Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

11:10-26 – As the population of the world grows and the people spread out over the land, the languages change and I assume that the cultures and spiritual beliefs did as well. These 16 verses go through the many generations that happened between the time of Noah’s son Shem and Abraham. I’m not going to go into it, but there are a couple of points to be made. The first is that “Shem lived long enough that he was contemporary with the next ten generations. In other words, he was still alive when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were born. This circumstance is one of the reasons why some have wondered if Shem was also Melchezidek.” I hadn’t heard that some people considered Shem and Melchezidek to be the same person and it’s interesting to consider. It’s also interesting to consider just what role Shem played as the family patriarch to the faithful throughout the generations. Another interesting point comes up with the mention of the birth of Eber, Shem’s great-grandson. The IM comments, “Many ...

11:1-2 - It’s hard to speculate the extent to which people spread out over the earth’s surface when the generations are listed but then we have statements like verse 1 which says, “and the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” As far as I know, languages change over time resulting in accents and eventually into something completely unrecognizable to the original. That everyone spoke the same language indicates to me that there weren’t that many people and that they all lived relatively close to each other. It’s also noted “as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.” I don’t know if this is referencing all the people alive on the earth at that time or just a small population that this story is tracking. Interestingly, the fact that the people dwelled in a “plain” or valley type place is significant. The article from this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes “the Jewish historian Josephus” as noting that the des...

10:1-9 - After Noah died, his sons and their families dispersed throughout the land, I was going to do a big chart thing with all the people listed, but I don’t want to. There’s several good ones online, so I just left it at that. There are a couple of items of note in chapter 10 that I want to cover, first is Nimrod, the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham. Nimrod only gets 2 verses but it appears that he was pivotal in the reestablishment of wickedness among humanity. Nimrod’s verses, 8-9 simply say, “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” The important part comes from a JST that changes “a mighty hunter before the Lord” to “a mighty hunter in the land.” Ok, still doesn’t seem to be that big of a change, why is he so important? Hugh Nibley, a scriptural scholar, studied the ancient Jewish traditions and apocrypha that gave a distinctly different p...

9:1-17 - Now that the ground was all dry, Noah and his family got out of the ark with all the animals and started planting. God “blessed Noah” and gave them dominion over all the animals of the earth. God uses the phrase, “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth,” which seems pretty crappy for the animals, but the footnotes link the word “fear” to Genesis 1:26-28 where God gives Adam “dominion” over the animals to take care of and use for his necessary purposes. They don’t have the law of Moses yet, so a dietary code hasn’t been explicit yet, but God does give the command to not “eat” blood, which a lot of cultures do so that was probably happening before the flood. Interestingly, part of the dietary code that God gives them is expanded on in the JST, where instead of just “every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” and “don’t eat blood,” there are five verses that clarify what is meant by “meat.” Some of the highlights are, “blood shall ...

8:1-4 - The water came out of the sky and the ground and flooded the whole earth for 150 days, the “God remembered Noah, and every living thing… and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.” I think this is a case of translation without context, similar to how it said that God repented of making man, etc. It’s not possible that God flooded the earth and then “forgot” that he had done it, and the way that this is written gives us a sense that God is oblivious or too caught up in his own wants, needs, or desires to keep track of what we’ve got going on down here. Obviously, this isn’t the case, and again, I think that this is just a translation miscommunication or maybe even Satan’s active influence to make us believe that God isn’t really interested in us after all. Just as the earth took some time to flood, it also took some time to get rid of the water, and as the water level dropped “the ark rested… upon the mountains of Ararat.” The IM notes that “no locatio...

7:11-15 - With Noah and his family safely in the ark, it was time for the flood to come. Here’s what’s interesting though, I’d always just assumed that the flood waters came from massive amounts of rain, but apparently that is not the whole story. Instead, we are told that “all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” So here is where I got the rain idea, but the IM quotes John Taylor as speculating that the “fountains of the great deep” might have referred to “something beyond the oceans, something outside of the seas, some reservoirs of which we have no knowledge, were made to contribute to this event, and the waters were let loose by the hand and power of God.” When I visited a part of Florida with my kids, we went swimming with manatees and something that the tour guide told us was that under the state of Florida there are thousands of aquafers that bubble up millions of gallons ...

7:1-3 - In a subtle contrast to what we studied yesterday, here the Lord commands Noah to not only take animals two by two, but “of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens… And of beasts that are not clean by two.” I think this is in reference to the types of animals allowed to be sacrificed, and it would make sense if you take two animals, a breeding pair, then have to sacrifice one, that species is now extinct, so it makes sense to take several pairs. Why the discrepancy though, between the earlier two command and this one? I’m not exactly sure, but when I was reading the book about the Bible came to be by Timothy Johnson (I think), one of the things that he said was that when translating between languages, one strategy that many translators used was when there were two different ways that something could be interpreted, then they would write both and leave them both in there. That concept would fit perfectly into what we are reading here, the first translation being “The...

6:14-16 - Genesis picks up where Moses ended in the middle of chapter 6 with some pretty specific instructions about the flood that is coming. The Lord commands Noah to “make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” The IM notes, “The ark: the Hebrew word means ‘box’ or ‘chest.’ It is used elsewhere only for the watertight ‘basket’ in which the baby Moses floated on the Nile- an interesting parallel. The ark is vast, designed to float, not sail- and there were n launching problems! An 18-inch cubit gives the measurements as 450x75x45 feet.” That is a huge vessel, by contrast, the Titanic was 882x92 feet, so about twice the length and just a little bit wider. The “pitch” I assume was some sort of tar waterproofing type of mixture, so it’s interesting that the Lord told Noah to put it on both the outside and inside of the boat. Interestingly, the Lord continues stating “a window shalt thou make to the ark.” The foot...

8:1-3 - The city of Zion is so righteous that it, with Enoch, is taken up into heaven, and not just them but also those various righteous who live between the time of the city being taken up and the flood happening. You’d think that since Enoch was taken up too that all his family would as well, assuming they’d be just as righteous, but verse 1 specifically states that Methuselah, Enoch’s son, “was not taken.” The reason that we’re given is that Methuselah had to remain on the earth so that the promise God made with Enoch would be fulfilled, and that promise is that “Noah should be of the fruit of his loins.” Methuselah was apparently content with this reasoning, “and he took glory unto himself.” I don’t know if that means he was prideful in some sort of way or if it means that he took this reasoning as good enough for him and was happy to do God’s work, or something else entirely. A little note about Noah as a person, the IM says, “Many generations of prophets foresaw Noah as the prop...

7:63- - At the time right before the Millennium, the city of Zion, or Enoch’s righteous city that was translated before the flood will return to the New Jerusalem, and all the righteous saints will rejoice together, “and we will receive them in 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.” It seems like that might be an extreme reaction, but imagine how it feels to meet someone who loves Jesus and tries to keep the commandments just like we do, it’s exhilarating, it make you feel validated in your choices, it helps you feel like you can endure in a wicked world in a righteous way. I imagine that this is how it will feel when the two places are brought together and the people meet in the flesh for the first time. Jesus will live in the righteous city with “and for the space of a thousand years the earth shall rest.” Even though Enoch saw the great day of the coming of the millennium where peace res...