It is easy to think of Jacob as merely a younger sibling—that is, as a lesser sequel to his older and more illustrious brother Nephi. The book of Jacob’s seven chapters are certainly dwarfed by the fifty-five chapters making up Nephi’s two books. Moreover, they lack the narrative excitement that propels readers through much of Nephi’s record,[1] and the ponderous parable Jacob quotes from Zenos only marginally improves on the readability of Nephi’s Isaiah quotations. Although Nephi quotes five chapters of Jacob’s teachings within his own record, he seems to present these as secondary and derivative, reshaping them to fit his own needs (see 2 Nephi 11:1) and stating that he includes them “to prove” that his own teachings “are true” (v. 3).[2] Jacob in turn often uses the pronoun we in his writings, as if his ministry after Nephi’s death was still attached to Nephi’s (see Jacob 1:5–8; 4:2–7), and at the end of his book, he explicitly defends Nephi’s exposition of “the doctrine of Christ” (see Jacob 7:2, 6; compare 2 Nephi 31:2, 21; 32:6) rather than setting out his own.[3]

Despite all this, it may be a mistake to understand Jacob as an echo of Nephi rather than as a prophetic voice of immense independent importance. There are hints that Mormon, upon discovering the small plates, took Jacob especially seriously.[4] Also of note is the curious fact that, after writing several chapters of his own, Jacob insists that the small plates “are called the plates of Jacob,” despite their having been “made by the hand of Nephi” (Jacob 3:14). Further—and too little has been made of this fact—certain of Nephi’s famous teachings seem to have originated with Jacob.[5] All this evidence suggests that Jacob’s is a voice that needs closer attention. This is something Deidre Green, Jacob’s most recent advocate, has pointed out: “Jacob has a unique voice in the Book of Mormon; his particular history and experience shape a rare and distinct perspective among the various authors of the text.”[6]

In this essay, I explore one dimension of Jacob’s writings that may serve to distinguish his prophetic voice from that of his older brother. Marilyn Arnold has spoken of “a contrast (though not a conflict) between Nephi and Jacob” when it comes to their affective dispositions; where Nephi is self-assured and at times can seem emotionally untouchable, Jacob is instead “unusually tender, even a bit fragile, in his emotional makeup.”[7] I consider a rather different point of contrast between the two figures, however. The difference that interests me concerns their differing use of Isaiah. Every reader of the Book of Mormon knows of Nephi’s delight in Isaiah’s words (see 2 Nephi 11:2). The question is whether Jacob delighted in them as well. It is of course true that Jacob quotes a few chapters of Isaiah in a sermon that Nephi includes in his own record (see 2 Nephi 6–10), and this perhaps makes it easy to assume that “Jacob was in perfect harmony with Nephi’s interpretation of Isaiah.”[8] But a careful consideration of the evidence suggests that Jacob had certain anxieties about Nephi’s boldness in using Isaiah in his prophetic ministry.

I therefore attempt in the following pages to gather evidence suggesting Jacob’s nervousness about the usefulness of Isaiah’s prophecies—not reluctance about what Isaiah had to say, to be clear, but about just how wise it was to use Isaiah in teaching Nephite audiences. It may be useful to note right at the outset that this examination of Jacob’s use of Isaiah is part of ongoing research for me, research into how the various authors of and contributors to the Book of Mormon use the words of Isaiah. I have argued elsewhere that the prophet Abinadi seems to have been driven by circumstances, and especially by God, to draw Nephite attention away from Isaiah, ushering in a long era during which the Nephites spent little time with Isaiah.[9] Although I have longed treated Nephi and Jacob as largely (but not entirely) seeing eye to eye on the utility of and strategies for deploying Isaiah’s words,[10] some closer reading of certain passages has raised for me the question of whether Jacob and Abinadi might be more aligned than I had presupposed. In what follows, then, I offer a possible adjustment to what I have elsewhere assumed regarding the relationship between Nephi and Jacob as regards Isaiah.

I will proceed as follows. In the first section of this chapter, I briefly examine ways in which Jacob’s ministry is clearly continuous with Nephi’s, making clear that any difference between them concerns strategy more than theology. I go on in two subsequent sections to consider potential points of tension between Jacob and Nephi when it comes to using Isaiah: one subtly present in Jacob’s public sermon in Jacob 1–3, the other less subtly governing Jacob’s written discourse in Jacob 4–6. I treat these in reverse order, privileging the more readily discernible one before coming to the subtler one. In a fourth section, I consider Jacob’s sermon on Isaiah that Nephi includes in his own record, showing that Jacob’s nervousness regarding Isaiah may appear even there. Finally, in a few paragraphs of conclusion, I ask what all this might mean about the task of reading of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. Nephi’s excitement and Jacob’s nervousness together appear to form part of a larger pattern that has important implications for those hoping to make sense of Isaiah’s role in the Book of Mormon.

A Shared Ministry

To examine potential disagreement between Nephi and Jacob on one point of strategy is not to overlook how much these two prophetic voices share. The continuity between their ministries is obvious from the text. Nephi indicates it straightforwardly at several different points. For example, he says that he chose Jacob and “did consecrate” him to be one of at least two dedicated “priests and teachers” in the land of Nephi (2 Nephi 5:26). He also explicitly claims that he saw Jacob’s public teachings as fit to confirm the truth of his own words (see 2 Nephi 11:3). Right within Nephi’s record, Jacob dutifully explains Isaiah to Nephi’s people when assigned to do so (see 2 Nephi 6:4), and he fulfills this task by using Nephi’s own interpretive strategy of likening (see 2 Nephi 6:5). Finally, when Nephi begins his final address to his readers, explaining the doctrine of Christ, he halfway apologizes for only having been able to include “a few of the words of [his] brother Jacob” in the record (2 Nephi 31:1). There is thus no question that Nephi means for his readers to see real continuity between his and Jacob’s prophetic ministries.

Jacob confirms Nephi’s picture of continuity. Especially important here is the previously mentioned fact that Jacob often uses the pronoun we when describing his ministry. In context, the pronoun groups Jacob with Nephi in a shared mission.[11] In all such “we”-talk, Jacob speaks of prophetic gifts and strenuous efforts to teach: “it truly had been made manifest unto us concerning our people what things should happen unto them”; “we also had many revelations and the spirit of much prophecy”; “we labored diligently among our people that we might persuade them to come unto Christ”; “we would to God that we could persuade all men not to rebel against God” (Jacob 1:5–8; emphasis added).[12] Thus Jacob, as much as Nephi, asks his readers to see them as sharing one and the same ministry, undertaken harmoniously. It is therefore significant that Nephi and Jacob agree about the theological substance of the two themes that organize the Book of Mormon’s core message: Nephi borrows his understanding of Christ’s saving grace from Jacob,[13] while Jacob’s outlines of Israel’s history follow patterns previously traced by Nephi.[14] Even the overarching order in which Nephi and Jacob lay out their prophetic teachings is instructively similar, suggestive of a shared vision.[15]

Even these broad reflections on similarities between Nephi’s and Jacob’s ministries make clear that their differences are more formal than material. In other words, the substance of Nephi’s teachings differs minimally from that of Jacob’s teachings. Nephi apparently means it when he says that his brother “hath seen [my Redeemer] as I have seen him” (2 Nephi 11:3)—and Jacob would apparently concur (see Jacob 7:5). Thus, to the extent that they significantly differ, their differences concern their approach and strategy.

Avoiding Isaiah’s Writings?

With the material similarities between Nephi and Jacob at least preliminarily clear, it is possible to ask about their formal differences. Is there compelling evidence that Jacob is less interested than Nephi in teaching his people from Isaiah? As noted above, it is best to begin with the least subtle moment in the book of Jacob, which occurs late in chapter 4. Jacob reflects there for a few verses on the question of why or how some prophets end up writing obscurely when the Spirit speaks plainly (see vv. 13–14). Although he does not mention Isaiah by name, it is difficult to avoid the idea that Isaiah is the key figure he has in mind.

It is worth noting that Nephi too reflects in his record on obscurity and plainness in contemplating Isaiah. Somewhat paradoxically, Nephi says that his soul “delighteth” both in “the words of Isaiah” (2 Nephi 11:2) and in “plainness” (2 Nephi 25:4). It was apparently this double delight—and the resulting desire to make the obscure plain—that drove Nephi to develop the strategy of likening. This strategy consists of Nephi setting his own plain prophecies alongside Isaiah’s obscure prophecies, letting the plainness of the one clarify the obscurity of the other (and the obscurity of the other enrich plainness of the one).[16] As this strategy attests, Nephi did not regard Isaiah’s prophecies as plain. He in fact explicitly states that they were “not plain” for his people (2 Nephi 25:4), which is why he graciously provides them with resources for making sense of the prophet he continually asks them to read (see vv. 4, 7). Nephi apparently felt that the task of reading Isaiah was important enough to develop such helps for his people. The question, though, is whether Jacob—who could certainly liken right alongside his brother when asked to do so (as he does in 2 Nephi 6–10)—felt the same way. The circumstances of Jacob’s birth naturally made him more intellectually akin to Nephi’s people than to Nephi; like them, he had never known Jerusalem or the regions round about (see 1 Nephi 18:7; compare 2 Nephi 25:6).[17] Did Jacob’s circumstances affect his attitude toward obscure prophecies that had their origins in a land unfamiliar to him? What can be learned from his comments about obscure prophecy?

Jacob’s words about obscure prophecy appear just verses before he outlines the history of Israel (by quoting a long parable by Zenos). He tellingly begins with a kind of warning: “Behold, my brethren, he that prophesieth, let him prophesy to the understanding of men” (Jacob 4:13). He then explains that “the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not,” and that it “speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be” (v. 13). This is why, Jacob says, what he and his brother witnessed in vision was “manifested . . . plainly” (v. 13). Jacob seems to be laying down a rule for Nephite prophets here: Avoid obscurity in your preaching! How could such a rule not have implications for using Isaiah’s prophecies in one’s ministry? Might it not even suggest that Isaiah never should have prophesied as he did in the first place? Unless Jacob means to condemn Isaiah’s style of prophecy outright, he has to move from issuing his rule to explaining why some prophets (like Isaiah) are in fact divinely ordained exceptions to the rule. This is exactly what he goes on to do: “God also spake [plain things] unto prophets of old, but behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people, and they despised the words of plainness and killed the prophets and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness—which blindness came by looking beyond the mark—they must needs fall. For God hath taken away his plainness from them and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it” (Jacob 4:13–14).[18]

Very likely, when writing these words, Jacob had in mind the infamous commission given to Isaiah at the moment of his call: “Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but they understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed” (Isaiah 6:9–10).[19] This potentially scandalous commission, taken exactly as it stands, has God sending Isaiah to the people of Jerusalem with a deliberately obscure voice.[20] As the book of Isaiah proceeds, it becomes clear that Isaiah’s peculiar mission is part of a larger strategy of reducing Israel to just a remnant of itself—a remnant that is then prepared to receive messianic deliverance.[21] It is precisely this surprising commission for Isaiah and its complex aftermath to which the apostle Paul turns when trying to understand what he calls the “mystery” of the Messiah’s general (but obviously not total) rejection among his fellow Jews in the first century (Romans 11:25).[22] As if to signal his agreement with Paul’s reading (although he is really writing long before Paul put pen to paper), Jacob goes on from his comments about obscure prophets among the ancient Jews to speak of the same “mystery” (Jacob 4:18).[23]

The upshot of all this so far is that Jacob, in his remarks about obscure prophecy, apparently hopes to quarantine Isaiah’s prophecies to some degree. The book of Isaiah would seem to be for Jacob a special case—not the kind of book a prophet should take as a model, and maybe not even the kind of book a prophet should use in preaching (although Isaiah is not, for those reasons, a prophet one should either dismiss or reject). It therefore seems significant that, when Jacob goes on to “unfold” the “mystery” of Israel’s scattering and gathering (Jacob 4:18), he quotes a long parable from “the prophet Zenos” (Jacob 5:1) rather than (as Nephi was wont to do) a series of oracles from Isaiah. Might Jacob offer Zenos to his readers as a deliberate alternative to Isaiah?

It is crucial to note that there is in fact a relationship between Zenos’s famous parable of the olive tree and one of Isaiah’s oracles, Isaiah 5:1–7.[24] The passage from Isaiah contains an entrapment oracle—an oracle meant to win its audience to a cause before then revealing that the cause in question is against the audience.[25] Isaiah sings a song about a vineyard that goes wrong despite the best and therefore blameless efforts of the vineyard’s master. Once his (likely inebriated)[26] listeners take the side of the master against the obviously corrupt vine, Isaiah reveals that his listeners are themselves the wayward vine, while the master is their God, who has run out of patience at their mistreatment of the vulnerable. Zenos’s long parable is of course not an entrapment oracle, and Isaiah’s oracle concerns the cultivation of grapes rather than olives. Yet one phrase unmistakably ties the two prophetic discourses intertextually: “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?” asks Isaiah in his song (Isaiah 5:4). “What could I have done more for my vineyard?” asks the master in Zenos’s parable repeatedly (Jacob 5:41, 47, 49).[27] Any regular reader of Zenos’s parable hears a clear echo when reading Isaiah’s oracle.[28]

What relationship would Jacob have expected his readers to assume between Zenos’s parable and Isaiah’s oracle? Some scholars have argued that Zenos was active in the Northern Kingdom of Israel some decades earlier than Isaiah’s prophetic ministry.[29] Building on that idea, some have argued that Isaiah’s oracle was adapted from Zenos’s parable.[30] If this is true, and if it is information that Jacob assumed his readers would know, then the choice to use Zenos’s parable rather than Isaiah’s oracle would signal a preference for the original over the derivative. But historical conjectures, however responsibly offered, are technically unnecessary to feel the force of Jacob’s choice. Because readers have already encountered Isaiah’s oracle in Nephi’s record by the time they read the book of Jacob (see 2 Nephi 15:1–7), Jacob could assume his readers would see him as deliberately deciding against using Isaiah—regardless of which parable came first. As much as a preference for the original over the derivative, Jacob’s choice signals a preference for plainness over obscurity. The connection with Isaiah’s oracle appears to clinch that preference.

Some readers might object that they find Zenos’s parable obscure in its own right.[31] Few, however, would insist that it is more difficult than the passages in Isaiah. For example, in telling the same larger covenantal story as Isaiah 6–12 (quoted in 2 Nephi 16–22), the parable’s relative plainness is perfectly manifest. Isaiah 6–12 forms a single overarching theological narrative for Nephi, but it is unmistakably patched together from various originally distinct Isaianic sources, any one of which seems to have little to do with the source immediately preceding or following it.[32] By contrast, although Zenos’s parable is long and therefore is not exactly straightforward, its uninterrupted storyline lends it a clarity that is lacking in Isaiah 6–12. To read through Isaiah’s prophecies is to tour an arcanely designed house, one small room after another. It is difficult to keep a map in one’s head, and the relationships between succeeding rooms are seldom obvious. To read through Zenos’s parable is, by contrast, to walk down a long but straight hallway. Its end is visible from the beginning, and it is far easier to keep one’s bearings.

Given Nephi’s intense investment in Isaiah, then, Jacob’s apparent choice to go in another direction while trying to explain the same basic doctrine is telling. It suggests a deliberate strategy distinct from Nephi’s. To be clear, however, it suggests nothing like outright antipathy toward Isaiah. We have no indication that Jacob believes that Isaiah’s lack of plainness indicated a fault or a failure on the part of Isaiah. Indeed, Jacob explicitly states that he saw obscurity in the words of certain prophets to have been due to a deliberate divine act in response to a problem among the prophets’ hearers. Further, when Jacob finally interprets Zenos’s parable for his readers, he uses Isaianic language to date the events referred to late in the parable: “the day that he shall set his hand again the second time to recover his people,” Jacob says, “is the day—yea, even the last time—that the servants of the Lord shall go forth in his power to nourish and prune his vineyard” (Jacob 6:2). This verse borrows from Isaiah 11:11, which opens with the following words: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people.”[33] Jacob is thus apparently unafraid to use an Isaianic trope now and again, but his preference for Zenos’s plain parable is clear.[34]

What can be learned from Jacob’s comments on obscure prophecy? Although he never overtly names Isaiah in offering his brief word about the matter (see Jacob 4:13–14), it is difficult to avoid the idea that he has Isaiah’s prophecies in mind. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Jacob follows his warning about obscure prophecy with a long quotation from someone who writes more plainly than Isaiah (despite the quotation’s unmistakable Isaianic echoes). In all this, the text suggests that, although he in no way wishes to excoriate Isaiah’s prophecies, Jacob is less sure than Nephi about how helpful those prophecies are for teaching people that have never known Jerusalem. But is obscurity enough in itself to turn Jacob away from using Isaiah in his teachings? Are there other—and subtler—points of evidence worth considering, other motivations Jacob might have had for being nervous about using Isaiah in his preaching?

Avoiding Isaiah’s Ideas?

The previous section discussed Jacob’s brief comments in Jacob 4 about how obscure prophets arose in Jerusalem prior to Lehi’s departure from the city. Looking more closely at his comments, however, one might wonder whether Jacob aims to do more than just explain why some prophets (like Isaiah) write more obscurely than others. He may also intend to remove the blame for Isaiah’s obscurity from God and place it instead on Isaiah’s people. Jacob does not contest the wording of Isaiah’s commission in the temple (see Isaiah 6). He effectively concedes that God commissioned Isaiah to speak words his people could not receive, such that the people would remain in their sins. But inasmuch as Jacob insists that God did this sort of thing only because the people “desired it” (Jacob 4:14), he shifts the burden of responsibility for the situation from God to the people.

With this move, Jacob subtly rules out one (today dominant) reading of Isaiah’s commission. That is, he rules out any reading in which God, for his own mysterious and sovereign purposes, chooses to harden his own people’s hearts against his word. Such a reading is spelled out by the toweringly influential biblical scholar Gerhard von Rad, especially active in the mid-twentieth century: “The saying about hardening of the heart in Isaiah 6 sounds as if it shut the door on everyone, and it was intended to be understood in this way. . . . For Isaiah the hardening of Israel’s heart is a particular mode of Yahweh’s historical dealings with her. . . . This means, however, that we must learn to read the saying about hardening of the heart with reference to the saving history.”[35] In short, what von Rad argues is that Isaiah understands God to be so totally in control of things that, in order to achieve his own longer-term purposes in history, he could deliberately choose to harden Israel against his own word during Isaiah’s day. For von Rad, Isaiah saw God as doing this so that the consequent reduction of Israel to just a remnant would prepare it for an illustrative graceful redemption.[36]

Such a reading may strike Latter-day Saints as leaving too little room for human agency, and it is this reading that Jacob subtly rules out by providing a backstory for Isaiah’s commission.[37] In Jacob’s words, God commissioned Isaiah to be an obscure prophet because his people were already “looking beyond the mark” (Jacob 4:14). This is worth underscoring because, by sifting possible interpretations of the words contained in the book of Isaiah, Jacob indicates that reading Isaiah alone—that is, without the larger context that Jacob prophetically provides—can lead to theological misinterpretation. In other words, Jacob may be read as suggesting that the book of Isaiah was written from within a rather narrow historical framework, such that its words cannot be interpreted without help from beyond (that is, outside of) Isaiah. Nephi clearly worries that readers might need help to grasp the basic message of Isaiah, but Jacob adds his own worry that readers might need help to avoid disastrously misconstruing God in light of the book of Isaiah.

It is not only in his comments about obscure prophecy that Jacob suggests readers of Isaiah might need more context than the book of Isaiah can provide. He arguably also suggests this need for context even more subtly in the sermon that opens the book of Jacob. Jacob directs this sermon, found in Jacob 2–3, against the Nephite men of his day and addresses a set of specific sinful attitudes and behaviors that were emerging at the time.[38] Jacob addresses two problems in particular: the fact that Nephite men began “desiring many wives and concubines,” and the fact that they “began to search much gold and silver and began to be lifted up somewhat in pride” (Jacob 1:15–16). He addresses this second concern (regarding pride and monetary greed) first, but only briefly (see Jacob 2:12–21). Then, as he shifts from the one sin to the other, he makes clear just how much more troubling the suffering of Nephite women is than the emerging pride of the Nephite men: “Were it not that I must speak unto you concerning a grosser crime,” [39] he says, “my heart would rejoice exceedingly because of you” (v. 22). It is as Jacob moves into this deeper problem that he begins, subtly, to gesture toward other challenges his people might face as readers of Isaiah. This reference to Isaiah requires particularly careful reading.

Central to Jacob’s attack on his listeners’ attitudes is an implicit contrast he draws between the respective cultures of two Israelite tribes. The contrast is a little difficult to riddle out of the text. Quoting God, Jacob points out that Nephite men, as they “seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms,” cite passages from the brass plates, specifically “things which are written concerning David, and Solomon his son” (Jacob 2:23). He condemns what “David and Solomon” did in having “many wives and concubines,” saying it was “abominable before [God]” (v. 24). Jacob then goes on to quote God once more as follows: “I have led this people [the children of Lehi and Sariah] forth out of the land of Jerusalem,” the city where David and Solomon were once kings, “by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph” (v. 25). Buried in these several verses is a subtle contrast between the Israelite tribes of Judah and Joseph. According to Jacob, God intends to accomplish something with the Lehites—the “fruit of the loins of Joseph” (see also 1 Nephi 5:14)—but the Nephites insist on returning to the abominations of Judah’s kings back in Jerusalem. What has Joseph to do with Judah?

Political antagonism between Judah and Joseph was a constant feature of the centuries leading up to the time of Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem. It was Josephite antagonism toward Solomon that split the Davidic kingdom of Israel into rival nations in the first place: the Southern Kingdom (the Kingdom of Judah, consistently led by Judahite—Davidic—kings) and the Northern Kingdom (the Kingdom of Israel, consistently dominated by the tribe of Ephraim, the son of Joseph).[40] The Josephite Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria more than a century before Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem, suggesting that his family was originally among the Josephite refugees who fled to Jerusalem at the time of the Northern Kingdom’s fall.[41] Such refugees certainly appreciated whatever welcome they received from Judah, but they undoubtedly continued to feel the pressures of the long antagonism between the two peoples in their new home. Jacob thus seems to see irony in the words of God that he quotes. Why should Josephite refugees—especially after being divinely led out of the Judahite capital to a land of their own—try to justify their lustful desires by appealing to the abominations of Judah’s kings? In Judah, or at least in its capital city of Jerusalem, God had only “seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of [his] people” (Jacob 2:31).

Jacob seems to have believed that God led Lehi and Sariah from Jerusalem for the express purpose of removing these Josephites from the culture of oppression for women in the kingdom of Judah they left behind.[42] In the aspiringly “righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph” (Jacob 2:25), a new and unoppressive culture for women might thrive. Unfortunately, instead, from the very beginning of their history, the Nephites failed to create such a culture—as Jacob prophetically points out and as later prophets, most poignantly Samuel the Lamanite, confirm.[43] It seems that, at least in part, this failure is due to a certain Josephite lusting after the fleshpots of Judah, so to speak. The problem begins when, as Jacob emphasizes repeatedly, Nephite men specifically appeal to David and Solomon as precedent (see Jacob 1:15).

Might this Nephite fascination with the royal figures of David and Solomon have raised questions for Jacob about using Isaiah to teach his people? It is again von Rad who states definitively what has come to be a given in Isaiah scholarship: that the inviolability of the Davidic monarchy is central to Isaiah’s theology. Von Rad writes, “During the course of his long years of activity, Isaiah certainly clothed his preaching in different dresses to suit the hour and the audience whom he was addressing; yet there is one form—indeed it is almost a schema—for which he had such a preference that, if we wish to understand him, it is wise to take it as our starting point. . . . A thunderous throng of nations dashes against Zion [the city of Jerusalem]; Yahweh rebukes them: thereupon they flee far away.”[44] As von Rad makes clear, this motif occurs throughout Isaiah, despite the fact that Jerusalem and its people are occasionally set back and even laid waste. What allows even these setbacks to be only moments in a larger story of victory is Isaiah’s total commitment to “the idea that Yahweh had established David’s throne in Jerusalem and made him far-reaching promises.”[45] According to von Rad, this unswerving certainty that David’s throne was divinely secure allowed Isaiah and other like-minded prophets to anticipate a coming Davidic king, a messiah who would “restore the glory of the original Davidic empire” in a total “renewal of Jerusalem.”[46] The book of Isaiah—especially the earlier parts of it, where Nephi spends his time in 2 Nephi—leans heavily on an intense affirmation of the Davidic monarchy.[47]

Might Jacob’s deep worries about his people’s interests in—and perhaps glorification of—David and Solomon as founding monarchs in Jerusalem be the motivation behind his suspicion about using Isaiah in preaching? There is no question that Jacob worshipped Christ, whom the New Testament often calls the Son of David. But he may have wished to downplay the Davidic lineage that such a title suggests. Passages from Isaiah suggestively mirror aspects of the later gender cultures among Lehi and Sariah’s children.[48] Jacob perhaps had very good reason to worry that Nephi’s consistent use of Isaiah in his preaching helped to cement Nephite admiration for David as a royal figure—and as an ideological linchpin in Nephite men’s justification for oppressing women in their society. For a people that in Jacob’s day had so recently been separated from Jerusalem, and that was therefore still loaded down with whatever cultural baggage they may have brought with them, a prophetic book couched in the language of Jerusalem’s inviolability and David’s immovable promise might have been more of a liability than a resource.

It is perhaps of interest that Jacob never uses Isaiah’s words in the course of calling his people to repentance in Jacob 2–3. Because the first sinful attitude he addresses (pride and inequality) is one Isaiah speaks about often and forcefully,[49] and because Jacob’s older brother occasionally uses Isaiah to address that very matter in his own record,[50] one might expect Jacob to use Isaiah in castigating the wealthier Nephites for their pride. At the very least, one might expect Jacob to use—as he does in his 2 Nephi sermon—the language of Isaiah 55:1: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”[51] That Jacob neglects Isaianic resources in addressing creeping pride is telling. It seems to confirm Jacob’s unsureness about using Isaiah’s prophecies to teach a people so prone to justifying their sins, even when Isaiah might be a powerful resource.

Several passages suggest that Jacob was nervous not only about Isaiah’s obscurity but also about some of Isaiah’s central themes and ideas. There is of course no clear evidence that Jacob believed Isaiah was simply wrong about these themes and ideas, but some evidence suggests that he was unsure of whether his people could handle such things maturely and wisely. There are even clear indications of Jacob’s fondness for certain Isaianic ideas, ones he could use without his people suspecting his source. For instance, Jacob does not shy away from using one of Isaiah’s most characteristic titles for God: “The Lord of Hosts.”[52] Despite his own potential interest in Isaiah, Jacob seems to have believed that his people needed to grow up spiritually before being ready to read Isaiah. In the meantime, he apparently felt it best to teach them with the plainest of prophecies, even when the subject of those prophecies was one Isaiah had masterfully expounded on.

If Jacob really did feel nervous about using Isaiah in preaching to his people, it might be asked when he came to have that feeling. How early did he begin to raise the question for himself? Is there anything to be learned about this matter from the fact that Nephi copies into his record a long sermon by Jacob that quotes and comments on several chapters of Isaiah? Was it only emerging waywardness among the Nephites that later made him wonder about using Isaiah in preaching? Or was he already unsure about this usage even when he dutifully fulfilled Nephi’s assignment to preach from Isaiah? These questions deserve some attention before drawing conclusions.

When Isaiah Cannot Be Avoided

Although, as I have argued, the book of Jacob exhibits a pattern of avoidance with respect to Isaiah—avoidance both of Isaiah’s writings and of many of his themes and ideas—2 Nephi 6–10 consists of a long sermon about Isaiah delivered by Jacob himself. What might a close examination of this sermon teach us about Jacob’s relationship with the hard-to-understand prophet? It is necessary to be brief here, rather than to provide a thorough study of Jacob’s sermon.[53] Even at a glance, however, one sees evidence that, although Jacob took up the assignment to preach from Isaiah, his inclination was to preach to the people on other subjects and with other sources.

The first piece of evidence concerns the simple fact that the topic of Jacob’s sermon on Isaiah was not his own, but was instead assigned to him by Nephi. Jacob notes this directly early in his remarks: “I will read you the words of Isaiah, and they are the words which my brother hath desired me that I should speak unto you” (2 Nephi 6:4). Jacob also explains that the assignment moves him into new territory. “I have spoken unto you exceeding many things,” he says to his audience, summarizing his usual topics and sources as follows: “I have taught you the words of my father, and I have spoken unto you concerning all things which are written from the creation of the world” (vv. 2–3).[54] These words are decidedly backward-looking, suggesting that Jacob gave much of his priestly preaching to explaining the law of Moses, focusing on Genesis and other early books in the Hebrew Bible. It is apparently only by assignment that he endeavors to speak “concerning things which are, and which are to come” (v. 4)—taking up the kind of topic that might require reading from a prophet like Isaiah. It thus seems clear that, much earlier than when Jacob wrote his own book, Isaiah was already not the first place he looked for inspiration when preaching.

A second piece of evidence comes into view when one compares Nephi’s running commentary on Isaiah with Jacob’s comments on Isaiah in 2 Nephi 6–10. Nephi never dwells for long on what Isaiah has to say literally about historical Jews (whether this means people living in the kingdom of Judah during Isaiah’s own day or whether it refers to Jews more generally, living in other times and contexts). Instead, Nephi hurries on from the literal meaning of Isaiah’s prophecies to the task of likening them. Although he plainly understands the literal meaning of Isaiah to be (most consistently) about Jewish history (from Isaiah’s day to the end of the world),[55] Nephi focuses mostly on reapplying prophecies from Isaiah to the future history of Lehi’s children (from Nephi’s day down to the fulfillment of all of Israel’s covenants).[56] Jacob’s approach to interpreting Isaiah for his listeners is distinct. He too understands the literal meaning of Isaiah to be about specifically Jewish history, but he tarries with that history much longer, delaying the task of likening Isaiah to his own people’s destiny so long that he has only a few words of likening to offer.[57] Jacob, it seems, was especially focused on spelling out Isaiah’s meaning for Jewish history.[58]

In commenting on Isaiah, why would Jacob dwell on Jewish history at such length? One likely possibility is that he felt—much more than Nephi did—that his people needed detailed information about Isaiah’s literal meaning before trying to apply his words to other contexts. Nephi overtly states that his familiarity with Jewish prophecy (as well as Jewish cultural, historical, and geographical data) made it easier for him than for his people to read Isaiah (see 2 Nephi 25:5–6). But despite his awareness of how “not plain” his people found Isaiah (v. 4), Nephi nonetheless spends little time giving them relevant information regarding Jewish things.[59] Jacob, it seems, suspected that more context was needed if his people were to make any sense at all of Isaiah’s prophecies—with or without the help that comes from likening the prophet’s words to more familiar things. Slowly and methodically, Jacob walks his listeners through what he understood the intended, literal meanings of Isaiah’s prophecies to be.

A third piece of evidence that Jacob is, even in 2 Nephi 6–10, more reluctant than Nephi to dwell on Isaiah’s prophecies is centered in his eagerness to talk about Jesus Christ’s Atonement. Nephi has much to say about the Lamb of God, whose life and death he saw in vision (see especially 1 Nephi 11:12–36). In Nephi’s writings, however, the balance between talk of Christ and talk of the Abrahamic covenant tips dramatically in favor of the covenant.[60] In Jacob’s sermon in 2 Nephi 6–10, by contrast, the balance between talk of Christ and talk of the Abrahamic covenant is nearly even.[61] Jacob begins with the assigned passage of Isaiah 49:22–23 and provides a few verses of explanation, adding another two and a half chapters of Isaiah quotation (apparently by way of context). He then interrupts his discourse on the history of the covenant people to speak directly about Christ’s atonement at length, in the longest sustained discussion of Christ’s Atonement in the whole of Nephi’s record. Only after some fifty-four verses about Christ and his gospel does Jacob return (on a second day of sermonizing) to the covenantal theme, and then for only a handful of verses.[62] The fact that Jacob interrupts his sermon on Isaiah’s covenantal meaning to pursue other topics—and especially to say something about the life to be lived in light of Christ’s Atonement—suggests that he felt a focus on Isaiah alone might leave his listeners without a full picture.[63]

One final piece of evidence regarding Jacob’s attitude toward Isaiah in his earlier sermon is tied to the looseness of his Isaiah quotations. Anyone who compares the Book of Mormon’s quotations of Isaiah with the King James Version’s Isaiah texts immediately notes variations—some minor, but others of major significance.[64] This is true of the Isaiah chapters quoted by Nephi throughout 1 and 2 Nephi, just as it is true of the (far fewer) Isaiah chapters quoted by Jacob in 2 Nephi 6–10. It seems important, however, that the variants in Jacob’s quotations are distinct in nature from those in Nephi’s quotations. Although more research needs to be given to the details, even preliminary study shows that Jacob’s quotation of Isaiah 49:24–52:2 is looser than Nephi’s quotations of other parts of Isaiah—as if Jacob were less interested in precise or accurate quotation of Isaiah. Especially important is the fact that Jacob seems simply to skip whole phrases and lines of the Isaiah text in a way Nephi does not.[65] This textual phenomenon is so apparent that it has led at least one student of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon to suggest that Jacob’s quotations of Isaiah “likely . . . are paraphrases.”[66]

Of course, some students of the Book of Mormon have suggested that at least some of the phrases and lines skipped in Jacob’s quotations are actually corrupting additions to a purer original text rather than intentional or accidental omissions.[67] And it certainly has to be asked whether these particular variants reflect real differences between Jacob’s source for Isaiah and the sources from which modern Bible translations are created or whether they show Jacob’s loose handling of his source. There is very good reason to think, though, that the missing lines and phrases are omissions attributable to Jacob. This is because one of them occurs in an Isaiah passage that Nephi quotes also, and Nephi’s version does not lack the line that Jacob’s does. When Nephi quotes Isaiah 49:25 in 1 Nephi 21:25, it concludes as the biblical version does, with the words “and I will save thy children.” When Jacob quotes the same verse in 2 Nephi 6:17, these words are omitted. Where the Nephites’ source text is independently available in Nephi’s quotations of Isaiah, omissions in Jacob’s Isaiah quotations seem to reflect his own handling of Isaiah’s words.[68] Although questions remain about why Jacob is looser in quoting Isaiah than Nephi is, the evidence is clear that he is looser. One very real possibility is that this lack of precision in handling Isaiah is symptomatic of Jacob’s “anxiety” in speaking on such things (2 Nephi 6:3).[69]

The evidence discussed in previous sections of this essay indicates that Jacob may have deliberately avoided Isaiah’s words (and even Isaiah’s ideas) when he undertook to write a book in his own name. The evidence considered in this section suggests that the nervousness that may have motivated such avoidance was something Jacob felt even before he inherited the project of writing in the small plates. He may have had misgivings from very early on about using Isaiah to explain God’s historical purposes to his people—again, not because he saw a fault or a failure in Isaiah, but because he wondered about the effectiveness of using Isaiah’s words to teach. But if all the data really do add up for such an interpretation, what conclusions can or ought to be drawn from it? What does Jacob’s concern about Isaiah have to say to readers of the Book of Mormon?

Conclusion

Similar to the way Jacob may have been nervous about using Isaiah in his preaching, there might be reason for me to be nervous about pursuing an argument like the one I have pursued here. Might it not too easily give the impression that Nephi was somehow wrong—or at least overzealous—in making Isaiah the focus of his own ministry? (Some readers might welcome such an impression, of course, and a little too excitedly!) The data need further context, much like Isaiah’s oracles do (according to Jacob). Whatever Jacob’s nervousness amounts to, for instance, it has to be read alongside what Jesus Christ himself has to say later in the Book of Mormon. Having descended among the Lehites after his resurrection, Christ directly commends the careful study of Isaiah: “Ye had ought to search these things—yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently, for great is the words of Isaiah!” (3 Nephi 23:1). No serious student of the Book of Mormon can find in Jacob’s apparent anxieties license to avoid grappling with Isaiah. The Book of Mormon is, in so many ways, founded on Isaiah’s prophecies; its program is Isaianic through and through.[70] What, then, should ultimately be made of Jacob’s apparent attempts to keep Isaiah at arm’s length, not only in his own book of Jacob but also when preaching by assignment from Isaiah’s own prophecies?

Jacob’s nervousness may be part of a larger pattern within the Book of Mormon. At certain times, it seems, the Nephites were quite prepared to reflect on Isaiah’s prophecies. At other times, however, they seem to have been unprepared to make sense of Isaiah’s words. Taken as a whole, then, the prophets within the Book of Mormon—and even Jesus Christ himself within the Book of Mormon—seem to halt between two opinions about what to do with Isaiah’s prophecies. For example, as I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, I have argued elsewhere that, because Noah’s priests used Isaiah’s words in the service of oppression and self-justification, Abinadi felt it necessary to relieve the Nephites for a time from any necessity of reading Isaiah. The Nephites accordingly seem to have almost entirely avoided Isaiah between Abinadi’s time and the arrival of Jesus Christ among them.[71] Additionally, real significance lies in the fact that Christ interrupts the first day of his sermonizing among Lehi’s children in the middle of quoting from Isaiah. Christ apparently gives the last part of his first-day visit and the first part of his second-day visit to preparing the people to understand Isaiah’s prophecies, only resuming their quotation—and pursuing a lengthy interpretation of them—after the people have developed a new and more intimate relationship with him.[72] Repeatedly in the Book of Mormon, the question is raised of whether and when the Nephites are fully ready to grapple with the obscurity of the prophet Isaiah’s words.

Jacob may ask this question more subtly than others, it seems, but his question seems to be the same one they ask. Rather than simply giving license to avoid Isaiah, Jacob asks the Book of Mormon’s readers what kind of a spiritual state one must be in before earnestly working through Isaiah’s meaning and importance. When the people exhibit tendencies toward promoting economic oppression, maintaining abusive relationships with women, and harboring racist attitudes toward those with whom they share the common cause of Christ, Jacob seems to suspect that they are unprepared to sort through Isaiah’s prophecies.[73] It is only when, following the Sherem episode that concludes the book of Jacob, “peace and the love of God was restored again among the people” that Jacob says his people “searched the scriptures” (Jacob 7:23). Did Jacob have to wait until the end of his life before he could share Isaiah with his people in earnest? He does not specify the purpose of the people’s reported return to scripture, nor does he cite specific texts that interested the people at the time. It is highly interesting, though, that Jacob next says that the people devised “many means . . . to reclaim and restore the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth” (v. 24). The redemption of the Lamanites is the topic of more or less all Isaianic discourses in the small plates. It is entirely possible—and perhaps rather likely—that Jacob received a belated opportunity at the end of his life to turn to Isaiah’s prophecies with his people. They had, at last, been prepared.

Of course, the long quotations of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon remain a significant barrier for many readers today. It may be, however, that the Book of Mormon’s prophetic—and even messianic—voices are less interested in pushing Isaiah on unprepared readers than they are in asking what it might mean to become prepared to wrestle earnestly and honestly with obscure prophecy. Read carefully, the Book of Mormon may be said to set a goal for its readers, rather than to make a requirement of them. Assessing the evidence for Jacob’s nervousness about Isaiah’s usefulness makes this distinction particularly clear. Isaiah is meant to be a treat, something to delight in, as Nephi does. Thus if, at any given moment, reading Isaiah feels nothing like a delight, Jacob suggests other topics that might worth attending to in the meanwhile. Isaiah’s time will come, like “a word in season” (Isaiah 50:4).

Notes

[1] Deidre Nicole Green poignantly suggests that “at the book of Jacob, the Book of Mormon takes a sharp turn from the narrative to the normative—from descriptions of one family’s sojourn and divine promises to be fulfilled in the future to prescriptions for human behavior to be enacted in the here and now.” Green, Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020), 3.

[2] Throughout this essay, as a base text for the Book of Mormon I use Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022). Where it seems appropriate, I take the liberty to alter Skousen’s punctuation.

[3] Thus John S. Tanner: “Nephi must have cast a long shadow, and Jacob’s writing suggests a man very conscious of this shadow.” Tanner, “Literary Reflections on Jacob and His Descendants,” in The Book of Mormon: Jacob Through Words of Mormon, To Learn with Joy, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1990), 264.

[4] In Words of Mormon 1:3, Mormon names Jacob before Nephi (“I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob . . . and also many of the words of Nephi”), and Jacob-like themes and interests run throughout Mormon’s project in as-yet mostly unexplored ways. One hint of this interest comes in the way that concerns about gender relations among Nephites and Lamanites—central to Jacob’s book—arguably help to structure Mormon’s book of Alma. For some discussion, see Joseph M. Spencer, “The Structure of the Book of Alma,” in The Anatomy of Book of Mormon Theology, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2021), 105–15.

[5] See, for instance, John Hilton III, “Jacob’s Textual Legacy,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 22, no. 2 (2013): 52–65.

[6] Green, Jacob, 2.

[7] Marilyn Arnold, “Unlocking the Sacred Text,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8, no. 1 (1999): 52. See also Tanner, “Jacob and His Descendants,” 259–63; and Green, Jacob, 10–11.

[8] Andrew C. Skinner, “Nephi’s Lessons to His People: The Messiah, the Land, and Isaiah 48–49 in 1 Nephi 19–22,” in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 118.

[9] See Spencer, An Other Testament: On Typology, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2016).

[10] See throughout Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).

[11] In Jacob 1, after several verses using “he” to refer to Nephi and “I” to refer to Jacob (vv. 2–4), the text moves seamlessly into using “we” and “us,” giving the clear impression that “we” is made up of “he” and “I,” Nephi and Jacob (vv. 5–8). It is worth noting also that these four verses of “we”-talk precede the actual report of Nephi’s death (see vv. 9–12), further strengthening the impression that “we” refers to Jacob and Nephi together.

[12] When “we”-talk resumes in Jacob 4, its focus is on those who “write upon plates” (v. 1), which again suggests that the pronoun speaks for Nephi and Jacob together. Further, the fact that Jacob repeats phrases from Jacob 1 in his “we”-talk in Jacob 4 (see especially v. 6: “we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy”) seems to confirm that the “we” of the later chapter is the same as the “we” of the earlier chapter.

[13] See Spencer, “What Can We Do? Reflections on 2 Nephi 25:23,” in Book of Mormon Theology, 1:171–86.

[14] A handy outline of this history as Nephi understands it appears in Garold N. Davis, “Pattern and Purpose of the Isaiah Commentaries in the Book of Mormon,” in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, ed. David Bitton (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 277–303. For a basic outline of the same history as Jacob understands it, see Paul Y. Hoskisson, “The Allegory of the Olive Tree in Jacob,” in The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994), 70–104.

[15] Nephi moves from narrative and history (1 Nephi 1–2 Nephi 5 especially) through a series of prophecies about the last days (2 Nephi 6–30 especially) to a final word regarding the doctrine of Christ (2 Nephi 31–33). (For examinations of the relevant structure of Nephi’s record, see Spencer, An Other Testament, 33–68; and Spencer, Vision of All, 37–58.) Similarly, Jacob opens his book with narrative and history, giving readers a sense for his times (Jacob 1–3); moves on to a sustained prophecy regarding last-days redemption for Israel (Jacob 4–6); and closes with an explicit defense of the doctrine of Christ against a detractor (Jacob 7).

[16] For a full exposition of likening, see Spencer, Vision of All.

[17] At the same time, Jacob clearly concerned himself with Jerusalem. On this point, see Spencer, “Weeping for Zion,” in Book of Mormon Theology, 2:19–44.

[18] These words might feel uncomfortable to read in certain ways, as they sometimes veer too close for comfort to antisemitic tropes. (For some helpful context, see Steven Epperson, Mormons and Jews: Early Mormon Theologies of Israel [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992], 19–41.) It is important, however, to recognize that Jacob has reference to a specific set of people at a specific set of time—rather than, say, to all Jews at all times, as if there were some kind of Jewish “essence.” The same should be said, I think, for Nephi’s similar remarks in the obviously related passage in 2 Nephi 25:2, where he speaks of “the Jews” his family left behind in Jerusalem as a people whose “works were works of darkness” and whose “doings were doings of abominations.” Both Jacob and Nephi on at least one occasion speak of Jews as the people inhabiting the place of their origins, “from whence we came” or “from whence I came” (2 Nephi 9:5; 33:8). What Jacob seems to be saying, therefore, is that at some point prior to his family’s departure from Jerusalem, the people in that city developed a problematic relationship with plain prophecy. They sought “things that they could not understand,” and God obliged. It is further worth noting that several words—“Jew,” “Judean,” “Judahite”—all represent just one Hebrew word, despite having different resonances in English; this makes it difficult to pin down the exact connotation of any one of these terms.

[19] I have quoted the Isaiah text here as Royal Skousen reconstructs its quotation in 2 Nephi. For Skousen’s detailed notes on this reconstruction, see Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part Two: 2 Nephi 11–Mosiah 16, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2017), 733–36. For extended analysis, see Spencer, “The Book of Mormon as Biblical Interpretation: An Approach to LDS Biblical Studies,” in Book of Mormon Theology, 2:143–67.

[20] For a sense of how difficult readers have found this passage from the beginning, see Craig A. Evans, To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6.9–10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation, JSOT Supplement Series 64 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989).

[21] For a brief treatment, see John Goldingay, The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 106–20.

[22] On Paul’s treatment of these themes, see especially Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).

[23] The connection between Jacob and Paul runs rather deep, despite crucial differences. For some preliminary exposition of the relationship, see James E. Faulconer, “The Olive Tree and the Work of God: Jacob 5 and Romans 11,” in Ricks and Welch, Allegory of the Olive Tree, 347–66.

[24] Although I consider here the relationship between Zenos’s parable and Isaiah 5:1–7, there is also a subtler—and therefore largely unnoticed—echo between Zenos’s parable and other passages in Isaiah. Given that the “young and tender branches” mentioned in Jacob 5:8 are suckers—that is, shoots growing directly out of the roots of the tree—the new life in Israel that triggers the parable’s narrative motion parallels the shoots that grow from the roots of the apparently dead stump of Israel in Isaiah 6:13 and Isaiah 11:1. On identifying the “young and tender branches” of Jacob 5:8, see Wilford M. Hess, Daniel J. Fairbanks, John W. Welch, and Jonathan K. Driggs, “Botanical Aspects of Olive Culture Relevant to Jacob 5,” in Ricks and Welch, Allegory of the Olive Tree, 530–31. For some commentary on the relevant Isaiah passages, see Kirsten Nielsen, There Is Hope for a Tree: The Tree as Metaphor in Isaiah, trans. Christine Crowley and Frederick Crowley, JSOT Supplement Series 65 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 129–34, 149–50.

[25] See, for instance, Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 144.

[26] “In general,” Hans Wildberger writes, “It is assumed [by interpreters] that Isaiah presented this message at a fall, or vintage, festival.” This would be an occasion for drunken singing and enjoyment of music. Isaiah seems to be taking advantage of the occasion by “playing the part of a popular singer.” Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12: A Commentary, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 179, 177.

[27] In one of these three iterations, the question is slightly different: “What could I have done more in [rather than for] my vineyard?” (Jacob 5:47).

[28] This is apparent from published commentaries by Latter-day Saints on Isaiah or the Book of Mormon; see Donald W. Parry, Jay A. Parry, and Tina M. Peterson, Understanding Isaiah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1998), 52; Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 2, Second Nephi through Jacob (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 230; and Kerry Muhlestein, Learning to Love Isaiah: A Guide and Commentary (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, 2021), 41.

[29] See Stephen D. Ricks, “Olive Culture in the Second Temple Era and Early Rabbinic Period,” in Ricks and Welch, Allegory of the Olive Tree, 467; and John L. Sorenson, “The Brass Plates and Biblical Scholarship,” in Nephite Culture and Society: Collected Papers (Salt Lake City: New Sage Books, 1997), 29–30.

[30] See David Rolph Seely and John W. Welch, “Zenos and the Texts of the Old Testament,” in Ricks and Welch, Allegory of the Olive Tree, 335–39.

[31] Indeed, the long parable attributed to Zenos is a good deal more complex than the few verses that make up Isaiah’s oracle. The point in the preceding paragraph, however, is not to suggest that the parable is plainer than the oracle, but rather to suggest that the parable is plainer than the larger collection of oracles within which the one oracle about the vineyard appears, and that Jacob’s apparent selection of the parable over the oracle (or oracles) suggests an overt preference.

[32] Scholars of course debate the original contexts for many of the passages making up Isaiah 6–12. At one end of the spectrum, scholars attribute passages from these chapters to dates stretching across multiple centuries, although they regard them as having been brought together into one overarching theological picture. At the other end of the spectrum, scholars attribute all the passages making up these chapters to Isaiah himself, but even they concede that the several sources likely had their origins at different points in Isaiah’s career. For commentary on all this, see Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 49–111.

[33] This is a passage Jacob also borrows from earlier, in his sermon in 2 Nephi (see 2 Nephi 6:14). Although Jacob borrows Isaiah’s words, it is potentially important that he drops “the remnant of” from his source both times that he quotes from it. In fact, Jacob never uses the Isaianic word remnant in his teachings. Nephi, by contrast, uses the word nearly two dozen times (some of these obviously when quoting Isaiah).

[34] One might also note that Jacob alludes to Isaiah 28:16 in Jacob 4:16. Although this is true (especially given the use of the phrase a sure foundation), the passage in Jacob 4 (in its English rendering) apparently alludes to Isaiah 28 through the prism of a New Testament passage: 1 Peter 2:6–8. The passage in 1 Peter borrows from three Old Testament passages, weaving them together, and it is the language of this fusion that appears in Jacob 4. For some commentary on 1 Peter 2 and its borrowings from the Old Testament, see D. A. Carson, “1 Peter,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 1023–30. For some helpful discussion of the Book of Mormon’s interactions with New Testament language, see Nicholas J. Frederick, “Evaluating the Interaction between the New Testament and the Book of Mormon: A Proposed Methodology,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 1–30.

[35] Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 154–55. (Note that I have standardized citations and the spelling of the name Yahweh.)

[36] For a summary of this interpretation, see Torsten Uhlig, “Too Hard to Understand? The Motif of Hardening in Isaiah,” in Interpreting Isaiah: Issues and Approaches, ed. David G. Firth and H. G. M. Williamson (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 62–83.

[37] Latter-day Saint commentaries often exhibit nervousness about what Isaiah’s commission might imply regarding agency and so generally avoid the dominant interpretation from mainstream Isaiah scholarship. (See, for example, Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982], 132–33; Parry, Parry, and Peterson, Understanding Isaiah, 67; and Muhlestein, Learning to Love Isaiah, 55–56.) In doing so, however, these commentaries seldom use Jacob’s words to justify developing another interpretation. Instead, they tend to lean on renderings of Isaiah 6:9–10 from certain New Testament passages—renderings that soften the implications of the text—despite the fact that the rendering in the Book of Mormon (in 2 Nephi 16:9–10) does not eliminate the difficulties in that way. The Book of Mormon seems, for its part, to suggest that the relevant New Testament renderings are late and derivative. It is certainly significant that the earliest New Testament quotations of and allusions to Isaiah 6:9–10 are more in alignment with the text as it stands in Isaiah and in the Book of Mormon.

[38] Deidre Green makes Jacob’s intense concern for these issues—all of them social in nature—the starting point for a productive reading of the book of Jacob. The power of such a reading emerges especially when she brings these themes to bear on the meaning of texts in Jacob that do not as obviously have to do with social matters, such as the parable of the olive tree or the story of Sherem. See Green, Jacob, 49–57, 96–107.

[39] Deidre Green helpfully quotes from historical dictionaries to underscore the meaning of the word grosser: Jacob “considers [the Nephite men’s] aberrant family organization and sexual immorality even more ‘glaring, flagrant, and monstrous,’ even more unseemly and shameful, than pride or greed.” Green, Jacob, 80.

[40] For a brief overview of the relevant history, see Leslie J. Hoppe, “Israel, History of: Monarchic Period,” in Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, vol. 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 558–67. For a thorough treatment, see J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).

[41] See, for instance, Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Lehi’s House at Jerusalem and the Land of His Inheritance,” in Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, ed. John W. Welch, David Rolph Seely, and Jo Ann H. Seely (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004), esp. 87–93.

[42] I suspect that Jacob means his listeners and readers to hear echoes of Genesis 38–39 in all he has to say here. These two chapters from Genesis tell back-to-back stories about how the ancestors of the leaders in Judah and the leaders among the Josephites—that is, how Judah and Joseph, the sons of Jacob—interacted with women. In Genesis 38, Judah is revealed to be oppressive toward the woman Tamar (and he only confesses his unjust attitudes when forced to do so by irrefutable evidence). In Genesis 39, immediately afterward, Joseph resists temptation in the house of Potiphar, revealing himself to be sexually innocent and the polar opposite of Judah. If Jacob means for his listeners and readers to hear such echoes, then the irony of a Josephite people appealing to Judahite royal behavior toward women is all the deeper. Unfortunately, far too little feminist biblical criticism has been given to an examination of the way these two stories appear back-to-back. Note, for example, how the matter is more or less entirely unmentioned in the extremely well-summarized piece by Susanne Scholz, “Eve’s Daughters Liberated? The Book of Genesis in Feminist Exegesis,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect, Volume I: Biblical Books, ed. Susanne Scholz (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), 33–61.

[43] For commentary, see Kimberly M. Berkey and Joseph M. Spencer, “‘Great Cause to Mourn’: The Complexity of The Book of Mormon’s Presentation of Gender and Race,” in Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon, ed. Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 305–8; and Green, Jacob, 80–85.

[44] Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:156.

[45] Von Rad, 2:169 (note that I have again standardized the spelling of Yahweh).

[46] Von Rad, 2:170–71. For a recent state-of-the-field summary of this theme, see H. G. M. Williamson, “Davidic Kingship in Isaiah,” in The Oxford Handbook of Isaiah, ed. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 280–92.

[47] The explicit statement of the Davidic covenant is found in 2 Samuel 7, but it is reflected throughout Isaiah.

[48] See Spencer, “Biblical Contributions to the Book of Mormon’s Presentation of Gender,” in Book of Mormon Theology, 2:229–39.

[49] For an excellent and explicitly Latter-day Saint treatment of this subject, see Hugh W. Nibley, “Great Are the Words of Isaiah,” in Old Testament and Related Studies, ed. John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, and Don E. Norton (Provo, UT: FARMS; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1986), 215–37.

[50] See, for example, Nephi’s use of Isaiah 3:15 in 2 Nephi 26:20.

[51] Jacob quotes this passage almost verbatim in 2 Nephi 9:50 but never even alludes to it in Jacob 2:12–21. Nephi also borrows from the passage once (see 2 Nephi 26:25), although he does so more loosely than Jacob does.

[52] This title is far more striking than it might appear at first. Although the title the Lord of Hosts appears in Nephi’s record some thirty-two times, thirty-one of those instances appear within quotations of Isaiah. That is, Nephi uses the title just once in his own voice (see 2 Nephi 28:17). The same title later appears eleven times in 3 Nephi, but every instance there comes in a quotation of Isaiah or Malachi. In Mormon’s other historical books, the title only appears three times, and only on the lips of Samuel the Lamanite. (For an argument that Samuel might draw on Isaiah and other biblical sources for “the Lord of Hosts,” see Shon Hopkin and John Hilton III, “Samuel’s Reliance on Biblical Language,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 24, no. 1 [2015]: 31–52. Another possibility—which these authors briefly note on p. 44—is that he draws directly on Jacob.) Moroni’s contributions to the Book of Mormon contain no instances of the Lord of Hosts. Thus, Jacob’s six uses of that title (see Jacob 2:28, 29, 30, 32, 33) in such a short book, and never in quotation of a biblical source, are dramatically distinct from the usage of the title in the rest of the Book of Mormon. Jacob’s uses of the Lord of Hosts therefore mark Jacob’s dependence on Isaiah in certain ways, even as he apparently labored to keep Isaiah out of the people’s hands.

[53] Naturally, there are numerous studies available of Jacob’s treatment of Isaiah in 2 Nephi 6–10, although none of them probes the text in ways relevant to the present concern. For example, one study argues for a specific historical setting for Jacob’s speech, given the specific texts of Isaiah used in the sermon; see John S. Thompson, “Isaiah 50–51, the Israelite Autumn Festivals, and the Covenant Speech of Jacob in 2 Nephi 6–10,” in Parry and Welch, Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, 123–50. Interesting as such treatments are, a thorough study of Isaiah’s uses in Jacob’s sermon remains to be done.

[54] It seems significant that Jacob’s key source in criticizing his people in Jacob 2–3 is also a set of “commandments” that were “given to [their] father Lehi” (Jacob 2:34; see also Jacob 3:5). It seems that Jacob regularly made Lehi’s prophecies a foundation for his own preaching.

[55] I explore this dimension of Nephi’s interpretation in the second half of Spencer, A Word in Season: Isaiah’s Reception in the Book of Mormon (Chicago and Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2023).

[56] There are two ways in which Nephi’s notion of likening is often misunderstood. On the one hand, many readers have assumed that by “likening,” Nephi means nothing more than applying Isaiah’s words (or any prophet’s words) to one’s own immediate circumstances. This assumption appears even in otherwise penetrating scholarly analyses; see, for example, Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 70–76. On the other hand, many readers have assumed that the Book of Mormon understands Isaiah’s prophecies to be literal prophecies of the history surrounding Book of Mormon peoples. See, for example, Parry, Parry, and Peterson, Understanding Isaiah, 263–74. The evidence, however, indicates that Nephi understands the literal meaning of Isaiah to be about specifically Jewish history (which contradicts the second assumption), and that his method of likening is about finding parallels between the history Isaiah literally talks about and the history Nephi prophetically knows will unfold among his own people. For some discussion of Nephi’s notion of likening, see Spencer, Vision of All, 71–117.

[57] For some discussion, see Spencer, Vision of All, 119–41.

[58] For example, Jacob’s comments on Isaiah 49:22–23 (the core of the passage assigned to him to speak about) appear in 2 Nephi 6:8–15; 10:3–22. Of these twenty-eight verses, only the last thirteen do any work of likening Isaiah to the children of Lehi. The first fifteen concern specifically Jewish history. The ratio between talk of Jewish history and talk of Lehite history is nearly one-to-one for Jacob, whereas it is drastically out of balance for Nephi.

[59] This is a conscious decision on Nephi’s part, fascinatingly: “But behold, I, Nephi, have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews” (2 Nephi 25:6).

[60] One way of approaching this apparent imbalance is to posit that Nephi understands “the fulness of the gospel” (1 Nephi 13:24) to involve putting Jesus Christ and his saving work into the larger context of the long history of the covenant. For some discussion, see Nicholas J. Frederick and Joseph M. Spencer, “Remnant or Replacement? Outlining a Possible Apostasy Narrative,” BYU Studies Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2021): 105–27.

[61] Some concrete numbers might be useful. In the 2013 Latter-day Saint edition of the Book of Mormon (the most current edition), Jacob’s sermon consists of 5,449 words, 2,388 of which concern Christ (44 percent) and the remainder of which focus on covenantal history (56 percent). But since 1,415 of those words about covenantal history (more than a quarter of the total sermon) are in sustained direct quotations of Isaiah, it should probably be said that Jacob gives to Christ about 59 percent of his own recorded words (2,388 words out of the 4,034 words that are not part of sustained quotations of Isaiah).

[62] It is of course important to note that Nephi explicitly truncates Jacob’s sermon: “Jacob spake many more things to my people at that time. Nevertheless only these things have I caused to be written” (2 Nephi 11:1). One should therefore be wary about drawing too many conclusions on questions of thematic balance. Even so, it has to be emphasized that Jacob’s fifty-four verses in 2 Nephi 9 constitute the most sustained discourse on Christ and his gospel in the whole of the small plates of Nephi.

[63] I have put this point rather gently, but one very well might press the issue harder. Does Jacob’s divergence from the assigned covenantal theme in 2 Nephi 9 suggest a kind of intervention on his part, a friendly but provocative signal or reminder to his brother that he thinks the people need a break from Isaiah now and again?

[64] The two major works on this subject—one written from a believing and even apologetic angle, and the other from a skeptical and even critical angle—are as follows: John A. Tvedtnes, The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1981); and David P. Wright, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Or Joseph Smith in Isaiah,” in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 157–234. Due to major advances in establishing the critical text of the Book of Mormon, these works are now both dated. Especially important in the work on the critical text is Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2019).

[65] The most significant omissions are in Isaiah 49:25 (Jacob’s version lacks “and I will save thy children”), Isaiah 50:10 (Jacob’s version lacks “let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God”), Isaiah 51:1 (Jacob’s version lacks “ye that seek the Lord”), Isaiah 51:2 (Jacob’s version lacks “and increased him”), Isaiah 51:9 (Jacob’s version lacks “in the generations of old”), and Isaiah 51:15 (Jacob’s version lacks “that divided the sea”). Such consistent omission of whole phrases and clauses from the biblical Isaiah text is never characteristic of Nephi’s quotations.

[66] Tvedtnes, Isaiah Variants, 80. Tvedtnes’s conclusion seems to me dramatically overstated, but that the evidence could lead him to such a conclusion is telling in its own right.

[67] See especially H. Clay Gorton, The Legacy of the Brass Plates of Laban: A Comparison of Biblical and Book of Mormon Isaiah Texts (Bountiful, UT: Horizon, 1994), 137–38.

[68] There are other differences between Nephi’s and Jacob’s quotations of Isaiah 49:22–26, some more significant and some less. The more significant ones are two additions to Isaiah 49:25 in 2 Nephi 6:17: “thus saith the Lord” and “for the Mighty God shall deliver his covenant people.” These variants suggest deliberate alteration on Jacob’s part. The minor differences, though, suggest a certain kind of haste or inattention. Jacob pluralizes “face” in his quotation of Isaiah 49:23 in 2 Nephi 6:7, while Nephi does not in his quotation in 1 Nephi 21:23. In 2 Nephi 6:17, Jacob has the plural “captives” (like the King James Version) in his quotation of Isaiah 49:25, while Nephi uses the singular “captive” in his quotation in 1 Nephi 21:25 (only in the Skousen edition of the Book of Mormon; see note 2). Jacob pluralizes “him” (changing it to “them”) in the same verse, while Nephi uses the singular “him.” Finally, a conjoining “and” is present in Jacob’s quotation of Isaiah 49:26 in 2 Nephi 6:18 (also present in the King James Version) but absent in Nephi’s quotation of the same verse in 1 Nephi 21:25.

[69] Jacob of course does not ever state that he is anxious about reading Isaiah with his people, but there might be a connection for Jacob between anxiety and reading scripture in preaching nonetheless. When introducing his long quotation of Zenos, he openly worries that he might “stumble because of [his] over anxiety” in reading (Jacob 4:18). It is difficult to know what this means, of course, but this phrasing suggests at the very least that anxiety attends Jacob when he deals with the prophetic future, and especially when he has to use the writings of the prophets to do it.

[70] This is the thesis of my shortly forthcoming book, A Word in Season.

[71] See Spencer, An Other Testament, 141–72. I might note that, although I did not at the time anticipate what I have pursued in the present essay, I included in An Other Testament a long series of parallels between Jacob and Abinadi. It would seem that their shared nervousness about Isaiah might be added to that list of parallels. See Spencer, An Other Testament, 125–34.

[72] See chapters 4 and 5 of Spencer, A Word in Season.

[73] I have not emphasized the question of racism in the course of this essay, because Jacob does not identify it among the emerging sins when, in Jacob 1:15–16, he introduces the sermon encompassing Jacob 2–3. As the sermon itself unfolds, however, Jacob eventually includes the problem of Nephite racism toward Lamanites in his remarks (see Jacob 3:5, 9). It seems intentional that Jacob thus attributes to the Nephites all three problems Nephi warns against in 2 Nephi 26:33, when he insists that God “denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female.”