat of the sun will descend. (20–22) It will burn your wings; you will catch fire and die.” (22–24) Then, at that time, upon hearing the voice I shook (or: beat) my wings and quickly descended fr[o]m heaven. Again I looked back. (24–25) Dawn had [br]oken.⁹¹ (25–26) The sun with its splendor was rising on the bluish mountain.⁹² (26–27) And again from above came a voice. (27–29) It conferred the words of the apostle Enoch. It said: (29–31) “I call you, o son of Virōgdā[d], I know [th]is: you are [l]ike some of them.⁹³ You are … (31–33) [An]d quickly … with that people … sickness …”

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Oh, Sang-Hak. “Circular world maps of the Joseon dynasty: Their characteristics and worldview.” Korea Jounral 48, no. 1 (2008): 8-45. https://www.ekoreajournal.net/issue/view_pop.htm?Idx=3460. (accessed April 14, 2020).

Orlov, Andrei A. The Enoch-Metatron Tradition. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 107. Tübingen, Germany Mohr Siebeck, 2005.

Parry, Donald W., and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. 6 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.

Reeves, John C. Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 14. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992.

Rubinkiewicz, Ryszard. L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave : Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire. Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolikiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, Zrodlai i monografie 129. Lublin, Poland: Société des Lettres et des Sciences de l’Université Catholique de Lublin, 1987.

Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Stuckenbruck, Loren T. The Book of Giants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.

VanderKam, James C. Enoch: A Man for All Generations. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

Welburn, Andrew, ed. Mani, the Angel, and the Column of Glory: An Anthology of Manichaean Texts. Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books, 1998.

Whitlock, Stephen T. E-mail message to Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, May 3, 2020.

Wilkens, Jens. “Remarks on the Manichaean Book of Giants: Once again on Mahaway’s mission to Enoch.” In Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Enrico Morano. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, ed. Jörg Frey, 213-29. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. New York City, NY: Harper-Collins, 1996.

Wyatt, Nicolas. Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Near East. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

Notes to Figures

Figure 1. Photograph copyright Stephen T. Whitlock, with permission. Photo ID: EtnaJul1977.jpg (July 1977). Stephen tells the following story (S. T. Whitlock, May 3 2020):

While I was in the USAF in Italy we sent out teams to remote sites for about 10 days. And on one of those trips I was in Reggio de Calabria to calibrate equipment for the radar site there. I was with a Sgt. Rafael Leal and we looked across the strait (the Scylla and Charibdis of Greek mythology) and could see Etna erupting with lava running down the side. So since we had to stay somewhere over the weekend anyway Rafael and I stayed at a B&B on the edge of the slopes of Etna and then on Saturday climbed up the mountain. We drove part way and then had to walk past the twisted remains of a ski lift that had been wiped out a couple of years earlier. The last third we were walking on pumice and it was three feet up and then two feet sliding back on each step. But coming down we surfed on our shoes. At around 10,000 feet it was cold as we got near the top but the ground was too hot to touch in most places. And at the top there were places where you would breath in and nothing would happen—clear gases that weren’t air. My intent was to get pictures looking down the crater—but it was steamy and irregular. … Overall this was not the smartest thing I did … .

Figure 2. Art collection of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_-_Vesuvius_from_Portici.jpg (accessed April 4, 2020). Public domain.

Figure 3. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/cheonhado-world-map (accessed April 14, 2020). British Library, Shelfmark: Maps C.27.f.14. Public Domain. The description on the website reads:

This world map is from an atlas produced in Korea in around 1800. It is one of a group of maps known as ‘Cheonhado’, meaning ‘Map of all under heaven’. The map shows a large inner continent surrounded by sea. This represents China and its surrounding lands. Beijing, the Yellow River and Great Wall of China are visible, with the sacred Mount Mēru at its center. The rest of the world appears as outer islands, with the Trees of Sun and Moon beyond.

The concentric circle structure of the map and many of the mythological names come from the Chinese Shan Hai Jing (The Classic of Mountain and Seas), a text that was probably compiled from older texts in the first or second century BCE. For detailed background on these and similar maps, see S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps. Among other things, Oh establishes the fact that even though such maps are round, they do not depart from the “square earth-round heaven” principle. The circular form of the map represents the round shape of heaven.

For a general introduction to cartography and the cosmic ocean in the ancient Near East, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 80–88, 113.

Among these mythical locations are the mountains and trees typically shown as sacred trees and mountains at the location of the rising and setting of the sun and moon (east and west) and at the north (S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 31, 32):

To the east, where the sun and moon rise, Mt. Yupa and Busang tree are depicted. Mt. Bang and the Bangyeoksong pine tree are also depicted to the west, where the sun and moon met. … It is presumed that Mt. Yupa was chosen [from among the many mountains where the sun and moon were supposed to rise] because it is located in the East Sea, a great distance away or farthest from thee center. …
It would be … appropriate to believe that the maps tried to show where the sky and the earth meet. Circular world maps are still based on the traditional view that the heaven is round and the earth is square. As this differs from the theory of the round Earth, circular world maps have east and west poles, and the locations of sunrise and sunset, and moonrise and moonset visibly represent the poles.

No tree in the south is shown on the map in this figure, and we do not currently have access to an interpretation of what is shown there. However, from another time and culture we have the report of Severus of Antioch (fl. 512–518) that avers, similar to other anti-Manichaean sources that “those (regions) which lie to the south and to the meridian belong to the Tree of Death, which they call Hyle [i.e., Matter], being very wicked and uncreated” (as cited in B. Bennett, Iuxta Unum, p. 69). In Mandaean and Zoroastrian cosmogonies the north and south are associated with “above” and “below” (i.e., the underworld).

S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 32–33.

Figure 4. H. W. Nibley et al., One Eternal Round, p. 364, Figure 43 and caption.

Figure 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flammarion.jpg (accessed May 25, 2020). Public domain. Published in Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, France: Librairie Hachette, 1888), pp. 163, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k408619m/f168.image (accessed May 25, 2020).

M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, pp. 486–488.

Footnotes

¹ Moses 7:13.

² Essay #4.

³ Moses 7:13.

⁴ Moses 7:13.

⁵ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, commentary on 92:1, p. 431.

⁶ Ibid., commentary on 92:1, p. 431. Nickelsburg observes that a similar double audience is addressed in 1 Enoch 81:6; 82:1–2; and 94:1, 3.

⁷ Ibid., 1:1, p. 430.

⁸ See Essay #10.

⁹ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 100:10, p. 503.

¹⁰ Ibid., 102:1-3, pp. 503–504.

¹¹ See Moses 6:47 and 1 Enoch 13:3 (ibid., 13:3, p. 235), as mentioned in Essay #11.

¹² H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 202.

¹³ Moses 7:43.

¹⁴ H. Freedman et al., Midrash, Genesis (Bereshith) 5:6 (Genesis 1:9), 1:37. Cf. J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, Parashah Five, 6:6:1, p. 50.

¹⁵ M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Von der Urzeit, Zweites Buch: Von Adam und seinem Geshlecht, Die Adamsöhne, 3 Der erste Götze, p. 153. Cf. M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Die Sagen (1997), pp. 122–123. English translation by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.

¹⁶ Amos 5:8, 9:6. “Thus He reversed His previous decree that the waters should be confined to one place” (H. Freedman et al., Midrash, 1:37 n. 1 commentary). Jacob Neusner comments (J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, p. 46 commentary):

The main point contrasts the gathering together of the water, done so obediently, to the rebellion of man, punished by the flood. … The water was originally spread over the whole earth. The water praised God. … God … ordered the water to draw back into one place—hence Psalm 104:7—so that there would be dwelling space for humanity. But in light of the record of humanity, God called the water back and restored it to its place over the whole earth.

¹⁷ Moses 7:14.

¹⁸ M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Von der Urzeit, Zweites Buch: Von Adam und seinem Geshlecht, Die Adamsöhne, 3 Der erste Götze, p. 153. Cf. M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Die Sagen (1997), pp. 122–123. English translation by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.

¹⁹ For more on the wars in which the gibborim were defeated, see Essay #12.

²⁰ Edward Cook, 4Q531 (4QEnGiants(c) ar), 22:5–6 in D. W. Parry et al., Reader, 3:495.

²¹ J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 122.

²² W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, Text G (Sogdian), p. 69.

²³ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 120.

²⁴ Moses 7:13, emphasis added.

²⁵ Moses 7:17.

²⁶ Moses 7:15.

²⁷ N. A. Maxwell, Prove, pp. 17–18.

²⁸ Doctrine and Covenants 57:3.

²⁹ See, e.g., H. W. Nibley, Hierocentric.

³⁰ For a survey of beliefs in the ancient Near East regarding the cosmic mountain at the center of the world, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 147–157.

³¹ M. E. Lewis, Construction, p. 285.

³² For more on the symbolism of the sacred center, see J. M. Bradshaw, Tree of Knowledge, pp. 50–52. On the symbol on eastward movement as distancing oneself from God and westward movement as approaching God, see J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary 3:8-b, pp. 160–161. The symbolism of east-west orientation and the symbolism of the sacred center are conjoined in the symbolic layout of the Israelite temple and the Garden of Eden (J. M. Bradshaw, Moses Temple Themes (2014), pp. 57–58, 77, 88–89). The east-west, right-left layout also recall the vertical bisecting of almost all Egyptian hypocephali and corresponding visions of the cosmos given to Jewish seers. Hugh Nibley(H. W. Nibley, Abraham 2000, p. 45) describes this bisecting view of the cosmos in terms of as “a graphic representation of ‘the whole world [and] its circle,’ (G. H. Box, Apocalypse, 12:8, p. 51) in which the human race, God’s people and the others (See A. Kulik, Apocalypse of Abraham, 22:5, p. 1471) confront each other beneath or within the circle of the starry heavens, on opposite halves of the picture.” In terms that echo the vertical and horizontal divisions of the hypocephalus in Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham, Rubinkiewicz explains this feature in the cosmic vision of the Apocalypse of Abraham, a Jewish pseudepigraphon that has close affinities with Moses 1 (R. Rubinkiewicz, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham, p. 171 — also cited and explained in more detail within Essay #40. See also a discussion of possible allusions to some of the general features of hypocephalus-like images in Essay #34):

If we pay attention to our account, we will see an astonishing thing. Abraham sees the earth peopled by the wicked (v. 3), but he also sees Eden inhabited by the righteous (v. 6); God shows him the sea ruled by Leviathan (v. 4), but Abraham also contemplates the “upper waters” that are above the firmament (v. 5). At the conclusion, he sees people at the left and right of the picture. What should Abraham understand by this vision? The answer is simple: the division between the righteous and the wicked is based on the structure of the world, where both the forces of evil (the earth and the wicked; the sea and Leviathan) and the forces of good (the “upper waters,” Eden) each have their place. The entire universe has thus been projected by God and “it is pleasing to Him” (22:2).

Rubinkiewicz (ibid., p. 171 n. adds): “This idea is not unique, for it is also found in the Testament of Naphtali 2:7–8” (see H. C. Kee, Testaments, p. 811). On affinities between the Apocalypse of Abraham and Moses 1, see J. M. Bradshaw et al., Moses 1.

³³ For cogent summaries of the mythology of the mountain paradise of K’un-lun, see A. Birrell, Mythology, pp. 183–185; M. Loewe, Ways, pp. 110–112. For traditions surrounding the primeval couple, Fu Xi and Nü Gua, whose stories are intertwined with K’un-lun, the Creation, and other temple themes, see J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, pp. 654–657.

With respect to the placement of Kunlun on the map, J. S. Major, Heaven, p. 155 explains how physical and mythological geography became inextricably intertwined in Chinese thought:

Kunlun has two closely related aspects: First, it is the world-mountain or axis mundi, pillar that at once separates and connects heaven and earth. As such it is the highest of mountains, the terrestrial plane’s closest approach, and stepping-stone, to the celestial vault. … Second, Kunlun is a paradise, a magical and beautiful land that is the home and kingdom of Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West.
One problem that immediately arises in dealing with these two aspects of Kunlun is that the Kunlun Mountains are, and from early times have been known to be, an entirely real and terrestrial mountain range on China’s northwestern frontier [“on the borderland of Xinjiang province and Tibet” (S. Allan, Turtle, p. 99)]. … In fact it is not unusual for real but distant places to take on paradisiacal qualities; think of Serendip, or Shambala.
Thus in early China the name Kunlun attached to a geographical mountain and a mythical one, and the two were soon hopelessly conflated.

³⁴ In support of the possibility of such influence, J. S. Major, Heaven, pp. 154–155 writes:

It is not clear how one was intended to visualize the nine-fold walls of Kunlun, but the most obvious image is as a peak of tremendous height, rising in nine steps like a ziggurat. Such a nine-tiered heaven … makes little sense in terms of the overall gaitian cosmology of Huainanzi [an ancient Chinese work of cosmological geography]: might there be here a hint of weak and distant Indian influence to go along with the possible Indian origin of the Jupiter Cycle names in Huainanzi 3. XXXIII? Certainly tiered-roof pagodas in later Chinese Buddhism reflect the Indian nine-tiered cosmos; earlier influence of the same sort is unattested but hardly impossible. The Nine-fold Shade mountain … associated with the Torch Dragon, is suggestive of a multitiered parasol of state of the sort found ubiquitously in Indic civilizations; it too may hint at an Indian-style nine-fold heaven weakly impinging on early Chinese cosmology.

Ibid., p. 337 n. 17 goes on to explicitly imply a common symbology in Mount Kunlun and Mount Mēru:

In the Indian tradition the link between architecture and cosmology is explicit. In Balinese Hinduism, for example, multitiered (often nine-tiered) temple towers are called meru, imitative in name as well as in structure of the classical Indian nine-tiered axis mundi or cosmic mountain.

³⁵ M. Wise et al., DSS, 4Q531, 22:5, p. 293. Cf. L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q531, 17:5, p. 164: “adversaries.” J. T. Milik et al., Enoch, p. 308 and F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q531), 2:5, p. 262 translate the term as “accusers.”

³⁶ F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q531), 2:6, p. 262. Cf. J. T. Milik et al., Enoch, p. 308: “they dwell in [heaven]s and they live in the holy abodes”; L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q531, 17:6, p. 164: “and in the heavens are seated, and among the holy places they dwell.”

³⁷ Moses 6:42.

³⁸ Moses 6:41.

³⁹ Moses 6:42.

⁴⁰ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 290. See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-20, p. 97.

⁴¹ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 13:7–8, p. 237.

⁴² 1 Enoch arguably identifies the “waters of Dan” as the sea of Galilee and the nearby sacred mountain of Hermon (see J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-21, p. 97). See also G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 250 n. 9–10 on “Abel-Main” and, more generally, on the sacred geography of this region on pp. 238–247. While Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that Enoch’s ministry took place in the New World (D&C 107:53–57), the general story line in ancient Enoch accounts is not inconsistent with the symbolic geography of the Book of Moses.

⁴³ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 290. See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-20, p. 97.

⁴⁴ For an overview and examples of the Egyptian concept of the horizon, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 184–185, 187–192. See related discussion in Essay #34.

⁴⁵ 2 Enoch locates paradise “between the corruptible [earth] and the incorruptible [heaven]” (F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 8:5, p. 116 and p. 116 n. l).

⁴⁶ N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 183–184 discusses the “two seemingly opposed ideas … of the end of the world, often represented by the notion of a ‘cosmic ocean,’ and … the center of the world” in the ancient Near East. See ibid., pp. 77–78, 83–84, 184–207 for examples from the ancient Near East of traversals of cosmic boundaries in heavenly ascent and of symbolic boundaries as part of ritual ascent in the temple.

Specifically with respect to Manichaean thought, Severus of Antioch (fl. 512–518), similar to other anti-Manichaean sources, reported (as cited in B. Bennett, Iuxta Unum, p. 69):

And they [i.e., the Manichaeans] say: That which is Good, also named Light and the Tree of Life, possess those regions which lie to the east, west, and north; for those (regions) which lie to the south and to the meridian belong to the Tree of Death, which they call Hyle [i.e., Matter], being very wicked and uncreated.

However, Bennett clarifies that the interpretation of the cardinal direction might best be understood in light of an an eastern rather than western frame of reference (ibid., pp. 76–77):

There are … some remarkable parallels for this teaching [about the primordial state] in both the Mandaean and Zoroastrian cosmogonies, suggesting that this teaching may have been formulated for an eastern audience who had the background beliefs necessary to comprehend and value it. The interpretation of the four cardinal directions as lines inscribed on a vertical plane (so that north and south are identified with above and below respectively) is found in the Mandaean cosmogony. Several other features can be paralleled in Middle Persian accounts of the Zoroastrian cosmogony.

⁴⁷ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 33:2, p. 329.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 329–330 n. 1 notes:

Whatever the origin of the author’s knowledge of these animals, they are envisioned primarily in mythic terms. Evidence for such a mythic tradition appears at a number of points in the cartology of the ancient world. In the Babylonian Mappa Mundi of the fifth century BCE, the sixth island that lies east of the Bitter River is said to be the place where “a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer.” Much later maps from the Common Era depict sea monsters and other beasts lurking in the farthest recesses of land and sea. Doubtless these reflect a tradition much older than the charts on which they are found.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 33:1, p. 329.

⁵⁰ D. A. Machiela, Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon, 2:23, p. 37: “And [Methusaleh] went through the length of the land of Parvain, and there he found the end of[the] ea[rth.”

⁵¹ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 106:7, p. 536.

⁵² M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, p. 488. Cf. S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 31, 32: “Mt. Yupa … is located in the East Sea, a great distance away or farthest from the center. … Given that pine trees are one of the ten traditional symbols of longevity, the trees in the [north, east, and west] of the [circular world maps] can be regarded as deeply related to [the] ‘Taoist idea of immortality.’”

In medieval times, European biblical drama sometimes contained portrayals of Elijah and Enoch that had them situated in the Garden of Eden (L. R. Muir, Biblical Drama, p. 139):

As Christ leads the redeemed souls out of Hell … a few plays include the scene of their arrival in Earthly Paradise (usually escorted by Michael) where they meet Elijah and Enoch, who have not yet died and will return to earth to fight against Antichrist.

⁵³ Scholars do not agree as to whether it is Mahaway’s first or second journey (J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 219–222, 224–225).

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 222.

⁵⁵ For a survey of the examples of the concept of the “ends of the earth” in the ancient Near East, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 113–120.

⁵⁶ J. Wilkens, Remarks, p. 225.

⁵⁷ M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, p. 488: “Or as it says in 1 Enoch 17:6, ‘where no human walks,’” emphasis Goff’s. Cf (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 17:7, p. 276: “where no flesh walks. See also ibid., 19:3, p. 276: “I, Enoch, alone saw the visions, the extremities of all things. And no one among humans has seen as I saw.”

⁵⁸ M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, p. 488.

⁵⁹ Enoch’s “similarity to, and perhaps derivation from, the [Mesopotamian] figure of Enmeduranki is widely accepted” (N. Wyatt, Space, p. 101. See also A. A. Orlov, Enoch-Metatron, pp. 23–29; J. C. VanderKam, Enoch, pp. 6–14; A. Annus, On the Origin of Watchers; H. Drawnel, Mesopotamian Background; J. Day, Enochs of Genesis 4 and 5). For an excerpt with commentary of a Mesopotamian account of the ascent of Enmeduranki, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 195–196.

⁶⁰ J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 225, 224.

⁶¹ Cited in ibid., p. 224.

⁶² Ibid., p. 222.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 225.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 225. See W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 66 for the full citation.

⁶⁵ W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, Text G (Sogdian), p. 69.

⁶⁶ Essay #33.

⁶⁷ Moses 7:18. For a discussion of Zion as God’s holy mountain, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 156–157.

⁶⁸ Hebrew tzimtzum. See also the gradual and seemingly reluctant departure of God from Jerusalem and its temple in Ezekiel (T. D. Alexander, From Eden, pp. 56-57). A number of other Jewish sources likewise describe the similar process of the removal of the Shekhinah—representing God’s presence—in seven stages (H. Schwartz, Tree, p. 51, cf. pp. 55-56).

⁶⁹ Articles of Faith 1:10. See J. D. Levenson, Temple and World, pp. 297-298; T. D. Alexander, From Eden, pp. 24-26, 42.

⁷⁰ J. D. Levenson, Temple and World, p. 298.

⁷¹ Revelation 22:1–5. See M. Barker, Revelation, pp. 327-333; R. D. Draper et al., Promises; T. D. Alexander, From Eden, pp. 13-15.

⁷² Matthew 6:10.

⁷³ W. J. Hamblin et al., Solomon’s Temple, pp. 14-15. See Revelation 21:22. Levenson finds a similar concept in his retranslation of the proclamation of the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision. Rather than chanting: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: The whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3), Levenson (J. D. Levenson, Temple and World, pp. 289-290) gives the more accurate rending of: “The fulness of the whole earth (or, world) is his glory”:

In cultic contexts, the term for “glory” (kabod) has a technical meaning; it is the divine radiance… that manifests the presence of God [cf. Exodus 40:34, 1 Kings 8:11] … If my translation of Isaiah 6:3 is correct, then the seraphim identify the world in its amplitude with this terminus technicus of the Temple cult. As Isaiah sees the smoke filling the Temple, the seraphim proclaim that the kabod fills the world (verses 3–4). The world is the manifestation of God as He sits enthroned in His Temple. The trishagion is a dim adumbration of the rabbinic notion that the world proceeds from Zion in the same manner that a fetus, in rabbinic etymology, proceeds from the navel.

⁷⁴ Article of Faith 1:10: “the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.”

⁷⁵ See J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, pp. 85-87.

⁷⁶ Abraham 3:26.

⁷⁷ D&C 130:2.

⁷⁸ W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 69.

⁷⁹ J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 384:

This line perhaps refers to those “archons” of Darkness … in Manichaean cosmogony. … Apparently two hundred archons managed to escape this imprisonment and fled to earth.

In I. Gardner, Kephalaia, chapter 38 (codex 92), p. 97, these archons are equated with the Watchers of 1 Enoch 6–16 and the Book of Giants (J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 384).

⁸⁰ It is possible that in the Manichaean version Enoch is not to be counted among the angels, but rather as one protected by the angels (W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i). However, the Mandaean accounts speak of Enoch and his two companions (for total of three rather than four as in the Manichaean version) having come “from on high” (J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 21–23). See Essay #4. Likewise, in the Book of Giants one of Enoch’s adversaries complains that his “opponents [are angels who] reside in [heav]en, and they dwell in the holy places” (Edward Cook, 4Q531 (4QEnGiants(c) ar), 22:5–6 in D. W. Parry et al., Reader, 3:495).

⁸¹ A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. See also W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i. In the Mandaean version, it appears that the “fleeing and hiding” referred to their going up into heaven rather than disguising themselves (J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 21–23). See Essay #4.

⁸² A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. Cf. J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 385:

According to Indian tradition, Mount Mēru or Sumēru (“Good Mēru) was the great mountain which stood at the center of the earth. See Mahābhārata 1(5) 15.5ff.: … “The great mountain rises aloft to cover with its heights the vault of heaven.”

⁸³ See comments in W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 59 comparing text S to text G. Cf. I. Gardner, Kephalaia, chapter 45 (codex 117, lines 5-8), p. 123 which also speaks of thirty-six towns. See also J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 386; J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 220–221.

⁸⁴ A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. See also J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 387.

⁸⁵ See also W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i and the discussion of other, similar sources in J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, pp. 160–161 n. 389. Cf. J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 25–27, where it is not Enoch and his companions, but rather their enemies who use “fire against them.” See also Essay #4.

⁸⁶ J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 227–228.

⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 216: “The fire is rising before the door [that lets the sun pass through] has opened. That being so, then whence does the fire emerge as we are told in the very first sentence? If we assume that the cosmology underlying the Manichaean Book of Giants is essentially Enochic [see G. W. E. Nickelsburg et al., 1 Enoch 2, 72:2–3, 7, p. 416], then we may assume that the flames come forth from one of the window openings located to the left and to the right of each gate.”

⁸⁸ J. Wilkens, Remarks, p. 215, 216: “The text probably wants to stress that the sun is revolving without any other cosmic force interfering. … Contrarily, in the Ethiopic Book of Enoch there is mention that the chariots of the sun and the moon are both driven by the wind. It is possible that in Mani’s work the force of the wind was deliberately minimized with regard to the ‘palace of the sun’ because of the high status the luminary is accorded in Manichaean doctrine. It is the residence of several divinities” but also a divinity in itself.

⁸⁹ See ibid., p. 219.

⁹⁰ See ibid., pp. 217–220.

⁹¹ Ibid., p. 222: “The journey as described in the Manichaean piece is clearly from the west to the east and back again. In one sentence [Mahaway] says: ‘Again I looked back. Dawn had [br]oken.’ This statement only makes sense if Mahaway is on his way back to the west again. In the Qumran fragment … 4Q530 7 ii 5, [Mahaway] crossed ‘bare regions,’ ‘the Great Deserts.’ In the Book of Watchers (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 13:9, p. 248) Enoch travels east and—as remarked by Stuckenbruck—‘Mahaway’s journey takes him from Abel-Mayya across this desert toward the paradisiacal garden in the east [where Enoch may be thought to live]” (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, pp. 133–134). The reference to Enoch’s voice issuing from the south in the Old Uyghur text [Mainz 317] is relevant only after Mahaway has arrived in the east. And, what is more, the scene takes place in the sky.”

⁹² J. Wilkens, Remarks, p. 222:

There are further questions to be resolved: is the kögmän mountain mentioned in the text really the Sayan range in South Siberia? In the Old Turkic runiform sources kögmän is attested several times. If the Manichaean text should refer to the same mountain range, then the Old Uyghur version of the Book of Giants would be adapted to an Inner Asian environment. According to Henning, kögmän “may reflect the ‘Mount Hermon,’” the place where the watchers had started their descent from heaven. But, the morpheme +mAn can also be just a suffix indicating similarity to the base word. We would then have to transcribe the word as kök+män (“bluish”), derived from kök (“blue”) with a voiceless stop. This explanation is followed here.

⁹³ Ibid., p. 224: “Does the phrase ‘like some of them’ allude to a distinction between the [gibborim]? We have evidence from other fragments that this seemingly was the case. Stuckenbruck has detected evidence for factions among the [gibborim] in two fragments from Qumran (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, p. 107).

October 2, 2020February 15, 2021

Enoch, the Prophet and Seer: Enoch’s Prophecy of the Tribes

Book of Moses Essay #23

Moses 7:5–11, 22

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Matthew L. Bowen

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Having concluded his teachings on the plan of salvation,¹ “from that time forth Enoch began to prophesy … unto the people.”² Like Moses and the brother of Jared,³ Enoch spoke with the Lord “even as a man talketh one with another, face to face” (Moses 7:4).⁴

Notably, each of the three major works of Enoch pseudepigrapha contain stories of Enoch’s activities in heaven. In 1 Enoch 14, Enoch is taken up into heaven and kneels before the throne of God.⁵ 2 Enoch 22:5 more closely echoes the wording of Moses 7:4 (“stood before my face”), when the Lord says: “Be brave, Enoch! Don’t be frightened! Stand up, and stand in front of my face forever.”⁶ In 2 Enoch 22:1, Enoch similarly relates: “I saw the view of the face of the Lord.”⁷ Because of the significance of the fact that Enoch is allowed to see God’s face, in 2 Enoch he is given the title “Prince of the Divine Face.”⁸

In Moses 7:5–12, we learn that Enoch was shown (in capsule form) “the world for the space of many generations,”⁹ a vision that stops short of Noah’s Flood. In the present Essay we discuss this limited vision of the tribes. In subsequent Essays,¹⁰ we will describe Enoch’s “Grand Vision.” In this latter vision, which starts in Moses 7:20, Enoch saw God’s work on the earth from beginning to end.¹¹

Enoch’s Prophecy about the Tribes of Canaan and Shum

In Enoch’s “vision of the tribes,” contained in verses 5–8, he was told to prophesy about the war that would come among the two peoples of Canaan and Shum. In verses 9–12, he is called to teach repentance and baptism to other peoples besides Canaan lest they suffer a similar fate.¹² We are not aware of any direct parallels to this two-part account in ancient Enoch literature, however we can conjecture some things about the background of these verses from a knowledge of the Old Testament and the ancient Near East.

The tribe of Shum. With respect to the brief reference to the first tribe of Shum in verse 5, Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes point out the joint reference to the “people of Shum” and the “valley of Shum” as a precedent for naming places after a notable ancestor in this account.¹³ They suggest that the name “is likely a variant of Shem, itself meaning ‘name.’”¹⁴ There are many mentions in the early chapters of Genesis of peoples who lived in tents.¹⁵

The tribe of Canaan. As to the second tribe seen in vision, Draper et al. conclude that the “people of Canaan” mentioned in verse 6 are “not the same as ‘the seed of Cain.’¹⁶ Although both groups were ostracized because of skin pigmentation,¹⁷ their tribal names are of different origin.”¹⁸ Neither should the people of Canaan or the descendants of Cain be confused with the people of “Cainan.”¹⁹ Cainan, Enoch’s great-grandfather, and others of the “people of God … dwelt in a land of promise,”²⁰ which Enoch had referred to during his preaching mission as “a land of righteousness unto this day.”²¹

The similar-sounding names of “Canaan” and “Cainan” mentioned in close proximity within the Book of Moses follow the same pattern of wordplay elsewhere in the corresponding Genesis chapters. For example, it is no coincidence, according to Hugh Nibley, that the descendants of the Sethite ancestors of Enoch “run in seven lines with almost the same names [as the descendants of Cain]. But,” he continues, “they are read differently as if you were punning on them, like twin names. This is a typical trick. The Egyptians do it all the time.”²²

Whether there is meant to be any connection between these antediluvian Canaanites and the later group of the same name that inhabited the area of Palestine is unknown. The first mention of “Canaan” in the Bible is as the name of the son of Ham, who was the son of Noah.²³ The “Canaanites” mentioned in Abraham 1:21–22 are said to have been Ham’s descendants, but no explicit connection is made between them and the land of “Canaan” where Abraham was commanded to go when he left Ur of the Chaldees.²⁴

The cursing of the land of Canaan. Enoch’s prophecy that the land of the Canaanites “shall be barren and unfruitful” is a “measure for measure” form of punishment that will continue indefinitely (“the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever”²⁵). Because the Canaanites will wickedly conspire to exterminate the people of Shum and take their land, their own land will be cursed. The curse and its murderous provocation parallel the experience of Cain on a larger scale.²⁶

The curse of barrenness recalls the prophecy of Enoch to the sinners in 1 Enoch 100:11:²⁷

And every cloud and mist and dew and rain will testify against you;

for they will all be withheld from you, so as not to descend upon you,

and they will be mindful of your sins.

Note that this prophecy about the unfruitfulness of the land is in direct contrast with the Lord’s promise given in Exodus 23:26 to the Israelites who were to be given their own land of Canaan: “There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren.” In 2 Peter 1:8, following a list of godly virtues, is a similarly worded promise of a spiritual nature: “if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Enoch also prophesies that “none other people shall dwell there but the people of Canaan.”²⁸ This is a second contrast to the later Israelites in their land of Canaan. The Israelites were told that the other peoples inhabiting the land would be driven out “little by little”²⁹ rather than all at once. Subsequent events make it clear that the Israelites were never successful in possessing the entire land for themselves alone.³⁰

The prophecy that “the Lord shall curse the land”³¹ of the people of Canaan is again reminiscent of the story of Cain.³² This is an explicit contrast to Moses 7:17, where the Lord is said to have “blessed the land” on behalf of the people of God.

The “blackness” of the people of Canaan. Of significance in connection with the “much heat” that was to come upon the land, is the mention that a blackness “came upon” the children of Canaan.³³ The description that this blackness “came upon” them seems to contradict the conjecture that these people inherited dark skin because they were of the lineage of Cain.³⁴ Hugh Nibley’s explanation of the Arab concept of aswad (black) verses abyad (white) is of interest here: those Arabs who live out in tents in the heat are called “black” while those who live in the shelter of stone houses in the city are seen as “white.”³⁵ Also of interest is the fact that “black” and “white” in Arabic can be used to refer to levels of moral cleanliness and purity.³⁶ Indeed, such a distinction is found in 3 Enoch 44:6, where Rabbi Ishmael is shown the spirits suffering in Sheol and comments that “the faces of the wicked souls were as black as the bottom of a pot, because of the multitude of their wicked deeds.”³⁷ Thus, the more straightforward modern assumption that the blackness of the children of Canaan refers to a difference in skin pigmentation is not an automatic given.

In Moses 7:22, we similarly find the mention that “the seed of Cain were black.” Commenting on the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch in which Cain is depicted as a “black calf,”³⁸ George Nickelsburg concludes that “the color of the bulls …—like their species—is symbolic. Adam’s whiteness suggests his purity, and … at the very least, the black or dark color attributed to Cain foreshadows his murder of Abel (cf. Job 6:16, of the treachery of Job’s enemies).”³⁹ With specific reference to the “mark of Cain,”⁴⁰ it is not a straightforward matter to decode the nature of the mark:⁴¹

Though readers have often assumed that the mark was a dark skin, the text of the verse itself fails to give warrant for any particular conclusion about the nature of the mark given to Cain. Nor is the verse explicit about whether the mark was passed on to his descendants.⁴² Of possible relevance to this question is Moses 7:22 which states that “the seed of Cain were black.”⁴³ Allred, however, finds even this statement inconclusive, arguing that it could be a figurative expression referring to “those who followed Cain in his wicked practices,” referring to them “in the same manner that the Jews were called the children of the Devil.”⁴⁴ Similarly, Goldenberg has argued that, as with the four horsemen of Revelation 6:1–8, the blackness of individuals depicted in 1 Enoch and in other ancient Near Eastern sources is used in a purely symbolic fashion to represent evil and exclusion from the covenant community.⁴⁵ He conjectures that beliefs about Cain’s skin becoming black were the result of textual misunderstandings.⁴⁶
Consistent with this view is al-Kisa’i’s report of a tradition that Lamech (the son of the Sethite Methuselah—not to be confused with the Cainite Lamech of Moses 5:43–54) married Methuselcha, a descendant of Cain. Though mentioning the fact that there was “enmity that existed between the children of Seth and the children of Cain,” the story implies that there was nothing in their outward appearance that would identify them as being of different lineages, since Lamech had to tell her his parentage explicitly. Described in wholly positive terms, Methuselcha was said in this tradition to have become the mother of Noah.⁴⁷

Enoch’s Teachings to the Other Tribes

In Moses 7:9, Enoch has a vision of “the land of Sharon, and the land of Enoch, and the land of Omner, and the land of Heni, and the land of Shem, and the land of Haner, and the land of Hanannihah, and all the inhabitants thereof.” Here is what can be said about the names that are mentioned in the verse:

- Sharon. “Sharon” appears as a place name in the Bible in 1 Chronicles 5:16, 27:29; Song of Solomon 2:1; Isaiah 33:9, 35:2, 65:10.
- Enoch. Presumably this place was not named after the prophet, but rather after Enoch, the son of Cain.⁴⁸
- Omner. “Omner” appears in the Book of Mormon as the personal name of one of the sons of Mosiah.⁴⁹
- Heni. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.
- Shem. Besides being the name of Noah’s son,⁵⁰ “Shem” is the name of a land in the Book of Mormon.⁵¹ It is also used as a personal name in Mormon 6:14.
- Haner. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.
- Hanannihah. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.

Apparently the “people” to which Enoch was commanded to preach included the groups named above, but not the people of Canaan.⁵² These groups were told to “Repent, lest I [the Lord] come out and smite them with a curse.”⁵³ The requirement that the people repent or be cursed is found throughout Scripture. For example, the commandments given to Israel in Deuteronomy 28 include blessings and cursings conditioned on obedience. The result of continued rebellion is destruction or death.⁵⁴

Figure 2. Details of a statue in St. Stephan’s Platz, Vienna, Austria with plaques for the God the Father (Creator), God the Son (Redeemer), and God the Holy Spirit, 2003.

In verse 11, the people are instructed to “baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, which is full of grace and truth, and of the Holy Ghost.” The instructions to repent and be baptized should be compared to the guidelines that the Lord gave to Adam regarding the teaching of his children.⁵⁵ Although Moses 6:52 states that baptism should be performed in the name of the Son and in verses 57–59 God refers to the Son and the Spirit in His explanation of spiritual rebirth, Moses 7:11 marks the first example of using titles of all three members of the Godhead in the baptismal ordinance as is done in the Church today.⁵⁶

Moses 7:12 concludes Enoch’s prophecy, stating that “Enoch continued to call upon all the people, save it were the people of Canaan.” The restricted scope of Enoch’s ministry outlined here is in contrast to the universal extent of the teachings of the “preachers of righteousness”⁵⁷ that preceded him. There is no explanation for why the people of Canaan are excluded from Enoch’s preaching. Following the narrative, we may suppose that the reason may be due to their acts of violence against the people of Shum.⁵⁸

Conclusions

The interesting interlude in these verses continues to echo themes in the Enoch literature as well as the Old Testament. Enoch’s prophecy to the tribes is a bridge between his teachings on the plan of salvation and the events that led to the establishing of Zion. His warning leaves the people without excuse, allowing them to choose either to participate in the devastating events of “wars and bloodshed” among the wicked or to dwell with the Lord and “his people … in righteousness.”⁵⁹

This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 105, 130–133.

References

al-Kisa’i, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah. ca. 1000-1100. Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiya). Translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr. Great Books of the Islamic World, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Chicago, IL: KAZI Publications, 1997.

Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Allred, Alma. “The traditions of their fathers: Myth versus reality in LDS scriptural writings.” In Black and Mormon, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith, 34-49. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Andersen, F. I. “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 91-221. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.

Bradley, Don. The Lost 116 Pages: Reconsructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2019.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. Creation, Fall, and the Story of Adam and Eve. 2014 Updated ed. In God’s Image and Likeness 1. Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2014.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014.

Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. 2018. Did Joshua ‘Utterly Destroy’ the Canaanites? In Interpreter Foundation Old Testament KnoWhy JBOTL18A. https://interpreterfoundation.org/knowhy-otl18a-did-joshua-utterly-destroy-the-canaanites/. (accessed November 23, 2018).

Cassuto, Umberto. 1944. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Vol. 1: From Adam to Noah. Translated by Israel Abrahams. 1st English ed. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1998.

Dahl, Larry E., and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds. The Lectures on Faith in Historical Perspective. Religious Studies Specialized Monograph Series 15. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1990.

Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005.

Feyerick, Ada, Cyrus H. Gordon, and Nahum M. Sarna. Genesis: World of Myths and Patriarchs. New York City, NY: New York University Press, 1996.

Gardner, Brant A. Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary of the Book of Mormon. 6 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007.

Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Ibrahim, Zaynab M., Sabiha T. Aydelott, and Nagwa Kassabgy. Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in Arabic and English Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 2000.

Martins, Marcus H. Blacks and the Mormon Priesthood. Setting the Record Straight. Orem, UT: Millennial Press, 2007.

Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.

———. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004.

Orlov, Andrei A. The Enoch-Metatron Tradition. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 107. Tübingen, Germany Mohr Siebeck, 2005.

Smith, Joseph, Jr. 1902-1932. History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Documentary History). 7 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1978.

Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1985.

Wenham, Gordon J., ed. Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary 1: Nelson Reference and Electronic, 1987.

Westermann, Claus, ed. 1974. Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary 1st ed. Translated by John J. Scullion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.

Notes for Figures

Figure 1. In A. Feyerick et al., Genesis, p. 127.

Figure 2. Copyright Stephen T. Whitlock. Image IDs: DSCN1022, 1019, and 1023 (12 July 2003).

Footnotes

¹ Moses 7:1.

² Moses 7:2.

³ Cf. Moses 1:2: “And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses”; Exodus 33:1: “And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” Regarding the brother of Jared, see Ether 3:4–20. See also D. Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, pp. 236–238; B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 6:191–194, 199–210.

⁴ See also J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary Moses 1:2-a, p. 44; J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 6:68-a, p. 84. Cf. L. E. Dahl et al., Lectures, 2:55, p. 51: “Enoch, the brother of Jared, and Moses … obtain[ed] faith in God, and power with Him to behold him face to face.”

⁵ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 14:8–24, pp. 257, 267.

⁶ F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 22:5 [J], pp. 136, 138.

⁷ Ibid., 22:1 [J], p. 136.

⁸ See A. A. Orlov, Enoch-Metatron, pp. 153–156.

⁹ Moses 7:4.

¹⁰ Beginning with Essay #25.

¹¹ See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 7:20-a, p. 137.

¹² Moses 7:7–11. On the themes of repentance in the Enoch tradition, see Essays #10–11, on the subject of baptism and the Son of Man, see Essays #14–20.

¹³ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 115.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 115.

¹⁵ E.g., Genesis 4:20; 9:21; 12:8.

¹⁶ Moses 7:22.

¹⁷ See Moses 7:8, 22.

¹⁸ R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 115. Other than a possible allusion in a JST addition to Genesis 9:26, there is no explicit connection in scripture made between the “seed of Cain” (i.e., “who were black”) and the people of Canaan mentioned in Moses 7:8 (i.e., “there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan”). See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 7:22-b, p. 139; Commentary Moses 6:17-c, p. 54; Commentary Genesis 9:26-b, p. 142.

¹⁹ Moses 6:17.

²⁰ Moses 6:17.

²¹ Moses 6:41.

²² H. W. Nibley, Teachings of the PGP, 20, p. 249. Cf. H. W. Nibley, Enoch, p. 178; G. J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, pp. 123–124.

²³ Genesis 9:18.

²⁴ See Abraham 2:1–4.

²⁵ Moses 7:8.

²⁶ Moses 5:36.

²⁷ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 100:11, p. 503.

²⁸ Moses 7:7.

²⁹ Exodus 23:30.

³⁰ J. M. Bradshaw, Did Joshua “Utterly Destroy”.

³¹ Moses 7:8.

³² Moses 4:23.

³³ Moses 7:8.

⁴ See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 7:22-b, p. 139.

³⁵ H. W. Nibley, Teachings of the PGP, p. 282.

³⁶ See Z. M. Ibrahim et al., Diversity, p. 78.

³⁷ P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 44:6, p. 295.

³⁸ G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 85:3–5, p. 364.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 371 n. 3–10.

⁴⁰ See Moses 5:40.

⁴¹ J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, 5:40-c, p. 386.

⁴² For arguments that the account of the mark of Cain should not be interpreted as referring to something that was passed on to future generations, see, e.g., U. Cassuto, Adam to Noah, pp. 227–228; C. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, pp. 312–313.

⁴³ Cf. J. Smith, Jr., Documentary History, 25 January 1842, 4:501. Note also the statement that a “blackness came upon all the children of Canaan,” seemingly in direct consequence of a notable act of genocide (Moses 7:7–8). See M. H. Martins, Blacks, pp. 10–11.

⁴⁴ A. Allred, Traditions, p. 49. See John 8:44.

⁴⁵ D. M. Goldenberg, Curse, pp. 152–154. See also manuscript versions of Moses 1:15 (S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT1, p. 84, OT2, p. 592), as well as J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary 1:15-a, p. 55.

⁴⁶ D. M. Goldenberg, Curse, pp. 178–182. For similar conclusions relating to the mark imposed upon the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon (e.g., 1 Nephi 12:23, 2 Nephi 5:21–24, Alma 3:6–19, 3 Nephi 2:14–16), see B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 2:108–123; J. L. Sorenson, Ancient, p. 90.

⁴⁷ M. i. A. A. al-Kisa’i, Tales, pp. 91–93.

⁴⁸ Moses 5:42–43, 49.

⁴⁹ E.g., Mosiah 27:34.

⁵⁰ E.g., Moses 7:9; 8:12, 27.

⁵¹ Mormon 2:20–21.

⁵² See Moses 7:12.

⁵³ Moses 7:10.

⁵⁴ See, e.g., Deuteronomy 11:26–28; 30:19; 2 King 22:16–19; Malachi 3:8–12; 4:5–6; Matthew 25:31–46; 1 Nephi 17:38; Jacob 2:29; 3:3; Alma 3:19; Alma 17:15; 45:16; D&C 41:1; Moses 5:25; 5:52.

⁵⁵ Moses 6:57–59. See Essay #14. The reference to “the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of the Father and the Son” is also used in Moses 5:9. The use of the term “record” recalls the titles of the Holy Ghost given in Moses 6: “the record of heaven” (Moses 6:61) and “the record of the Father and the Son” (Moses 6:66). See also Moses 6:63: “all things are created and made to bear record of me.” For more on the use of the term “record” in the teachings of Enoch, see Essay #16.

⁵⁶ D&C 20:73.

⁵⁷ See Moses 6:23.

⁵⁸ See Moses 7:7.

⁵⁹ Moses 7:16.

Book of Moses Essay #30

Moses 7:18-19, 68-69

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

“All the Days of Zion”

“Zion Was Not”

“God Received [Zion] Up into His Own Bosom”

“Zion Is Fled”

Conclusion: Learning from Enoch

Further Reading

References

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #29

Moses 7:60-69

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

1. The Lord Will Fulfill His Oath

2. Great Tribulations Among the Children of Men and Preservation of the Lord’s People

3. The Lord Will Gather the Righteous

4. The Lord and Enoch’s City will Receive the Righteous

5 and 6. The Earth Shall Rest, and Enoch Receives a Fulness of Joy

Further Reading

Appendix: A Provisional Proposal for Structuring Moses 6:60-69

References

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #28

Moses 7:28-43

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Jacob Rennaker, and David J. Larsen

Did God or Enoch Weep in Moses 7:28?

Weeping in Similitude of God

Weeping Because the Divine Withdrawal from the Earth.

Weeping Because of the Insulting Words of the Wicked

Weeping Followed by Heavenly Vision

Conclusions

Further Reading

References

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #27

Moses 7:28-29, 40, 42-43

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Creation

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Enoch

The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Noah

Further Reading

References

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #26

Moses 7:48-49, 54, 61, 64

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Conclusions

Further Reading

References

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #25

Moses 7:18-49

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 as Models for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Vision

1. Zion Is Blessed, But the Residue of the People Is Cursed

2. The Heavens Weep for the Residue of the People—God’s Children and Enoch’s Brethren

3. Enoch Weeps and His Heart Swells “Wide as Eternity”

Further Reading

Appendix: Provisional Proposal for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Grand Vision

Notes on Figures

Footnotes

Book of Moses Essay #24

Moses 7:12-18

With contribution by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

“The Earth Trembled and the Mountains Fled”

Pouring Out and Drawing Back of the Waters

The Decisive Battle

The End of the Wicked and the Beginnings of Zion

Conclusions

Further Reading

Appendix 1: The Battle of the Angels and the “Giants” in the Manichaean Book of Giants

Appendix 2: The Journey of Mahaway to Enoch in the Manichaean Book of Giants

References

Notes to Figures