Moses 7
“The Lord Called His People Zion”
February 2 - February 8
scripture
commentaries
Enoch and Mahujah Cry unto the Lord
<p><strong>7:2. “stood.”</strong> In ancient tradition, standing before the Lord may have symbolized the role of an attendant to a king. It is a posture that shows readiness to listen and carry out divine instructions with promptness.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a></p> <p><strong>7:2. “the place.”</strong> BYU professors Richard D. Draper, S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes noted that in a scriptural context, the Hebrew term corresponding to “the place” often describes a special or sacred location.<a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a></p> <p><strong>7:2. “Mahujah.”</strong> Scholars agree that Mahujah is a variant on the name Mahijah (Moses 6:40), perhaps a new name given to him at that time.<a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> Because the pronoun “I” is present in the original manuscript (OT1) and the second-person plural “ye” appears twice later in the verse, the following reading seems to be more accurate: “As I was journeying and stood in the place, Mahujah and I cried unto the Lord. There came a voice out of heaven, saying—Turn ye, and get ye upon the mount Simeon.” This reading turns the name Mahujah into a personal name instead of a place name. In other words, Enoch is seen as standing <em>with</em> Mahujah rather than <em>on the place named</em> Mahujah. This reading is also consistent with ancient sources that describe a second journey of Mahaway (Mahijah/Mahujah) to visit Enoch and that appear to show him praying on a high mountain.<a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> Non-Latter-day Saint scholar Salvatore Cirillo found this parallel impressive, concluding, “The emphasis that [Joseph] Smith places on Mahijah’s travel to Enoch is eerily similar to the account of Mahaway to Enoch in [the <em>Book of Giants</em>].”<a href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a></p> <p><strong>7:2. “cried unto the Lord.” </strong>As Draper and his coauthors emphasized, it is the cry of the righteous that mobilizes the Lord to act—whether it be in providing needed understanding (as we see in the story of Enoch), in taking action to correct injustices, or in delivering His people from distress.<a href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a></p> <p><strong>7:2. “the mount Simeon.”</strong> Fittingly, the name Simeon (Hebrew <em>Shim‘on</em>) is generally taken from the Hebrew <em>shama</em>‘, which means “to hear,” as indicated in Genesis 29:33.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Standing in the Holy Place: Ancient and Modern Reverberations of an Enigmatic New Testament Prophecy,” in<em> Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of the Expound Symposium, 14 May 2011</em>, ed. Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Orem, UT: Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2014), 75–76.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Richard D. Draper, S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes, <em>The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary</em> (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005), 112.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7 and the <em>Book of Giants</em>: Remarkable Witnesses of Enoch’s Ministry,” in<em> Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses: Inspired Origins, Temple Contexts, and Literary Qualities</em>, ed. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David R. Seely, John W. Welch, and Scott Gordon (Orem, UT: Interpreter Foundation; Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central; Reading, CA: FAIR; Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2021), 1113–1114.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7,” 1107–1113.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Salvatore Cirillo, “Joseph Smith, Mormonism, and Enochic Tradition” (master’s thesis, Durham University, 2010), 105. In his thesis, Cirillo looked for documents besides the <em>Book of Giants</em> (which Joseph Smith could not have known about) that were what he took to be the necessary manuscript source for Joseph Smith’s Enoch. He eventually regarded 1 Enoch as the source; however, a careful reading of the 1 Enoch accounts will show that evidence for a resemblance to the book of Moses is strained.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> Draper, Brown, and Rhodes, <em>Pearl of Great Price</em>, 113.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author</strong>: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw<br /><strong>General Editor:</strong> Taylor Halverson<br /><strong>Associate Editor:</strong> Morgan Tanner<br /><strong>Senior Editor:</strong> Sarah Whitney Johnson<br /><strong>Assistant Editor:</strong> Verlanne Johnson</p>
Old Testament Minute: Genesis by BMC
The Heavens Open, and Enoch Is Clothed with Glory
<p><strong>7:3. “I turned and went up on the mount.”</strong> Note Enoch’s immediate response. The singular pronoun in the text implies that at this point, Mahujah/Mahaway declined to follow Enoch to higher ground.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> We are not told directly whether Mahujah/Mahaway remained repentant or became recalcitrant before he died, but the <em>Book of Giants </em>description of Mahaway’s slaughter suggests that he remained too long with the wicked and for that reason, if for no other, ultimately shared in their tragic demise. The <em>Book of Giants</em> records these words as a lament for Mahaway’s violent death: “Slain, slain was that angel who was great, [that messenger whom they had]. Dead were those who were joined with flesh.”<a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a></p> <p><strong>7:3. “I was clothed upon with glory.”</strong> This event anticipates verse 17, in which Enoch’s people are glorified. Hugh Nibley commented that the idea of putting on clothing in a temple context is in symbolic imitation of being transfigured to a glorious state.<a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a></p> <p>The pseudepigraphal books of 2 and 3 Enoch purport to describe the process by which Enoch was “clothed upon with glory” (<a class="ref_link">Moses 7:3</a>) in detail. Both accounts describe a “two-step initiatory procedure” whereby “the patriarch was first initiated by angel(s) and after this by the Lord.”<a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> As this process culminated, Enoch, both in ancient sources and in modern scripture, received “a right to [God’s] throne” (7:59). In 2 Enoch, God commanded His angels to “extract Enoch from (his) earthly clothing. And anoint him with my delightful oil, and put him into the clothes of my glory.”<a href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> After Enoch was changed, he resembled God so exactly that he was, in some Jewish accounts, mistaken for Him.<a href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a></p> <p>To summarize, in this event Enoch became a “son of God” (<a class="ref_link">Moses 6:68</a>) through the sealing power, having been remade fully in God’s image and likeness. In this sense, sealing ordinances can be seen not only as the means of linking but also as the result of imprinting. Throughout history, seals have provided a unique stamp of identity on important documents—the image of the author being transferred, as it were, to the document itself. Similarly, the scriptural concept of sealing is both an empowering and an imprinting process,<a href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> recalling Alma’s words about receiving God’s image in our countenances (see <a class="ref_link">Alma 5:14</a>).</p> <p>Agreeing with the Latter-day Saint view that every person is invited to follow in the footsteps of Enoch, Enoch scholar Charles Mopsik concluded that Enoch’s exaltation should not be seen as a unique event. Rather, he wrote, the “enthronement of Enoch is a prelude to the transfiguration of the righteous—and at their head the Messiah—in the world to come, a transfiguration that is the restoration of the figure of the perfect Man.”<a href="#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> This echoes the book of Moses description of God as the Man of Holiness (<a class="ref_link">Moses 7:35</a>; see also 6:57).</p> <p><strong>7:4. “many generations.”</strong> In verses 4–11, Enoch is given a limited vision of the tribes that stops just short of the events of the Flood. Going further, starting in verse 20 Enoch is given a grand vision that shows God’s work on this earth from the beginning to the end. Why was such a vision necessary? Nibley observed, “Before the king can take over his throne, the king must go to heaven and see the field of his labors, which is shown him on a map, and receive his assignment.”<a href="#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a></p> <p> </p> <p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7 and the <em>Book of Giants</em>: Remarkable Witnesses of Enoch’s Ministry,” in<em> Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses: Inspired Origins, Temple Contexts, and Literary Qualities</em>, ed. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David R. Seely, John W. Welch, and Scott Gordon (Orem, UT: Interpreter Foundation; Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central; Reading, CA: FAIR; Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2021), 1113.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> For details about this translation of Werner Sundermann, <em>Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer</em> (Berlin, Germany: Akademie-Verlag, 1973), 78, M5900, lines 1574–1577, see Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7,” 1236nn376, 378.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Hugh W. Nibley, “Sacred Vestments,” in<em> Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present</em>, ed. Don E. Norton, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 12 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 118–119.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> A. A. Orlov, <em>Enoch-Metatron Tradition </em>(Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 102.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> F. I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in <em>The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha</em>, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 1:138.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> See, for example, Philip S. Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in<em> Old Testament Pseudepigrapha</em>, 1:268. Compare Galatians 3:27; Hebrews 1:3; Doctrine and Covenants 138:40. Enoch is called “The Lesser YHWH,” and his throne, crown, and robe “match the insignia of God” (Philip S. Alexander, “From Son of Adam to Second God: Transformations of the Biblical Enoch,” in<em> Biblical Figures Outside the Bible</em>, ed. Michael E. Stone and Theodore A. Bergren [Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998], 105).</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> Luke Timothy Johnson, <em>Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies</em> (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 78, 78n44.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Charles Mopsik, ed., <em>Le Livre hébreu d’Hénoch ou Livre des Palais</em> (Lagrasse, France: Éditions Verdier, 1989), 214; translation mine.</p> <p><a href="#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Hugh W. Nibley, <em>Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price</em> (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS], 2004), 281.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author</strong>: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw<br /><strong>General Editor:</strong> Taylor Halverson<br /><strong>Associate Editor:</strong> Morgan Tanner<br /><strong>Senior Editor:</strong> Sarah Whitney Johnson<br /><strong>Assistant Editor:</strong> Verlanne Johnson</p>
Old Testament Minute: Genesis by BMC
video
Evidence for Enoch in the Pseudepigrapha (Moses 7)
<p>Jasmin Gimenez Rappleye, “Evidence for Enoch in the Pseudepigrapha (Come Follow Me: Moses 7) Week 4, Part 2/7,” Book of Mormon Central Video, 2022.</p>
Jasmin Gimenez Rappleye
