The Sentence in 1 Nephi 21 That No Bible Has

Isaiah 49, as Nephi gives it in 1 Nephi 21: the chapter for people who think God forgot them. It opens with a sentence no Bible has, it answers the complaint in the same breath, and it ends with them carried home.

New here? Ken’s lesson tells this chapter’s story at the shallow end →. This is the deep end.

The first thing to know: 20 of 26 verses differ

Lay 1 Nephi 21 beside Isaiah 49 and 20 of its 26 verses differ. (TEXT, counted) Most are small. These are the ones that carry weight. All but one are already in the 1830:

1 · The sentence no Bible has

“And again: Hearken, O ye house of Israel, all ye that are broken off and are driven out, because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people; yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad, who are of my people, O house of Israel.” — 1 Nephi 21:1 (1830)

“And again.” Those first two words tie this chapter to the last one. In the 1830 printing, chapters 20 and 21 were a single chapter, and this sentence reads like the next breath. (1830)

It’s built as a mirror (SCHOLARSHIP: John Tvedtnes and H. Clay Gorton both laid it out this way):

A · Hearken B · O ye house of Israel C · all ye that are broken off, and are driven out D · because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people C′ · yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad B′ · who are of my people, O house of Israel A′ · Listen

In a structure like this, the middle is the point. (OURS) The center of the passage the King James doesn’t have is the wickedness of the pastors. The shepherds caused the scattering.

And it’s the Lord speaking: “the pastors of my people… who are of my people.” That’s His first person, not Nephi’s.

The words are Jeremiah’s, and so is the promise

(TEXT) Jeremiah 23 opens with the same charge in nearly the same words: “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!… Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away” (23:1–2). Lehi left Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day, and the brass plates carried “many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” (1 Nephi 5:13).

Read on in Jeremiah, and the promise is bigger than the charge: “they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The LORD liveth, which… led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them” (23:7–8). The same God who names the shepherds who drove them out promises a gathering greater than the Exodus. That’s Isaiah 43:19’s new thing, in Jeremiah’s words.

The shepherd thread

Isaiah has been building toward this sentence for ten chapters: – The true Shepherd carries the lambs: “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom” (40:11). – A pagan king is called “my shepherd” (44:28). – The pastors of “my people” drive the flock out (21:1).

A king who didn’t know God was called His shepherd. Men who carried His name drove His sheep away. (OURS)

And the scriptures run the same sequence three times: the shepherds fail, and the Lord raises His own. – Jeremiah 23: the pastors scatter (vv. 1–2), and then “I will raise unto David a righteous Branch” (v. 5). – Ezekiel 34: “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves!” (v. 2), and then “I will set up one shepherd over them… even my servant David” (v. 23). – 1 Nephi 21: the preface, and then the Servant.

In the Gospels, the Shepherd says who He is: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

Whose day is it about?

Ours. Nephi says so himself. The chapters he just read concern a house of Israel “scattered upon all the face of the earth” (1 Nephi 22:3), and “it meaneth us in the days to come” (22:6). President Benson taught that the Book of Mormon was written for our day, not the Nephites’.

So read the preface in two directions: – To anyone scattered: the Lord knows why you were driven out, and He names the cause Himself. – To anyone who shepherds (a parent, a teacher, a quorum or class presidency, a bishop): this verse is aimed at you first. Ken: “I teach Sunday School. So I read this verse about myself first.”

How could a sentence like this go missing?

(SCHOLARSHIP · a hypothesis, labeled) John Tvedtnes proposes haplography, an ordinary copying slip. The Hebrew of Isaiah 49:1 opens with shim’u, “Listen.” If an older text began with another shim’u (the “Hearken”), a tired copyist’s eye could jump from the first to the second and drop everything in between. No one had to cut it. An eye slipped. (OURS) The mirror’s matching frame, Hearken and Listen, is exactly what would make it easy to lose.

Who first wrote it down is an open question: the brass-plates text Nephi read from, Nephi’s own prophetic voice, or Joseph’s translation. Behind all three is the same first-person voice: “my people.”

2 · Five times, it tells you who’s listening

The King James leaves you to work out who’s being addressed. Nephi’s text keeps telling you: O house of Israel twice in verse 1, O isles of the sea in verse 8, And then, O house of Israel in verse 12, and yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel in verse 15. (1830) Five times the Book of Mormon turns to the reader and names him. It’s the same pattern you’ll find again in Jacob’s reading (2 Nephi 7:2, 4).

3 · The Servant, named from the womb (verses 1–9)

(TEXT) – “The Lord hath called me from the womb… hath he made mention of my name” (21:1). The name thread again. – “In the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me” (21:2). Hidden, twice. And held in God’s hand. That’s the right arm of the canon (typology credited to Avraham Gileadi): the Servant lets God hold him. The villain tries to take God’s place. – “Thou art my servant, O Israel” (21:3), and then the Servant is sent “to bring Jacob again to him” (21:5). The Servant is called Israel, and he restores Israel. One stands for the many, and Isaiah won’t let us reduce it to either. – “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles” (21:6). Simeon spoke that line over the baby Jesus: “A light to lighten the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). One fulfillment, at least.

And one large one, in verse 8. (1830)

In the King James, the one being addressed is the covenant. In Nephi’s text, God speaks to the isles of the sea and gives them “my servant” as the covenant. The Servant isn’t the one receiving the promise. He’s the gift. (TEXT)

And who lived on the isles of the sea? Jacob tells us, in his own words, a few chapters later: “we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea“ (2 Nephi 10:20). He adds, “great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea” (10:21). (TEXT)

(OURS) Listen to Jacob’s words there: not cast off, driven out, an isle of the sea. They are this chapter’s words: the driven out of 21:1, the isles of the sea of 21:8. And the cast off is the question that opens Jacob’s own reading of Isaiah (“Have I… cast thee off forever?” 2 Nephi 7:1). Jacob heard 1 Nephi 21 as a promise to his own people, on their island, at the far edge of the sea. God would give them His servant for a covenant. Under the multiple-fulfillments rule, Isaiah’s words “have been and shall be” (3 Nephi 23:3). We’re not naming the Servant. We’re showing you where Jacob saw himself in the verse.

Two small differences worth noticing: – Verse 7 lacks the King James ending, “and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee.” (1830) We’ll leave it as an observation. – Verse 9 says “them that sit in darkness.” That’s the exact phrase of the Servant’s mission in 42:7, “to bring out… them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” (OURS) Nephi’s text links the two Servant passages with a single word.

4 · Two lines the Bible doesn’t have (verse 13)

“Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.” — 1 Nephi 21:13

We’ll state these and stop. Two promises the King James doesn’t carry: feet established in the east, and a people smitten no more. Read them, and see what you see.

5 · The answer inside the complaint (verses 14–16)

“But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not.” — 1 Nephi 21:14

In the King James, Zion complains and God answers in the next verse. In Nephi’s text, the answer comes in the same breath. (1830) Then: “yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (21:15–16).

Put the chapter’s first verse beside this one. The ones who feel forgotten in verse 14 are the ones driven out in verse 1. The Lord names the cause first. Then He answers the despair. (OURS) And at Bountiful, the hands that hold those names were held out, and a whole people came “one by one” (3 Nephi 11:15).

6 · The children come back (verses 17–21)

• “Thy children shall make haste against thy destroyers” (21:17). (1830) In the King James, the children just hurry home. In Nephi’s text, they turn on the destroyers.
• “The place is too straight for me; give place to me that I may dwell” (21:20). The mother who lost her children is overrun with them: “Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children…?” (21:21).

That’s Babylon in reverse. (OURS) Babylon boasted, “I shall not… know the loss of children,” and then lost them “in one day” (47:8–9). Zion lost hers, and gets back more than she has room for.

An honesty note: in verse 20, today’s text reads “after thou hast lost the first.” That’s Joseph Smith’s 1837 change. The 1830 reads “the other,” like the King James. It’s a revision, not plate text. (LATER)

7 · Carried home (verses 22–26)

“Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.” — 1 Nephi 21:22

This is one of the most-quoted Isaiah verses in the entire Book of Mormon. (TEXT, counted from Welch’s Chart 96) Verse 22 appears five times: here, twice in Nephi’s explanation (1 Nephi 22:6, 8), in Jacob’s sermon (2 Nephi 6:6), and in Nephi’s last chapters (2 Nephi 29:2).

And Nephi tells us what it means. The Gentiles who carry Israel’s children home are “a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even upon the face of this land” (1 Nephi 22:7), and the carrying is “a marvelous work among the Gentiles” (22:8). “This land.” The land Nephi was standing on.

Three carryings in ten chapters: the Shepherd carries the lambs (40:11), God carries His people to old age (46:3–4), and the Gentiles carry Israel’s children home (49:22). Babylon has to carry its gods. Our God carries us, and sends others to carry our children. (OURS)

This is where Jacob picks up the reading →. And Jacob, quoting verse 25 with the same plates, writes “I will contend with them that contendeth with thee” (2 Nephi 6:17), where Nephi has “him.” A Book of Mormon prophet adapting Isaiah as he quotes it.

The last verse shows the left arm at work: “I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood” (21:26). The oppressors destroy themselves. (OURS) That’s Mormon’s principle, “it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished” (Mormon 4:5), and the left arm of the canon. And then: “all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Savior and thy Redeemer.”

This week

1. Read 1 Nephi 21:1 aloud. Find the center of the mirror. Then ask which direction it points at you: scattered, or shepherd?
2. Read 21:14–16 as one sentence. Where does the answer start?
3. Read 21:22 and then 1 Nephi 22:7–8. Whose land is “this land”?

THE GREATER PORTION · “to him is given the greater portion of the word” (Alma 12:10). Next in the deep end: how to read any Isaiah chapter this way, the seven steps (Ancillary #1).

With thanks to John Tvedtnes and H. Clay Gorton for the structure of the preface, and to Avraham Gileadi for the reading of God’s two arms. The readings marked as ours are mine.