26
A Voice ‘From Out of the Ground’
“In the doctrinal and devotional writings of this dispensation,” writes Latter-day Saint Robert A. Cloward, “no chapter of Isaiah is more often cited” than Isaiah 29.52 Isaiah 29 has provided the Saints with a rich source of learning and inspiration as they have sought to support their faith with reference to the Bible. Latter-day Saint usage of this passage might be said to trace back to the founding events of the Restoration. The Lord quoted Isaiah 29:13 during the First Vision given to the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Isaiah 29 has been seen as a biblical prophecy that is fulfilled with the advent of the Book of Mormon. Verse 4 in the KJV reads:
And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.53
Curiously, the verse is changed in its pronouns in the JST version (see #7 JOSEPH SMITH’S NEW TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE) of the same verse:
And she shall be brought down, and shall speak out of the ground, and her speech shall be low out of the dust; and her voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and her speech shall whisper out of the dust.
The JST, by replacing the pronouns “thou” and so on with “her,” emphasizes the original message of Isaiah which is his prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction.
Nephi’s version in the Book of Mormon is different from both the KJV and the JST. In 2 Nephi 26:14–16, Nephi engages in a “creative reinterpretation of [Isaiah 29] in ways that highlight its hidden significance with regard to new contexts and situations,” to form “a prophecy concerning the Lamanites and the coming forth of the [Book of Mormon] in the last days.”54 Nephi does this throughout his quotations of scripture and calls it “likening” the scriptures (1 Nephi 19:23). Following his own stated intentions in the 25 chapter of 2 Nephi verses 1 and 4, Nephi sets out to give meaning to Isaiah’s prophecies using Nephi’s own revelations and prophecies.
The original context of Isaiah 29 is Assyria’s impending invasion of Israel. Isaiah 29 intends to explain “concerning the Lord’s purpose in assaulting Ariel/Zion.”55 Verse 4 says that Jerusalem will be destroyed and that the inhabitants’ of Jerusalem’s speech will be from the ground. The speech of the inhabitants of Jerusalem will be “as of one that hath a familiar spirit” which just means that the only communication that Jerusalem’s inhabitants will have with the world is through seances as spirits.56 The Assyrian invasion wasn’t a bloody and fiery one. “The Lord acknowledged the pleadings and humble repentance of King Hezekiah by plaguing the Assyrians so that 185,000 of them died in one night (see Isaiah 37:36; 2 Kings 19:35).”57 Cloward argues that, instead of the Assyrian invasion being the fulfillment of Isaiah 29, that the Baylonian invasion which happened 100 years after Isaiah’s death should be in view. 2 Kings 25:1–2, 8–10, he notes, “[report] the Babylonian response in words strikingly reminiscent of Isaiah’s prophecy.” If that is the case, it lends credence to Nephi’s reading of Isaiah 29.
Nephi, engaged in his “midrash” of Isaiah 29,58 reapplies the text of Isaiah 29. Instead of referring to Jerusalem’s inhabitants, he reapplies it to the remnant of his people that survive after the apostasy that takes place in 4 Nephi. Instead of Jerusalem’s inhabitants being brought to the dust, it is them. Instead of them only being able to speak through seances, Nephi reapplies this and makes it a simile for the Book of Mormon’s translation. Where translators typically translate with lexicons and dictionaries, Joseph Smith would translate with revelation from God.
Isaiah 29 may not be a prophecy about the Book of Mormon; but Nephi certainly made it one about the Book of Mormon. Npehi, using his vision of Lehi’s dream in 1 Nephi 11-14, creatively used the spirit of prophecy to reapply Isaiah’s words to his own and his future kin’s circumstances. As Robert Cloward writes, “[w]hen readers in any era are moved upon by the Holy Ghost, there is no impropriety in their giving old scripture new meaning for their lives. As readers do this, the Lord can reveal new truths to them and enlarge their understanding.”59
Nephi’s use of the spirit of prophecy inspires us, as few other religions today do, to use the Spirit to enlarge our understanding (see #36 FINDING THE RIGHT MEANING OF THE WORDS OF ISAIAH). This mode of receiving inspiration and the fruit that comes from it are unique gifts for Latter-day Saints.
52Robert A. Cloward, “Isaiah 29 and the Book of Mormon,” in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 191, https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/isaiah-29-and-book-mormon. The footnote that supports this assertion of Cloward’s reads as follows: Monte S. Nyman makes this observation in his “Great Are the Words of Isaiah” (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 101, apparently based on data in his Appendix B, 259–81. The same observation is supported in the published sermons and writings of Joseph Smith by data found in the appendix of Grant Underwood, “Joseph Smith’s Use of the Old Testament,” in The Old Testament and the Latter-day Saints, Sperry Symposium 1986 (Orem, Utah: Randall, 1986), 399–411.
53This is the version as contained on the Church’s website. See “JST, Isaiah 29,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, accessed February 5, 2025, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/jst/jst-isa/29?lang=eng. See the minor punctuation changes to this verse that can be found in Kent P. Jackson, ed., Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible: The Joseph Smith Translation and the King James Translation in Parallel Columns (Provo, UT: BYU Press; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 198.
54Grant Hardy, ed., The Annotated Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 151n14–19.
55Marvin A. Sweeney, “Isaiah,” in The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible, ed. Michael Coogan, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 1017n29.1–24.
56Joseph M. Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016), 264–66.
57Cloward, “Isaiah 29,” 198.
58Hardy, Annotated, 151n14–19.
59Cloward, “Isaiah 29,” 234.
