Is there poetry in the Book of Mormon? I don’t mean verse, the kind of poetry that we usually think about. I mean poetry in the broad sense–artistic writing that follows a prescribed form.

The poetry of classical Hebrew wasn’t the style of poetry we are most familiar with–verse built on rhyme and rythm. It wasn’t based on repetition of sounds (rhyme) or stresses (rythm) but on repetition of meanings or of words or phrases with the same, similar, or contrasing meanings were arranged in a patter to produce a sort of rhyme or rhythm of meaning.

The ancient Hebrews had their own styles of poetry that they used in important writings such as scripture. But poetry doesn’t translate well between languages. Sometimes it gets hidden in translation. Other times, it just gets awkward or strange.

While reading some portions of the Book of Mormon, you might have wondered why everything has to be repeated two or more times. For example, the Book of Mormon prophet Alma apparently thought his son Helaman needed to hear everything twice (Alma 37:21, 1830 edition of Book of Mormon):

And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them, that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works—or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed—may be made manifest unto this people—yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people—yea, and that ye preserve these directors.

Alma is trying to emphasize the sacred importance of the Jaredite records and the miraculous directors (called interpreters in later editions) used to translate them. He’s passing both of these treasures down to his son and wants to make it clear that they should be carefully preserved. But still, couldn’t he have kept it simple? Maybe like this:

And now, I will speak unto you about preserving these twenty-four plates and these interpreters, so the secret works and sins of those people who have been destroyed might be made known to our people.

If Joseph Smith or anyone else involved with the publication of the Book of Mormon knew why the language was so repetitive, they didn’t say. It wasn’t until 1967, nearly 140 years after the Book of Mormon was published, that a young missionary in Germany discovered the answer. Upon learning about chiasmus in the Bible, John Welch wondered if the Book of Mormon had examples as well. He looked, and was soon working on a groundbreaking paper on chiasms in the Book of Mormon, which he published in the 1969 issue of BYU Studies.

A chiasm is an inverted parallel structure formed when words or ideas are repeated twice, the second time in reverse order. Chiasmus was used as a poetic device by the ancient Hebrews and other Semitic peoples, and is common (though usually not obvious) in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

Genesis 9:6 (ESV) has a simple example of a chiasm:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

The chiastic structure of this sentence is even more obvious in the Hebrew, where every word in the first half of the sentence has a match in the second:

Chiasms are often more complex, encompassing entire paragraphs or even books.
So what about Alma’s repetitious instructions to his son mentioned at the beginning of this article. Could it be a chiasm as well?

You guessed it.

	And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them,
		that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works—or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed—may be made manifest unto this people—
		yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people—
	yea, and that ye preserve these directors.

The outer layer brackets the chiasm with Alma’s objective: to convince Helaman to take good care of the records and instruments. The center of the chiasm gives a reason: that the secrets and sins of the extinct Jaredites might be made known to the Nephites.

It turns out that this chiasm is just the first element of a larger chiasm (Alma 37:21-26):

A	And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them,
		that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works—or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed—may be made manifest unto this people—
		yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people—
	yea, and that ye preserve these directors.
B		For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness, yea, work secret murders and abominations;
C			therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the earth.
D				And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.
D’				And now, my son, these directors were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land.
C’			And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God hath been fulfilled;
B’		yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness
A’	and made known unto us.

Notice that element A is much larger than element A’. Such imbalance isn’t generally considered a good thing in a chiasm. In this case, however, it appears intentional, since A is in the form of a chiasm, with its central theme (making things manifest unto the people) mirrored beautifully by the “made known unto us” in A’.

The first half of the chiasm tells of an ancient prophecy, and the second half describes its fulfillment. Very nice. But it gets even better! Remember the little Jehovah Easter egg that appeared at the center of the “Zedekiah” chiasm only in the Hebrew? There’s a similar Easter egg in this one.

But first, what does directors mean?

The directors (called interpreters in later editions of the Book of Mormon) were a pair of stones the Lord provided to the Book of Mormon peoples (and later to Joseph Smith) for the purpose of translating ancient records. According to a paper recently published by Stan Spencer in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, directors is likely an English translation of Urim. Urim is a short form of Urim and Thummim, the biblical instrument used by ancient Israel to receive God’s word. Directors is a reasonable English translation of urim based on ancient Greek translations of Urim in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek Old Testament) and on the fact that the principle use of the Urim and Thummim, according to the Bible, was for the directing of Israelite warfare. In any case, a few years after publishing the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith began referring to the interpreters (or directors) as Urim and Thummim, and Alma may have been doing the same here.

Although director describes the use of the Biblical Urim, the word urim itself is probably closely related to the Hebrew word orim, meaning “light(s),” or urim, meaning “fire(s).” In fact, since classical Hebrew writing didn’t include vowels, urim (the instrument), urim (fire), and orim (light), would have all been written the same way. It’s no wonder that, in the Septuagint’s Ezra and Nehemiah, Urim was translated into Greek by forms of photizo, which means “to shine” or “to give light.”

Just as in the case of the Zedekiah chiasm, the center of Alma’s directors chiasm doesn’t work particularly well in English. At the center of this chiasm, directors is parallel to a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light.  The problem is that there’s no obvious similarity between a “director” and a shining stone. But if directors is just the English translation of urim, which could be read as “to shine” or “light,” then it’s a near perfect match!

Next we’ll see an Easter egg in the form of hidden allusions.

Later in his instructions to Helaman, Alma calls another instrument a director. This time it’s the brass ball–a sort of compass that miraculously guided the first Nephites through the wilderness to their promised land. At times, writing would appear on the brass ball to give additional instructions from the Lord. In this way the brass ball was analogous to the Biblical Urim and Thummim, so urim would be a suitable label for this instrument as well. Since the Hebrew word urim could be either plural or singular (a “plural of respect” or “plural of excellence” as some call it), Alma could have used the same word for both instruments. Urim would have been translated into English as director for the brass ball and as directors for the interpreter stones.

Speaking of the brass ball, Alma says that the “director” that “did bring our fathers…to the promised land” is like “the word of Christ” that will “carry us beyond this vail of sorrow into a far better land of promise” (Alma 37:45).

And now I say: Is there not a type in this thing? For just assuredly as this director [=urim?] did bring our fathers, by following its course, to the promised land, shall the word of Christ, if we follow its course, carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.

If Alma is indeed using the Hebrew word urim here, it makes for some pretty interesting scriptural allusions. Remember that urim (an instrument), urim (fire), and orim (light) would have all appeared identical in classical Hebrew writing. To the reader of the Hebrew text, Alma could have been speaking of an instrument, a light, or a fire (or all three!). The reader would have to decide which was the case, based on the context.

In Alma’s writing, the “light” that “did bring” the fathers to their promised land would have been reminiscent of Old Testament passages that use similar imagery. Just as Alma compared the director (or urim) to the word of the Lord that guides us through a “vale” (valley) of sorrow, the Old Testament presents light as a metaphor for the word of the Lord that guides us along a path to higher ground. In Psalm 119:105, his “word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,” and in Psalms 43:3, we read, “O send out thy light and thy truth: let then lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill.” (It is perhaps no coincidence that the phrase “thy light and thy truth” in Psalm 43 has been seen by some authors as a reference to the biblical Urim and Thummim.) Alma himself compares the word of the Lord to a light elsewhere (Alma 5:7; 32:35). Also, the Lord had told the first Nephites that he, as their “light in the wilderness,” “did bring” then out of Jerusalem and would, according to their obedience, prepare the way before them and lead them towards the promised land (1 Nephi 17:13-14).

Urim’s alternative meaning of “fire” would have created another appropriate biblical allusion in Alma’s text. The “fire” that “did bring our fathers . . . to the promised land” in Alma’s poem would have brought to the Hebrew mind the pillar of fire that directed the Israelite fathers to their promised land (Exodus 13:21).

By using the word urim, Alma would have been making a brilliant four-way analogy. In one sentence, he would have compared the brass ball (“director”) that guided the Nephites, to the fiery pillar that guided the Israelites, to a light that guides us along a path, to the word of Christ that guides us through life. Is it merely coincidental that the word director is an appropriate translation for urim, which in turn is a fitting label for the brass ball? You be the judge.

Complex poetic structures (chiasms), Hebrew plays on words, allusions unlocked by ancient connotations. Who would have thought these little Easter eggs would have been hidden in the book Mark Twain called “chloroform in print.” This is just a small sampling of what appears to be abundant classical Hebrew poetry in the Book of Mormon. The prophet Alma seems to have been especially inclined to write in poetic form. (There’s another Hebrew wordplay in Alma 37 involving Liahona and Jehovah, but I’ll leave that for another post.)