Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: Jacob Text with Jeffrey Cannon

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute's Book of Mormon Studies Podcast. My name is Rosalynde Welch:. I host the podcast and I'm joined today by my colleague and my friend, Dr. Jeffrey Cannon. Dr. Cannon is a research associate here at the Maxwell Institute where he has an awesome job. He teaches and studies the Book of Mormon and how saints around the world read and understand the book.

So he's an expert and we're so grateful to have him with us on the show today. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeffrey Cannon: Thanks, Rosalynde. Happy to be here.

Welch: Today we are focusing on the text of the Book of Jacob, which is a short but extremely powerful and memorable book here early in the Book of Mormon. We won't be walking through every verse and chapter of this book, but instead we'll be reviewing some sort of large-scale frameworks and ideas that readers can have in mind as they begin their reading of the Book of Jacob. So we think about this as sort of like an introduction to your reading of the Book of Jacob, and we hope that by the end of our time here, you have some new ideas and some new tools to help you find new nourishment in the Book of Jacob. So let's jump right in.

Jeff, I always like to start by talking about any context. Even before we read a word in a Book of Scripture, it helps to have a little bit of context so that we can interpret what we're reading. So share with us any context that we should have in mind.

Cannon: Great, thanks. I absolutely agree. I always tell my students that context is very important to understanding the text that we're looking at. And part of that, of course, is what is this thing? I always tell my students the first thing we do when we look at any text or we encounter any information is to look at what it is, whether it's a book of scripture or a social media post or whatever it is.

So Jacob tells us at the beginning of his book that Nephi has given him some specific instructions as to what this is. So this is part of the small plates of Nephi, which Nephi tells us is an account of the ministry of his people. And so he explains that they don't include these more secular parts of their history. Jacob tells us that Nephi has actually physically made these plates and given them to him, and he's given him instructions as to what's supposed to go on them. And so he says that there's supposed to be a few things which Jacob considered to be the most precious. So we know right off the bat that anything that's on here is something that Jacob considered to be the most precious of what's going on and the history that's part of his people's spiritual history. So there's a lot more that could have been included, but this is those sort of highlights that are there.

The next question that I always have my students think about is who created that? Who created this little bit of information, this book, this text? And Jacob, of course, is the obvious answer, but that's a very incomplete answer, just Jacob, because Jacob himself is such a fascinating character. And...

Welch: Yes, one of the most memorable, don't you think? And one that readers, I think modern readers really, really connect to Jacob in a way that I think is a little harder sometimes with Nephi.

Cannon: Yes, so with Nephi, we kind of come at Nephi blind. He opens it up and he says, I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, we get that little bit of him right at the beginning. But before we even get to the book of Jacob, we already know some things about Jacob. In fact, we first meet Jacob in 1st Nephi. Nephi makes this sort of passing comment, right, as the family's about to get onto the ship. And he says that his parents have had these two sons in the wilderness and they've named them Jacob and Joseph.

And the fact that they are named Jacob and Joseph, I think, is really highly significant to who they are and the place that they hold within the society that they create in the Promised Land, as well as in the text of the Book of Mormon. So Lehi, we read about, is so happy about the brass plates that his sons have gone back to Jerusalem to get. He's especially excited about the fact that he is a descendant of these biblical characters, Jacob and Joseph.

Welch: Yes.

Cannon: And Nephi makes this really special mention of the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt so that he could eventually rescue his father's, Father Jacob's family from the famine and the covenant could be preserved in the land. And in a similar way, I think that perhaps Lehi and Saraiah in naming their sons this really wanted the family--and also us by extension as the readers--to see the exile of their family as a similar sort of means of preserving the covenant, the house of Israel somehow.

Welch: I think, yeah, it's so interesting to me. I've noticed this, that oftentimes in families that migrate to a new country or a new place, they will give their children names that connect them to the old place, right? As a way of carrying on that legacy and building a kind of living connection to the home that they still love. And yet there's this paradox here in the heart of Jacob that he...

He bears this name, Jacob, that's so connected to the house of Israel and Jerusalem and their heritage as branches of the house of Israel. And yet he's never seen Jerusalem. He was born in the wilderness and he probably has few, if any, memories of the old world. So at one and the same time, he is his family's embodiment of their connection to this past life, yet he himself doesn't remember it and has never seen their old home.

Cannon: Yeah, and in fact, that I think is a really important part of what Jacob does and is in the Book of Mormon and the things that he chooses to include in his book, especially we'll get into the allegory of the olive tree and how that story talks about parts of the original tree being put into these other places, you know, grafted into other places and some places from, grafts from other areas coming into, onto the main tree. And Jacob as this figure who is this connection with the House of Israel, yet he's never been to Jerusalem, probably has very few memories of before they even did on the ship, is very fascinating to me.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, what else you got for us about Jacob?

Cannon: Yeah, so they leave Jerusalem. These two sons become this sort of embodied symbol in the family's continuing connection to Israel. In fact, Nephi tells us that he builds a temple in Second Nephi chapter five. And in that same chapter, he talks about how he consecrates Jacob and Joseph to be priests, presumably to officiate in this temple. And also that they're supposed to be teachers of the people and sort of explicate what these temple rituals mean for the people who are there. And in the next...

Welch: And it seems like we mostly see Jacob as teacher in the book of Jacob, right? We don't actually, we see him at the temple, but not officiating in temple rites. Instead, he portrays himself as a teacher primarily.

Cannon: Yeah, and that seems to be sort of the role that Jacob wants to portray. He doesn't give us a whole lot of, okay, well, I was administering in the temple on this day and this is what was going on, but he tells us about his preaching and his teaching. And Nephi tells us that, too. That's the way that Nephi talks about it. We get this section in Second Nephi, where Nephi takes Jacob and he asks him to read from Isaiah.

And as Kim Matheson talked about in her episode on this podcast, really the point of Isaiah is about the scattering and the gathering of Israel. And Nephi tells us that these stories from Isaiah have been really useful in helping to convince his brothers that they were part of the house of Israel, that they kind of accepted that those words from Isaiah, maybe a little better than they did from their little brother.

So just the specific words that are coming from Nephi, but if Jacob reads from Isaiah, this seems to work better within the family dynamic.

Welch: Sometimes younger brothers, younger children in the birth order, sometimes have a kind of freedom in relation to the other siblings that the others don't. Though it's worth noting that Jacob himself, we know, received harsh treatment from Laman and Lemuel as well and very much suffered from what he witnessed as the contention and even the abuse, physical abuse between his family members.

Cannon: Yeah, so at the beginning of 2 Nephi, we get Lehi, he's giving his last sermon to his family, and he talks to Jacob and he says, you know, I know that you have suffered a lot because of the rudeness of your brethren. And I think this affects the way that Jacob sees the world. Not only this sort of Israelite aspect of his personality and his sort of symbolic being, but he's suffered at the hands of his brethren.

And so that's part of the way that he has grown up. Now, interestingly also, Jacob uses about half of the references or the uses of the word anxiety in the Book of Mormon are coming from Jacob. So there are about eight times that the word gets used for them or from Jacob. And Jacob talks about anxiety, talks about his anxiety for his people, who are of course are his family. I mean, this would be a relatively small group of people at this point. And Jacob is one of the few who would have remembered after the Nephites and the Lamanites have separated themselves. And at the beginning of the book of Jacob, where Nephi has died, and Jacob then is sort of one of the older people there, one of the few that would have remembered the Nephites and the Lamanites living together as a single family.

Welch: Oh, that's so interesting because you see when he teaches his own people at the temple, he wants to change the way they see the Lamanites. He wants to inject a little more understanding and love and respect into that relationship. And maybe it's for precisely the reason that you just said, because he does retain some memories of the family before it was decisively split. He remembers what it feels like to, to live together as a family where those bonds are intact, if certainly not perfect. And so that informs, it seems, his later preaching to the Nephites.

Cannon: Yeah, I think it absolutely does that he still sees them as part of his family. And he also uses the word brethren a lot throughout the book. And he's talking to the people who are right in front of him, and he includes them amongst his brethren. But I think also throughout the text, we see the reader is included within his definition of brethren. And certainly the Lamanites are included within who he's talking about when he's talking about our brethren or my brethren. He means them. So I think that they're very much a part of who he's thinking of in all of the things that he's talking about.

And so back to this idea of anxiety, he has this anxiety not only for these Nephites who are part of his immediate community, but this extended family as well of the Lamanites, as well as the reader. He has this anxiety. And he says that because of this anxiety that he has, he's very conscious of his anxiety. In fact, at some places he refers to it as his over anxiety. That he seems to think, okay, well, maybe I've got too much thinking about this, but even if I do, these are the good things that have come from it. Because in the first chapter, he says that because of their anxiety, they've had revelations and they know about the future of their people, including Christ and his coming kingdom. And he talks about that because of their anxiety and these revelations that they've had, that they labor, he says, diligently among their people that they can persuade them to come to Christ. So anxiety leads to something good in that case.

Welch: That is really interesting. I love that you point that out because I think so often we, you know, we might think Jacob is weakened in some way or he's kind of a vulnerable figure. And we might assume that detracts from his ability to do his prophetic work. But what you're saying is actually kind of the contrary, that the Lord uses those realities about his nature, that he is an emotional person who becomes emotionally overwrought, and that he experienced trauma really in his early life, and that it's given him these ongoing anxiety issues. But the Lord actually uses those for good purposes and he can put that anxiety to work to reveal to him what he needs him to know about the coming of Christ and the future of his people.

And it seems as though his own suffering and his own vulnerability turns his heart in an

vulnerable members of his own community, right? The women and the children who have suffered in the way that he has. So he can speak with a kind of real moral authority, both to those who sin and those who suffer from the consequences of other's sin. So I love that insight that the Lord can use even his own weaknesses to accomplish his ends.

Cannon: Absolutely, and that's something we see with Moroni as well. I think Moroni had a lot of self-consciousness going into his prophetic project, and we see that as well with Jacob. It's easy for us to think, oh, you know, like these prophets, these apostles, these people who have had these amazing spiritual experiences, they really want to go forth and share those. But if we think about Joseph Smith and his experience with the First Vision, some of the first people he shared with rejected it, and he then becomes very reticent to share the story to the point where we only have just a few written accounts of the first vision from Joseph or written accounts of him telling other people, because it does become something that you want to hold guarded. But the Lord calls His servants to do specific things, and we see Jacob doing that, and I think that the fact that He does that even with the anxiety that he experiences is something of an example to us who might also be a little bit reticent about what our callings and what our responsibilities are.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Another thing to mention about Jacob maybe as a person is that he is, he's a visionary man, right? This is a word that Laman and Lemuel sometimes throw at Lehi as an insult. I think even Sariah uses that once. But Lehi accepts it. He is a visionary man and the Lord does communicate to him through visions. He does have this open channel of communication with God. Nephi, of course, like his father, has this open channel of communication where God continues to instruct and to teach and to give them these new revelations.

And Jacob is like his brother and his father. He's a little bit, he doesn't share quite as much about the kind of open visions or dreams that he has, but we know that he saw a vision of Christ and that he himself has this open channel with God where he can prophesy of the future with plainness in the same way that Nephi can. And I think that's an important aspect of his nature and his personality. And as you said, I think it's only aided by his sensitive and emotional nature as well.

Cannon: Yes, and you say that he has this vision of Christ, and that's an important part of understanding who Jacob is and also his ministry and his testimony. But he doesn't say, I saw Christ. He talks about, I heard the voice. But both Lehi and Nephi say that he has seen him, that he has beheld him. And so then again, we see a little bit of Jacob's maybe reticence to say, okay, this is where I'm coming from. But he is bold to say, this is what I know. He's just not always forthcoming with how he knows.

Welch: Oh, that is so interesting. I had never quite put that together that he, yeah, he himself isn't wanting to trumpet out what he, you know, what he has seen, but his, his family members know what he has seen and have shared that with him. And nevertheless, he is very willing to share what he knows and anxious -again, there's that word anxious- for his people to have the same knowledge that he does, right? That those extremely powerful words in the first, in the first chapter of Jacob where he, you know, pleads with his people to know Christ and to, what does he say, “believe in Christ, view his death, suffer his cross.” He wants his people to have this extremely personal and intimate relationship with Christ in the same way that he has.

Cannon: Yeah, and you wonder what does he mean entirely by “suffer his cross?” Is he talking a little bit about how he feels about his own ministry, that this is sort of a form of suffering for him because he's not maybe naturally disposed to this sort of a ministry, but nevertheless it's what he's been called to do.

Welch: Yeah. Well, Jeff, anything else that you want to touch on about Jacob as a character, as a person, as a prophet?

Cannon: No, I think that gives us a good sense of where he's coming from. The next question that I always have my students ask is, who is the audience for this? And again, we come back to this word, brethren, and he uses this word several times throughout the text, and he uses it in these different ways that we've talked about. And I think that throughout the book, he seems to be arguing that all people are brothers and sisters, or they have the potential to be brothers and sisters within the covenant. And that goes back to this idea of who Jacob is symbolically. As this symbol of the covenant itself.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, that's powerful.

Cannon: Yeah, very famously, he says, you know, he concludes the book with the phrase, brethren adieu, which means, you know, this sort of accommodation to God, like I want you to be my brethren, I want to be able to present you to God as my brethren. And that seems to be a really important part of the way that he views his ministry.

Welch: And it seems like he sees us as his brethren too, right? He's like Nephi and like several prophets in the Old Testament, I'm sorry, in the Book of Mormon. He's conscious of his readers and he knows something of the role of the Book of Mormon in the latter days. And so in chapters four through six, he's addressing his future readers, that is you and me. And he even calls us his brethren. So this sense of, of the whole human family, encompassing, of course, the divisions between Lamanites and Nephites, the divisions between Jew and Gentile, but even the divisions of time between ancient and modern. I think he sees us all, those who want to know Christ, as part of His body and part of His family.

Cannon: Yeah, I think that's absolutely the case. So part of that also understanding how Jacob is addressing us as brethren is to understand one of these other questions that I have my students talk about, which is when was this created? And this is sort of this context of what's going on in Jacob's world when he's writing this.

And he tells us at the very beginning of the book that it's about 55 years after Lehi's left Jerusalem. In verse 12 Nephi has died and so we see this--this is the first time in the Book of Mormon that we see this shift in authors the first two books are both written by Nephi and so we don't have that shift in authors, even though we have a shift in books, but we're coming into Jacob. We've– ”Okay. All right. We're passing along the record. We've got these instructions that have been given as to what's supposed to go into this book.”

And Jacob is very self-consciously telling us what these what these instructions are that he's he's trying to comply with. So we also know that Jerusalem has been destroyed. And so Jacob shows his family who's been divided after Lehi's death and the older siblings have divided and he's aligned himself with Nephi. And like we talked about, he's one of the few who probably remembers this sort of pre-division sort of experience of Lehi's family, Lehi and Sariah's family. So this is the context in which he's writing.

And we know that he's writing because he's been commanded by Nephi. And the intent of any sort of a document like this, of course, is important because we need to know what are the biases? What is the agenda of any sort of author who's created information that we're looking at? This sort of basic information literacy skill. What is the, the bias and the agenda of the person who's creating this. And Jacob is forthright, and I think it's just great when he says this, and in chapter 1 verse 4, he says that he's doing it for Christ's sake and for the sake of his people. And so this is something that we see from Jacob, that these are his two main motivations, is to fulfill the responsibilities that he has to Christ and to his people.

Welch: Well, that's such a helpful way. So review for us again, what are the handful of topics that you have your students take account of before they start reading? Because that was a really helpful method, I thought.

Cannon: Okay, so we start off with what is it? What is this thing I'm looking at? And in this case, it's part of the small plates, which is a spiritual history of the Nephites. And in the second case is who's created it. And when you look at who's creating it, like someone like Jacob, you look at their past and you look at the sort of biases and agenda that they're going to have. What are the sort of experiences that they've had in their lives that are going to affect the way that this book is going to be written? And then we look at who's the audience, who are we writing this for? What would we expect that author to be trying to say to these people? And would it be something different if he was writing to somebody else? Well, I would imagine that if Jacob were writing to, for example, people who were in the, who had been dispersed from Jerusalem, he would tell them different things than what he was telling his family who were right there with him.

Welch: Yeah.

Cannon: When was it created? The fact that it was created after Lehi and Nephi have died mean that Jacob's probably the spiritual leader of his people, not only the record keeper, but the spiritual leader of his people. And why was it created? Understanding that agenda that he has is important to us for understanding it. And then I always ask my students, and we've kind of covered this along with these other questions, is how do the answers to these questions inform or help us to interpret the text. How does that change the way that we read the text? And so we've talked about those answers as well. And then we can finally get into what does the text itself actually say? Understanding this background, this context to the text, I think is a really important point before we even get started of looking what the text says itself.

Welch: Yeah, I really agree with that. And in part, this is kind of what I hope these episodes can be for our readers. I never want these conversations to be a substitute for reading the book of scripture itself, but a preparation. And when we think about those questions and answer them, I think it can help us to read the Book of Mormon in a way that scholars would call critically. I don't really like that word because it sounds like you're criticizing the text, which you're not. It just means you're reading it in an informed way and you're being intentional about the interpretations that you form based on that text. We all interpret the text, whether we realize it or not. And when those interpretations are informed by a deep understanding of what's happening in this text as text, the interpretations we get out the other side are likely to be more faithful to the actual text itself. So incredibly helpful sort of, yeah, yeah.

Cannon:Yeah, I like your word intentional. Yeah, as we think about it intentionally, because it's very easy for all of us to look at any sort of a text and just sort of skim through it and get to the end of the page and realize, oh, wait, I don't even know what I read. But hey, I got my page of my chapter from the Book of Mormon in today, so we're good. But as we intentionally look at it and we think about, OK, well, you know, I know this about Jacob or I know this about Nephi or Alma. And so understanding that helps me to think, oh, yeah, maybe this thing that at first doesn't even make sense. It seems sort of like this random comment, this throwaway verse. Oh yeah, well actually there is a point for this because we can see why this particular person would have put that in.

Welch: I agree. It really opens up a whole new layer. You can see beyond to one layer beyond just the words on the text and it's powerful. Well, let's talk a little bit about how the book of Jacob is put together, its structure. It's not a long book. It's just seven chapters. There's very little narrative. What narrative there is, is really only in the first and last chapters. So talk to us a little bit about how Jacob has chosen -talking about thinking intentionally about authors- how has Jacob chosen to put his book together?

Cannon: Okay, well it is only seven chapters today. In the original Book of Mormon, it was only five chapters. So it was even shorter as far as that goes. The first chapter is Jacob really introducing his book. He gives us Nephi's instructions. He talks about his own personal anxiety for his people. And then he starts to tell us about some of the problems that his people have started to experience, that they've started an unauthorized practice polygamy and concubinage, they've started to put an emphasis on their riches. And that's affected the way that they've treated people who don't have those riches. And so he tells us that he goes up to the temple to preach to them, and he does this to avoid being held personally accountable for their sins. Again, we see this sort of element of Jacob's own anxiety for his people.

So then the second chapter is Jacob's sermon at the temple. And he tells them again, you know, I'm here because the Lord has commanded me to be here and that the voice of the Lord has sort of told me go up to the temple and tell my people this. So that's chapters two and three, or is his temple sermon.

Chapters four and five, which is one chapter in the original text, he starts talking about, he introduces, and then he reproduces Zenos' allegory of the olive tree, which of course has a lot to do with Israel and scattered Israel and bringing the Gentiles into Israel, which he interprets that in the next chapter, chapter six.

And then finally, chapter seven is his dealing with Sherem, who's one of these antichrists that we see in the Book of Mormon, who challenges his testimony. But Jacob very clearly states, you know, I've seen these visions and I had these revelations. And so I really couldn't be swayed by those things. And then he gives us his final farewell, which he addresses to again, his brethren.

Welch: You know, when I think about the Book of Jacob and the way it's put together, I tend to think of three sort of pre-existing elements that Jacob kind of puts as the pillars of his book and then fills in around them. And that would be the Sermon at the Temple in chapters two and three, the Allegory of the Olive Tree, Zenos's Allegory of the Olive Tree in chapter five, and then the dialogue with Sherem in chapter seven. And I think there's something to that. Jacob is a very unselfish person. As you said, he's a bit reticent to put himself out there. So you see him very generously putting forward the words of Zenos and allowing Sherem to have his say.

But the only problem with that way of seeing the Book of Jacob, as I have tended to, is that it can give short shrift to those in-between chapters, chapters four and six. And this time through, as I read it, I was so struck by the richness of Jacob's own prophetic voice in especially chapters four and six where you see that. So I recommend to any listeners who maybe have been like me and focused on these sort of flashy elements, don't forget about chapters four and six. They're beautiful and they're rich and it's a treat to hear Jacob's own prophetic voice coming to the fore for a moment.

Cannon: Yes, and I think that when we think about Jacob and his prophetic voice, we have to go back to 2nd Nephi. We have to look at the way that he's not only reading from Isaiah, but he's also commenting on Isaiah there. So if we really want to understand Jacob, we can't just limit ourselves to the book of Jacob, but we have to go back to where he is commenting on Isaiah in 2nd Nephi.

Welch: I so agree. He's learned from Nephi, right? He's learned--and this was Nephi's great hope--is that he would teach his people to do precisely this with the work of Isaiah, to read it and then to liken it to their own situation, which is not just a kind of facile connecting the dots. It's a deeply inspired work of its own, where the words of Isaiah are brought to life by the Spirit in your own mind and you are given prophetic insight into your own life or your own people's life, a kind of whole new prophecy that comes to you through this deep immersion in the words of Isaiah.

So Jacob learned how to do this, I presume, from watching Nephi do it. And now you see him practicing a little, in Second Nephi. And then here you see him using the words of Zenos. In this case, you see him likening the words of Zenos in Nephi's beautiful, beautiful method. And kind of tragically, I think this is the last time that we see likening happening in the Book of Mormon, at least in this particular way. It seems as though this particular method, a deep, deep immersion and a very detailed metabolism of those words, you don't really see later Book of Mormon prophets doing it. So it may be that this particular way of engaging with the words of Isaiah was powerful with Nephi and Jacob, and you don't see it too much after that in the Book of Mormon.

Cannon: Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I wonder if the reason for that is because we have in these first books unfiltered words of the prophets who are not coming through Mormon and maybe Mormon is taking that part out because it's not working for the people of his day or it's just not his particular way of doing things.

Welch: That is fascinating, Jeff. You're right, because Mormon tells us again and again in the large plates. I can only include 100th part of everything that happened. So maybe it's a casualty of his editorial method –an inspired editorial method, I will say. But yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wonderful. Good, okay. Well, anything else you'd like to say about the structure of the Book of Jacob?

Cannon: Yeah, casualty sounds a little extreme, but I understand what you mean there.

No, I really like how we've looked at a couple of different things there. And so, yeah, that's kind of the way that I look at the structure there.

Welch: Great. Well, we've already had a really wonderful discussion about Jacob as a person, as a prophet, who he is, his character, and his nature. And the Book of Jacob is largely kind of a one-man show. It's probably, I think for sure, it has the most limited cast of characters of any book in the Book of Mormon. But there is one more character that comes into play here in the Book of Jacob, and that is Sherem, right at the end in chapter seven. Anything you'd like to share with us or with our readers about who Sherem is and what we should keep in mind about him?

Cannon: So, Sherem comes on the stage right at the end of the Book of Jacob, and it almost seems like the Book of Jacob has come to a conclusion, but no, there's this one more part here. Earlier, I labeled him one of the antichrists of the Book of Mormon. And together with Korahor, Sherem and Korahor bring to the floor this way of knowing that we might call an epistemology, that you can't know what you can't see. He tells us, you know, you can't know these things that are coming because they haven't happened yet. You have no way of knowing it. And yet Jacob says, well, I've had these revelations and I have faith in these revelations. And so he tells them, you know, that the scriptures and the prophets have always testified of Christ.

And Jacob is saying, well, I do know these things. I know them for myself. And sort of the same way Joseph Smith talked about, he knew what he had seen and he knew that God had seen what he had seen and he couldn't deny it. Sherem, on the other hand, has seen and experienced a few things that might make you think, well, of course you have to believe in angels and you have to believe in Revelation. And yet he tells us that he did start to deny them.

So I think that that's an important thing to understand Jacob and how he knows what he knows and helping us to understand that this is a legitimate way of knowing anything is through Revelation.

Welch: Yeah. Sherem is so fascinating to me. In some ways, he really stands--and I think Jacob has put this here very deliberately, this interaction and dialogue with Sherem--because Sherem is a kind of a stand-in for a skeptical reader of the Book of Mormon. The reader of the Book of Mormon who picks it up and says, wait, what? These people lived 600 years before Christ, and yet there's Christianity among them. They know who Christ is coming. This is simply not plausible.

So, Sherem is there very deliberately as a stand-in for that reader of the Book of Mormon. And it gives the prophets an opportunity to respond to that possible take on the Book of Mormon and say, actually, we do know. We are aware that you think it's preposterous. That's not lost on us. Nevertheless, we know. And here's how we know, because there have been many witnesses. And Jacob goes into this in chapter 4, especially, I think, you know, we, there have been many witnesses of Christ, the scriptures testify of him. On top of that, we have personal experience and we know with plainness that this is the case.

So, Sherem, Sherem is here, I think, at a very opportune place for those readers who have gotten this far in the Book of Mormon and are saying, hang on, this just isn't plausible. Here shows up Sherem so we can have those concerns, I think, addressed in a very direct way. I think he, Sherem, you talked about how Jacob’s awareness of his brethren reaches back to, you know, his own brothers, Laman and Lemuel, and also forward to his modern readers.

I think in the same way, Sherem is a character who connects in some ways back to Laman and Lemuel, who similarly, simply could not accept the reality that Lehi and Nephi were having new ongoing visions and revelations from God. They just, that was the fundamental disagreement. They just didn't believe that it was true.

And, and, and Sherem also then, of course, stretches forward to a modern reader who comes to the Book of Mormon with a secular framework and a sort of historical critical view of scriptures and says, this just isn't the way it works. You know, these people didn't know about Christ. So I think he's fascinating in that way.

I'll recommend Deidre Green's brief theological introduction to the Book of Jacob, which I'm gonna be discussing in the next episode, which touches on scholarship about the Book of Jacob.

But I want to recommend her treatment of the episode with Sherem because she has an amazing expansive reading of this where Sherem is allowed to be much more than simply a fall guy, right? Who kind of is made to look stupid as the surrogate for the skeptical reader of the Book of Mormon. She shows how actually in an extremely generous and open way, Jacob allows Sherem to have the last word and to testify of Christ on his deathbed, right? And allows Sherem's final repentance to deeply affect the Nephite people. So there's a lot to Sherem, and we shouldn't too quickly dismiss him as just a one-dimensional bad guy.

Cannon: Yeah, and I think that that's sort of Jacob's hope always, because he has seen this separation of his brethren, as he calls them, the Lamanites, and he wants them to return. And we learn from him that they have made several attempts to reclaim, is the phrase that he uses, to reclaim them. And I think that's a reclamation for the House of Israel to bring them back into the covenant -to use modern parlance- to put them back onto the covenant path.

Welch: Yeah, wonderful. Okay, well, moving ahead then, let's think about, this is always my personal favorite part of these interviews focused on the text of the Book of Mormon. Let's think about any literary forms or genres that we see in the Book of Jacob. As you mentioned earlier on, being aware of the conventions that an author is adopting can help us be intentional in our interpretations and help us understand the intentions and the meaning of the author. So what literary forms can we expect to see in the Book of Jacob?

Cannon: Well, we start off and we sort of end with these historical narratives. First of Nephi transferring the plates and then of Sherem. But we also have to understand that this is a qualified sort of historical narrative because it's small plates history, which means that it's mostly a spiritual history and any sort of political or military history that's there is just to help us understand these spiritual elements of it. So there's that part, that historical narrative that sort of frames the book.

But also we have the sermon, which is an interesting genre itself of Jacob speaking to his people and trying to help them to understand the things that he wants them to know or what he feels like the Lord is telling him that he should tell them.

And then finally we have the allegory, which isn't actually Jacob himself, but it's Jacob recording, transcribing onto the plates this allegory that's come from the prophet, Zenos off of the brass plates. Which is interesting in and of itself that this element that takes up so much of Jacob, it's one of these really short books, but this particular part is the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon, which was actually originally even longer if we take those two chapters that have been separated apart in the current Book of Mormon. So this allegory of the olive tree that’s coming from Zenos, it’s coming from the brass plates. And the brass plates, of course, are where we've already hypothesized that this is a big part of why Jacob is named Jacob in the first place, and then he's giving us this information about Zenos and the way that he talks about the house of Israel.

Welch: Yeah. So just as a reminder for any listeners who may not have taken an English class recently, what is an allegory? How does that work as a literary form?

Cannon: So we've got characters and other elements within the story that stand for something else. And we learn right away that the beginning of this allegory of the olive tree, that we've got this tame olive tree that's in this vineyard, what really we might call a sort of more of an orchard. I'm not really sure about what's going on.

Welch: Yeah, why is it a vineyard? I know.

Cannon: With those words, I'm not a farmer, I'm not a vintner. But so we've got this, this olive tree that represents the house of Israel, this tame olive tree. And so there are other elements within there that are standing for that. But you, you my dear Rosalind, you are a literary scholar. Is there anything else that you want to put in there about what an allegory is?

Welch: Yeah, yeah, right. So an allegory is a figurative story that is meant to be mapped onto the real world in some very definitive way, right? And often it's a kind of historical thing. So for an author who doesn't, for whatever reason, want to directly lay out a history, say a period of history, they can write an allegory where these different symbolic figures that are meant to be understood in a one-to-one correspondence with another set of reference, right? And so it can be very powerful. Allegories can be memorable, right? The story of this vineyard and the master of the vineyard who loves his olive trees. This is very gripping and it's memorable in a way that maybe a recitation of the salvation of a vineyard –the Salvation History of Israel wouldn't be, right?

And it allows the author to bring in kind of imaginative elements that appeal to the imagination and the heart, as well as just to the mind. So the allegory can be a very powerful form, and we've seen allegories earlier, right? Nephi, when he wants his sort of re-vision of Lehi's vision, is quite allegorical in nature, right? So he wants to point to various elements that Lehi had seen and correlate them with specific things in the real world. Lehi himself doesn't necessarily seem to see his own dream in that way, but for Nephi, that's how the spirit and the angel interpret it for him. And of course, Lehi previewed this allegory or metaphor of the olive tree as a symbol for Israel earlier back in First Nephi.

So the allegory form is powerful. I will say sometimes we can get distracted and we just wanna play dot to dot, right? And it is satisfying to play dot to dot and say, okay, the first decay in the vineyard equals this event. The first remedy equals this event. And we wanna just very neatly match up each thing that happens in the allegory of the of the olive trees and match it up with something in history.

And that's useful, but that doesn't exhaust the meaning of the allegory. And Jacob 5 has really come back to life for me as I've started to read it more deeply and read it for character, say. Say, let's look at this figure of the master of the vineyard and what is his personality like? What is his character like? The servants. So don't think that you've wrung all the meaning out of this text once you've connected all those dots as fun as that is to do.

Cannon: Yeah, as fun as it may be, that I think if we look at the character in that part of it, what we see here in this story is a master of the vineyard who deeply cares about this tree. And I think we see there a god and a savior who deeply care about the covenant and the people with whom they have made this covenant, which is all of us, that we can all become part of that tree.

The moment when this first sort of started to make some sense was as a young missionary in Africa when one of the counselors in the mission presidency came to his own conference and this was his text that he used. And he was saying, look, these are these different parts of the venue that are going forth. These are all the people that we're talking to, that we're sharing the gospel with and trying to bring them in. And for the first time, I think for me, it was, okay, this is where, this is where Africa fits into salvation history, that it is in the scriptures itself. And it doesn't have to just be Africa. I mean, it really is all of us throughout the world who aren't obviously part of this ethnic house of Israel that we sometimes see, but it's all of God's children everywhere.

Welch: You know, Jeff, I just got the chills as you said that. That was so powerful to me. I love what that young missionary did, which was to do as Jacob and Nephi did and to liken the sacred text to his own life and to marinate in it, understand it so deeply, and then be able to pull it apart and say, it works in these other ways too. And this explains what I'm experiencing. And this helps me to see how me and my people are also connected to the Lord. So what a beautiful story. I love to hear--this is what you study, right? Is how people all around the world read the Book of Mormon and use it to build their own covenant relationship with Christ.

Cannon: Yes, we've also seen this same sort of interpretation coming from Joseph W. Sitati , who was the first black African General Authority Seventy in the Church, and he talked about living to see this as his sort of experience in the Church as a fulfillment of Jacob, Jacob chapter 5.

Welch: Well, I wanted to add something, if I may, just because I have to uphold the honor of English majors here, say a couple more things about the literary aspects of the Book of Jacob. First of all, I just wanted to tag onto what you were saying about the sermon form, and that's really important. A sermon is very different from like a lecture or a podcast or something, some other kind of oral performance, right? Because a sermon in particular has the intention to change the heart of its listener. Much more than just to convey information or to inform people about something, it is meant to reach inside, set something on fire, and change your heart and soul to invite you to come unto Christ. And so a sermon will use different kinds of language than like a lecture or a podcast will. And I think that's important to keep in mind. Sometimes we see in Jacob, alongside his deep compassion and tenderness, we also see a willingness to put some striking, vivid, and sometimes difficult language out there as well. He talks about, back in 2 Nephi, he talked about death and hell as these awful monsters, in language that's almost a little frightening if you were a child. And here in the Book of Jacob, we see him talk in very vivid terms about the lake of fire and brimstone and the suffering that awaits the sinner.

And it's important, I think, as we read that language again, to put it in its proper genre, which is a sermon. In D&C 19, we, the Lord, the Lord gives us, pulls back the curtain a little bit and says the language that I use sometimes is put in a very express form so that it will act upon the hearts of its listeners.

And so I think we need to keep that in mind as well. Jacob was talking to some hardened sinners and abusers of their families. And so he chooses language that he hopes will awaken something within them and call them to repentance. And he says he regrets the fact that he has to use this harsh language also to an audience that includes the very delicate minded, right? Those who would possibly be wounded.

So often this is the great irony –is that when you're trying to teach a group of people, you're using very pointed language, but the people who need to hear it, on whose behalf you're using the pointed language, are probably just going to tune it out. And it's the people who actually need the loving word of God who maybe are going to feel that dagger to their heart. But Jacob is very, again, aware and sensitive to that. And so he tries as best he can to directly address that issue and say, this very pointed language is not addressed to you who are suffering. It's to those who are hardened, who need a wake-up call. So I think that's helpful in understanding what Jacob is trying to do with some of this language about the lake of fire and brimstone and the suffering that awaits the sinner.

Cannon: Yeah and thinking of sinners and sermons, my mind goes to you know, sinners in the hands of angry gods sermon from Jonathan Edwards. You see this, you know, spider dangling over a fire, and this sort of rhetoric we get from that we get from that. And having studied that -in highschool very interestingly- as a literary genre, that sort of period. Which is a bit of a caricature I think, but it is helpful to us to understand this sort of rhetoric that we see in sermons. And we see that from Jacob, and there are some really masterful sermons in the Book of Mormon. And this takes a place amongst those really great sermons in the Book of Mormon.

Welch: I agree, I would love somebody to just do –I mean it sounds kind of silly, because we have all the sermons right before us. But just pull out just the sermons, there’s so many epic classic sermons in the Book of Mormon. I’m sure, maybe a scholar has already done that, but to jut compare them all and to think carefully about genre of the sermons in the Book of Mormon.

Cannon: Well, when you use the phrase one-man show, that of course brought up the idea of the genre of the stage play. And I thought using Jacob, the book of Jacob, if someone were to stage that, what would that look like as a dramatic production of this man? I think that would just be a fascinating look at Jacob. And maybe it wouldn't be entirely a one-man show because you've got to bring Sherem in there and the angels and other things that are speaking to him. But I think that would be a fascinating production to watch.

Welch: Yeah, well, and thinking of theatrical and stage plays, I'd like to suggest that there's a kind of hidden and embedded literary form in chapter seven, which is the dialogue. I mentioned this earlier, but the dialogue is a sort of ancient genre.

Plato's dialogues, of course, are very famous, where you have these two characters that are in conversation with each other. And there are conventions that govern this, and it's all done for a very didactic point to lead the reader to understand something new. And so I'd like to suggest, and it may actually have been Deidre Green in her theological introduction who made this observation, but I think there is a dialogue, a very specific dialogue embedded there in Jacob chapter seven. And when you see that and you start to listen for Sherem's voice and see how very carefully their conversation is leading you as the reader towards certain conclusion, I think that brings it to life.

Cannon: I love anything that makes me feel smart! It’s so rare that it happens, that I like to feel smart.

Welch: I actually love big words if they turn you off, I get that too, and again, you don’t have to know this word. But if you like it here’s a gift for you: metatextuality. It just means texts that are about texts. Texts that are aware of themselves as a text and that kind of pull back the curtain or break the fourth wall and let you have this direct connection with the author. And so we see that here in the Book of Jacob as he speaks specifically to his future readers and he acknowledges himself as the author and us as the reader. And this is something that’s very distinctive about the Book of Mormon as a book of scripture. We don/t see that kind of metatextuality or at least very rarely in the old testament and new testament, but it’s a part of what Nephi calls the plainness of Nephite prophecy. The sense that they know prophetically of their future readers, so they can speak directly to us with a kind of directness and a kind of precision that is impossible in other settings. So that’s something to be aware of as well here in the book of Jacob.

Cannon: Yeah I hadn’t thought about the sort of metadiscourse around the book of Jacob, but yeah I love that.

Welch: Okay, well, let's move on. Let's talk about really some of the meat of the Book of Jacob, and we've touched on these in a lot of ways already, but highlight for us, Jeff, a couple of themes that are especially powerful and salient in the Book of Jacob.

Cannon: The first one, of course, is the whole idea of Jacob as the image of or the symbol of the House of Israel or the House of Jacob. So he's come into Nephi's society, into the Lehi and Sariah’s family. He's named Jacob. He's named, I think, consciously Jacob. And he is a big part of that, this whole idea of Israel. He talks about that, of course, as well and very pointedly in the allegory that we see from his including Zenos. And the fact that he, right before he records this allegory from Zenos, he talks about how difficult it is for them, again in this sort of meta discourse, he's talking about how difficult it is for them to inscribe things into plates, and then he goes on and he records this really long chapter. So we know this is really important because it's almost like he's complaining about how much he has to do, but he realizes how important that is. That, Israel there is a big part of what he's talking about. And we miss the point, I think, of Jacob if we miss that point. I mean, if we get nothing else out of the book, I think that's one of the most important parts of the book.

I think we also see sort of a commitment to the marginalized, those that we might not always think about. First of all, he's talking about the poor in his sermon at the temple and the way that the Nephites were treating the poor. He talks about the way that they treat the Lamanites, specifically because of the color of their skin and because of other cultural aspects that he refers to as filthiness. And he says, look, if you think you're better than them because of their skin or because of their filthiness, remember that there are reasons for the way that they are, and there are reasons for the way that you are. And really, you should be thinking about the way that you are.

Welch: Yeah, I agree with that, that--here we see set up the end of the Book of Mormon, right? We see here the kind of fundamental and habitual sins of the Nephite people that over time will escalate and escalate and eventually in the end--of course with the beautiful respite when Christ comes--but will eventually lead to their destruction. And that is sexual immorality and pridefulness, pridefulness. And both of them stem from, I think, a really fundamental misunderstanding of our created nature. And this is something that Jacob is at pains to stress, is that there is a fundamental equality among all human beings, regardless of your sex, your skin color, your righteousness, your wickedness, your place of birth. None of that matters. We are all dust. We are all created from dust. We are all creatures of God.

So because that is our fundamental origin, we are all fundamentally equal. So any form of society or ideology that tends to treat other people differently because of who they are-- specifically to elevate yourself, you think you are better than they--he says, it is wrong. And actually is not just wrong, but it's a denial of divine creation. So it's among the very worst errors that one could make because you're denying our own deep humility before God as our creator. So I think we see here in those themes both the recurring blindness of the Nephite people and the sins that grow from that blindness and eventually will lead to their destruction.

Cannon: I think it's really important that we point that out, that the, not Nephi, but Jacob, is very specific and explicit in saying, these are not things that you should be judging people for, that judging people for the color of their skin is a sin.

I think finally one of the big themes I think we see within the person of Jacob himself, and that's the way that he thinks about his duty and his calling. What is it that he does and that he has this anxiety for the salvation of his people and to make sure that he does his duty by them, by preaching to them and helping them, or trying to help them to come to Christ.

Welch: Yeah, yeah. And you know, he, as far as I can tell, correct me if I'm wrong, but he is the originator in the Book of Mormon of this really characteristic and striking thing that Nephite preachers do, which is to hold up their garments, their cloak or something apparently, and to shake it, right, as this kind of visual representation that by having taught the people what is right and what is wrong, what the prophecies are, the warnings of God's judgments and the promises of God's blessings, and having given them all that they need to know, they are now transferring the responsibility for the people's choices and behavior onto themselves. So they're shaking the sins of the people off of their garments and saying, now you have the responsibility. I've done my duty to teach you to the best of my ability, and now it's on you. And you get to choose. You get to choose the level of connection and relation that you want to have with God.

And you can tell that Jacob takes that responsibility with the utmost seriousness, and it's a burden. And he must feel at least some measure of relief to be able to say, I have taught you what it is God told me to teach you. And now please choose the right, you know, he tells them, please do what's right with this knowledge, but at least I know that I've given it to you. And so you can make informed decisions moving forward.

I think that's something that I, as a parent, can very much relate to. I think the Book of Mormon is so insightful about the psychology of prophets, preachers, teachers, and parents, anybody who has the stewardship to teach the gospel to people that you love and the weight of that responsibility, the seriousness with which we take it, the desire and anxiety that we have for those that we love to accept the truth and to build a relationship with Christ. So we know how Jacob feels in that moment. And there is a beautiful sense when you feel like you've been able to communicate adequately to somebody that you love, your own testimony and your own knowledge, it feels good. It feels good to know that at least I've done that much and now they can take that information--and more than information, right? They can take that desire and that love and they can do with it what they will according to their own agency.

I'll just add one theme to this discussion, Jeff, and it's--of course, it's been running through everything that we've said, and it's the subtext of everything. But that, of course, is Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ and the reality that long before His coming, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God's giving of His own Son has been known and prophesied by the prophets. This is what Jacob knows. It's what he offers to us with every bit of earnestness that he can, and he pleads with us to despise not the revelations of God. I think we can connect that to Sherem, who does deny and despise the revelations of God until the end, right, when Jacob is able to lead him to see that.

Jacob also has a deep sense, as we've mentioned, of Christ suffering his crucifixion. He mentions the cross, which is a pretty unusual image in the Book of Mormon, but Jacob is one of the prophets who shows us Christ on the cross and invites us to contemplate that.

And I think he sees--I think another element of his testimony of Christ is an understanding of grace. So we see these paired, these paired ideas of weakness and grace, which becomes so important in the Book of Mormon, especially when we get to Moroni in the Book of Ether, famously. But Jacob is the first place that we really encounter this here in the Book of Mormon.

I'm thinking about chapter four in particular, where he lays out to us, his readers, the many witnesses of Christ and says, based on these many witnesses, especially mine, you can have a hope in Christ. You can hope that he will come and that there is peace and salvation for you. That hope leads to faith and that faith gives you great power to do God's will. But then he does a quick pivot from power to weakness. We can't stop on the power. We have to take the further step to weakness. And he says, in what becomes such a familiar theme later, God gives us weakness so that we know we must turn to him and depend on him and that we know that it's because of his grace in the end that we are brought into his presence and brought home. So this beautiful conjunction of weakness and grace. And I think from everything that we've shared, we can see that Jacob knows that from the inside out. He knows his own weakness. And as we've just been discussing, I think he has deeply experienced the grace of Christ and knows that he can rely on his savior. After all that he can do, Jesus is the one who brings him home. So his powerful testimony of Christ, I think, is resonant across the entire Book of Mormon.

Cannon: Yeah, thanks for that because I think we would have missed something if we hadn't noted the importance of Christ in all of this. Of course, the whole purpose of the covenant with the house of Israel is to bring people to Christ and into the atonement, which makes that possible. And the Book of Mormon itself as the subtitle, which was added in the 1980s, says it's another testament of Jesus Christ. In interviews with other Latter-day Saints from Africa, particularly the fact that subtitle is on there has been really instrumental in drawing people to the book that they see. Well, the Book of Mormon, that doesn't really mean anything to sometimes to people, but when they see a subtitle like, Another Testament of Jesus Christ, they think, okay, well this is something that I'm interested in. So we would have really missed that if you hadn't brought that out. Thank you.

Welch: Yeah. Well, this has been such a wonderful interview, Jeff. I love everything you've said. You've really opened my eyes to something new. I love what you've shared about your connections and your friends in Africa, the way that they read the Book of Mormon and how this text is relevant and alive to them. That's really exciting.

I always conclude these interviews by inviting my guests to exchange with me a favorite scripture from the Book of Jacob. So that's how we'll conclude today as well. And if it's okay, I'll go first, and then I'll turn the time over to you to share with us something that is meaningful to you. I was thinking, as we've been talking so much about Jacob and what he experienced in his early life, the traumas, the deprivations, and the hardships that he experienced, we know one of the things that the Lehite clan experienced was hunger, right? They were hungry and they didn't always have enough to eat as they were migrating across the Arabian Peninsula. And Jacob was a child. He may have experienced ongoing physical effects of malnutrition from those early years.

(I will say, of course, an important point of 1 Nephi is that the Lord did nourish them in the wilderness. So the Lord provided for them. But we know that there were times when they weren't eating their normal diet and they were hungry.)

So, with that in mind, Jacob chapter 6 verse 7, and actually maybe 5, 6, and 7 has a lot of meaning to me. So, here's where I'll read, and this is where Jacob is talking to his brethren, right? That includes his immediate brethren and also us.

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I beseech of you in words of soberness that ye would repent and come with full purpose of heart and cleave unto God as he cleaveth unto you. And while his arm of mercy is extended towards you in the light of the day, harden not your hearts. Yea, today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For why will ye die? For behold, after ye have been nourished by the good word of God all the day long, will ye bring forth evil fruit that ye must be hewn down and cast into the fire?"

So those verses really jumped out at me thinking about Jacob being nourished. He knows hunger. And as I said, he may live with the effects of hunger, but he has found nourishment in the Word of God. And so being sensitized to the personal meaning of these verses, possibly for Jacob, I was especially moved by verse six: “Yea, today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts for why will you die?”

And I was reminded of probably my most favorite passage of scripture of all. And this is in the book of Luke, in Luke chapter four, where we see Christ return to Nazareth. He goes into the synagogue, he mounts the bimah there, and he quotes from Isaiah 61, where he says, "'The Spirit of the Lord is on me. "'He's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. "'He sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners "'and sight for the blind.' And then in this incredible moment, Christ walks back down to his seat, says everybody in the synagogue was watching him, and he says to them, this day is the scripture fulfilled in your hearing. And it's this electric moment for both the people in the synagogue and for us as readers as we experience Christ speaking directly to us. This day, prophecy is fulfilled.

And the urgency of that “this day,” I think, is echoed here in Jacob 6 verse 6. “Yea, today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” It's this moment from scripture that just leaps off the page. And again, it appeals to our hearts and says, I'm speaking directly to you today, now, in this moment. If these words are connecting with you, this is the voice of God who is speaking to you, and this is your moment to turn to him. So I found it to be such a powerful moment of this meta-textuality, as we said, this direct connection between the prophet and his reader, and in its invitation that my heart responded to this time through.

Cannon: Great. I love this idea of today and doing things today, especially as somebody who is somewhat prone to procrastination. I had a friend in grad school who, I don't know why it took me so long to learn this lesson, but she would talk about she always did the things that she wanted to do the least first. Those projects that she didn't want to do, those were the first things that she did. It's like, wow, that's- brilliant. I don't know why it took me so long to think of that. And that's helpful to me in a lot of different things. Even just as simple as when I'm doing my ironing, I always iron the things that I want to iron the least first.

Welch: Collars and cuffs maybe. Trousers okay.

Cannon: Well, I start with trousers and then I move on to shirts and I do the shirts that are it's trousers then dresses then shirts it tends to be but…

Welch: I'm impressed that you iron dresses. Gold points for you.

Cannon: Oh yes! I have three daughters. I have to iron dresses.

Welch: Well, I have learned a lot about you today, Jeff. Well take us home by sharing with us a scripture that's meaningful to you.

Cannon: Yeah, so I think maybe I've hinted at this a couple of times today in the way that I think about Jacob, and this probably has something to do with the fact that I've recently received a new calling in my ward, but I think a lot about the responsibility of people and their callings and Jacob and the way that he dealt with his calling as a priest and a teacher within the Nephite community. And in chapter 2, when he first stands up to talk to the people, he's very clearly reticent to want us to say some of the things that he needs to say, what he knows that he has to say. And then in Jacob chapter 2 verse 5, he says, "'But behold, hearken ye unto me, and know that by the help of the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth, I can tell you concerning your thoughts, how that you are beginning to labor in sin, which sin appeareth very abominable unto me, yea, and abominable unto God.'"

Now, the last part of that verse isn't so much what I think about when I read this verse. But to me, the part that sticks out is that he says, “by the help of the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth, I can.” And to me, that's very important because as Thomas S. Monson was very fond of saying, whom the Lord calls, he also qualifies. And so Jacob here is saying, maybe I'm not personally qualified to do these things, but he says that by the help of the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth. And to say, like, you know, this is not just the help of somebody else, the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth, I can do this.

Welch: I could do it. Well, Jeff, I think that is the perfect place to end today. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared and for being with us today on the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast.

Cannon: Thank you, I had a lot of fun.