Who Are the Hunters? · Part 2 of 4 · Isaiah 49 · Jeremiah 16
In Part 1, we asked a simple question about one verse. The Lord said, “Behold, I will send for many fishers… and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks” (Jeremiah 16:16). We think we know the fishers. So who are the hunters?
We laid out the readings already on the table and named the thesis we’re testing: that Jeremiah’s hunters are Isaiah’s kings and queens of the Gentiles, husbands and wives working as one.
Now we test it. Put Jeremiah 16 and Isaiah 49 side by side and read them slowly. Watch who shows up on the hill.
A word used once
Start with the word itself. Jeremiah’s Hebrew for “hunters” is tsayyadim, and it appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Nimrod was “a mighty hunter before the LORD” (Genesis 10:9), and Esau was “a cunning hunter, a man of the field” (25:27), but those verses use a different form of the word. Jeremiah’s hunters are a one-time word for a one-time work.
And until Jeremiah, hunting was not a flattering picture. Esau came in from the hunt and sold his birthright for a bowl of pottage: “thus Esau despised his birthright” (Genesis 25:34). Micah used hunting for the predators of a ruined society: “they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net” (Micah 7:2).
Ezekiel saw the worst of it. False prophetesses in Jerusalem were hunting souls with lies: “Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes… to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people…?” (Ezekiel 13:18). They did it “for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread” (13:19). And the Lord answered: “I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly… and deliver my people out of your hand” (13:20–21).
So when Jeremiah says the Lord Himself will send hunters, the word is turned around. The hunting that predators did to trap souls, the Lord’s hunters do to set them free.
The Book of Mormon has a picture of exactly that. When the Gadianton robbers spread, “the Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton; and they did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites” (Helaman 6:37). They hunted the robbers by preaching to them.
And sometimes the hunter is the one who gets found. Enos went into the forest to hunt beasts, “and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. And my soul hungered” (Enos 1:3–4). He went out hunting, and the Lord found him.
Where the hunted are hiding
“From every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.” Why would anyone be in the holes of the rocks?
Isaiah gives two answers. Some are hiding in fear: “they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:19). And some are trapped. In Part 1 we read Isaiah 42:22: a people “robbed and spoiled… snared in holes… hid in prison houses… for a prey, and none delivereth.”
But Isaiah doesn’t leave them there. The Lord sends someone “That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves” (49:9). Isaiah calls it the second gathering: “the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people” (11:11).
Notice which chapter that call to the prisoners comes from. Isaiah 49. The same chapter as the kings and queens.
Where Nephi put it
Isaiah 49 has a special place in the Book of Mormon, and the reason is one of the most moving stories in the book.
Nephi saw our day in vision. He saw the church of the Lamb, “few,” its “dominions upon the face of the earth… small,” facing multitudes gathered “to fight against the Lamb of God.” And then: “I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord… and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory” (1 Nephi 14:12–14).
Then the angel stopped him. “The things which thou shalt see hereafter thou shalt not write” (14:25). “I, Nephi, am forbidden that I should write the remainder of the things which I saw and heard” (14:28).
So what did Nephi do? Five chapters later he tells us: “that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us” (19:23). And he copied two chapters of Isaiah onto his plates, word for word: Isaiah 48 and Isaiah 49 (1 Nephi 20–21).
Those are the first two chapters of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. They’re the headwaters. Every Isaiah chapter that follows, in Jacob’s sermon, in Nephi’s great Isaiah section, in the Savior’s own words in 3 Nephi, flows from there. And the second of those two chapters ends with the kings and queens of the Gentiles.
We read it this way. What Nephi was forbidden to write in his own words about our day, he wrote in Isaiah’s. He saw the saints “armed… with the power of God,” the pen was taken from him, and the very next prophecy he put on the plates ends with Gentile kings and queens carrying Israel’s sons in their arms and daughters on their shoulders.
His brothers asked the question every reader asks: “What meaneth these things which ye have read? Behold, are they to be understood according to things which are spiritual… and not the flesh?” (22:1). Nephi answered that they “shall come upon the children of men according to the flesh” (22:2), and that they pertain to “things both temporal and spiritual” (22:3). Real people, carried by real people, on a real road.
Two prophets, one hill
Now set the two passages side by side.
1. Both are the second gathering, from the north. Jeremiah’s hunters gather Israel “from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them” (Jeremiah 16:15). A few verses before Isaiah’s kings and queens, the same crowd is coming home: “these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west” (Isaiah 49:12). Fishers first. Then a second, harder gathering. Two prophets, looking at the same moment.
2. Both turn straight to the Gentiles. Right after the hunters, Jeremiah says: “the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies” (Jeremiah 16:19). Isaiah’s kings and queens begin the same way: “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” (Isaiah 49:22). In both prophets, the Gentiles arrive at the exact moment the second gathering starts.
3. Both speak a hunter’s language. Read the verses right after the kings and queens:
“Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.” (Isaiah 49:24–25)
Prey. The mighty. Captives taken back. That’s hunting talk, one verse after the nursing fathers and nursing mothers. Somebody has hunted Israel’s children, and the Lord’s people are going in to take the prey back. Isaiah had already told us where the prey was hidden: “snared in holes.” Jeremiah sends his hunters “out of the holes of the rocks.” Same holes. Same rescue.
4. The Book of Mormon prophets wouldn’t let go of it. Nephi read Isaiah 49:22–23 to his brothers (1 Nephi 21:22–23) and explained it (22:6–8). Jacob read it again to the Nephites (2 Nephi 6:6–7) and added the condition: “blessed are the Gentiles, they of whom the prophet has written; for behold, if it so be that they shall repent and fight not against Zion… they shall be saved” (2 Nephi 6:12). Four chapters later he said it a third time, with one new word:
“Yea, the kings of the Gentiles shall be nursing fathers unto them, and their queens shall become nursing mothers; wherefore, the promises of the Lord are great unto the Gentiles.” (2 Nephi 10:9)
Become. The queens shall become nursing mothers. It’s something you grow into. And the Lord adds: “I will soften the hearts of the Gentiles, that they shall be like unto a father to them; wherefore, the Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel” (2 Nephi 10:18).
Avraham Gileadi calls the passage a lifeline. In his reading, the Book of Mormon prophets kept quoting it to wake up the Gentile kings and queens who would one day read the book. And he says the thing that turns the whole reading over: the role “has little to do with non-Israelites but everything to do with Israel’s birthright tribe of Ephraim” (Isaiah Institute, “Who Are Isaiah’s Kings and Queens of the Gentiles?”).
Gentile by nation, Israel by blood
At the Kirtland Temple dedication, the Prophet Joseph prayed for the Lord’s people “who are identified with the Gentiles” (D&C 109:60). Three years earlier the Lord had told the same people: “ye are lawful heirs, according to the flesh… a light unto the Gentiles, and through this priesthood, a savior unto my people Israel” (D&C 86:9, 11).
We told that story in Joseph Was Sent Into Egypt: Ephraim, born in Egypt to an Egyptian mother, adopted by Jacob, became “the fulness of the Gentiles” (Genesis 48:19, in the Hebrew). Gentile by nation. Israel by lineage. Joseph by assignment.
That’s who Isaiah’s kings and queens are. Not foreign monarchs doing Israel a favor. Joseph’s children, raised among the Gentiles, sent back to carry their brothers and sisters home. The Lord used the same word for the Saints: “they were set to be a light unto the world, and to be the saviors of men” (D&C 103:9).
And notice the reversal. In the meridian of time, Jewish apostles carried the gospel out to the Gentiles. In the last days it runs the other way. Nephi saw it: the Lord “shall manifest himself unto all nations, both unto the Jews and also unto the Gentiles; and after… then he shall manifest himself unto the Gentiles and also unto the Jews, and the last shall be first, and the first shall be last” (1 Nephi 13:42). The marching order is the same today: “call upon all nations, first upon the Gentiles, and then upon the Jews” (D&C 133:8). The Gentiles who were carried in are the ones who carry Israel home.
The way we first learned it
Look at this picture for a moment, because it’s the reading most of us grew up with, and it’s true as far as it goes.
The fishers are the missionaries. The hunters are the members who go after the one: the ministering brother and sister, the couple who climbs up to whoever no net will reach. That’s the Good Shepherd’s work.
And the kings and queens? Nephi himself gave us a national reading. After quoting Isaiah 49, he explained that “the Lord God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even upon the face of this land,” and then “proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles… wherefore, it is likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms and upon their shoulders” (1 Nephi 22:7–8). A nation, raised up to make room for the Restoration. That’s scripture, and it’s true.
Paul would call that reading milk: “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 3:2). Milk is real food, and it’s the right food for the start. But Isaiah asked the question that ought to bother every comfortable reader: “Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk” (Isaiah 28:9).
The national reading leaves one thing out. It never says who the kings and queens are. A nation can make room. Only a person can carry a child.
And here’s the irony. The milk reading misses Isaiah’s own milk:
“Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings.” (Isaiah 60:16)
The Hebrew verb for “suck” in that verse comes from the same root as Isaiah’s “nursing mothers” in 49:23. In Isaiah, the milk of the Gentiles is what kings and queens give to Zion’s children. The milk was never the lesser thing. The milk was the nursing. We just never asked who was doing it.
The couple on the hill
So here’s what happens when you read the two prophets together.
Jeremiah sends hunters up the mountain, into the holes of the rocks. Isaiah, in the same gathering, from the same north, at the same moment the Gentiles arrive, sends kings and queens who carry the sons in their arms and the daughters on their shoulders, and who take the prey back from the mighty. The hunt and the carrying are one work, seen from two hills.
Avraham said both halves of this before we did. In Endtime Prophecy he writes that Isaiah’s kings and queens of the Gentiles, Obadiah’s saviors on Mount Zion, Daniel’s saints of the Most High and John’s 144,000 “all evidently form one and the same body of saviors.” And in his lectures, reading Jeremiah 16, he says it in five words: “I will send for many hunters, That is the 144,000.”
Put those side by side. Kings and queens are the 144,000. Hunters are the 144,000. By Avraham’s own reading, Isaiah’s kings and queens are Jeremiah’s hunters.
That’s why the pictures changed. In the first, two men climb into the rocks. In the second, a woman kneels beside the hunter with water. In this one, they’re a couple from our own day, climbing together under a modern bridge. Isaiah never pictured the hunt without her. He wrote kings and queens, nursing fathers and nursing mothers, sons and daughters, arms and shoulders. Every line of the promise comes in pairs.
And look at what the three pictures still don’t show. In every one, the hunters reach the one. In none of them do we see where they take him. Isaiah drew that picture first: “they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders” (49:22). Where are they carrying them?
Coming in Part 3: how the hunters are made. We’ll take Revelation 14:4 head-on, follow the carried children all the way to the house of the Lord, and look through the window Elder Spencer W. Kimball opened in 1966 when he titled a devotional “Kings and Queens, Priests and Priestesses.”
Before then
Think about the people who carried you. Not the ones who handed you a pamphlet, but the ones who picked you up when you couldn’t walk on your own.
Was it one person, or two? Tell us in the comments. Then come back for Part 3.
Ken Krogue is a co-founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply searching Isaiah for more than ten years. He writes with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approves every word.
Credit: the identification of Isaiah’s kings and queens of the Gentiles with John’s 144,000 and Obadiah’s saviors, and the reading of Jeremiah’s hunters as the 144,000, are Avraham Gileadi’s. We quote him briefly from Endtime Prophecy, the Isaiah Institute and his lectures, and summarize the rest in our own words. His book Becoming Kings and Queens of the Gentiles takes this theme further than any article can.
