The Stick of Joseph

EDITORIAL

THE STICK OF JOSEPH

Ezekiel, a Hebrew prophet who lived and spoke under divine commission in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, saw in vision the coming forth of separate records, one pertaining to Judah, the other to Joseph, and voiced the proclamation that the two would eventually become one. Read his lines:

The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying,

Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:

And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?

Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.

And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.—Ezek. 37:15-20.

From the last verse quoted, as also from the tenor of the whole, the sticks here spoken of are records or, as we would say, books. Let it be remembered that prior to Ezekiel’s day, the Israelites had separated into two kingdoms, and were known respectively as the people of Judah and of Israel or Ephraim.

The record or stick of Judah is generally acknowledged to be the Holy Bible. What is the other, spoken of as the stick of Joseph, or Ephraim? We answer and affirm: It is the Book of Mormon.

Lehi, another prophet who dwelt in Jerusalem, a contemporary of Jeremiah in the earlier period of his ministry, departed by divine command, as the leader of a company comprising his own family and that of Ishmael, together with an individual named Zoram. This little colony reached the shore of the Arabian Sea, and there built a ship in which they were wafted across the waters to the western coast of America. On the new continent they grew to be a numerous people, and by segregation developed into two powerful nations, the Nephites and the Lamanites.

Records were kept by the Nephites, some of which have been brought to light and translated in these latter days, by the gift and power of God, through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith the Prophet. This modern translation of ancient annals has been before the world since 1830, when it was first published as the Rook of Mormon.

As the book itself sets forth. Lehi was of the tribe of Manasseh, who was the elder of the two sons of Joseph, son of Jacob or Israel. But the record of Manasseh would be incomplete as the stick of Joseph. for the younger son, Ephraim, would not be represented therein. Nowhere in the Book of Mormon is the tribal relationship of Ishmael, whose daughters intermarried with the sons of Lehi, specifically declared: though frequent mention in the book itself makes plain the fact that it is the record of the house of Joseph, and the inferential evidence that Ishmael was an Ephraimite in so strong as virtually to be a demonstration. But we have actual proof.

In the history of Joseph Smith the prophet states that he trans­lated at first from Mormon's abridgment of the Larger Plates of Nephi, down to the record of King Benjamin; and that the manuscript, which he reluctantly entrusted to the custody of Martin Harris in compliance with the insistent request of the latter, was lost. Joseph Smith u as forbidden to make a new translation from the same plates, but was instructed to translate from the Smaller Plates of Nephi the record engraved thereon, relating to this same period as that covered by the earlier trans­lation from the Larger Plates. We are told in the book that the Larger Plates contained more of the history and genealogy of the people than did the Smaller Plates.

That Ishmael was an Ephraimite was plainly stated in the lost pages, lit) in number; for so the translator affirmed.

In the Journal of Discourses, Volume 23, beginning on page 181, is the report of a “Discourse by Apostle Erastus Snow” delivered at Logan, Utah, May 6, 1882, in which appears the following:

… The Prophet Joseph informed us that the record of Lehi was contained on the 116 pages that were first translated and subsequently stolen, and of which an abridgement is given us in the First Book of Nephi, which is the record of Nephi individually, he himself being of the lineage of Manasseh; but that Ishmael teas of the lineage of Ephraim, and that his sons married into Lehi’s family, and Lehi’s sons married Ishmael's daughters, thus fulfilling the words of Jacob upon Ephraim and Manasseh in the 18th chapter of Genesis, which says: “And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” Thus these descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim grew together upon this American continent, with a sprinkling from the house of Judah, from Mulek descended, who left Jerusalem eleven years after Lehi, and founded the colony afterwards known as Zarahemla and found by Mosiah—thus making a combination, an intermixture of Ephraim and Manasseh with the remnants of Judah, and for aught we know, the remnants of some other tribes that might have accompanied Mulek. And such have grown up on the American continent. But we are not informed that the Prophet Joseph and the first Eiders of this Church, who were called and chosen of God to bear the Priesthood and lay the foundation of this work, were descended from any portion of those remnants that peopled America anciently, and whose history is given ns in the Book of Mormon. Yet we find in the Doctrine and Covenants the declaration concerning the first Elders of this Church, that they were of the house of Ephraim; and another passage referring to the wicked and rebellions, says, they shall be cut off from among the people, for the rebellions are not of the seed of Ephraim.

Thus is it made plain that the Book of Mormon is the record or stick of Joseph, embracing the descendants of both Manasseh and Ephraim—of Manasseh through Lehi, of Ephraim through Ishmael—from which two families sprang both Nephites and Lamanites, whose history is embodied in the Book of Mormon.— J.E.T.