Book of Mormon: Iron Rod and Word of God

In their visions of the Tree of Life, Lehi and Nephi beheld a “rod of iron” which extended along the bank of a river and led to the Tree of Life (1 Nephi 8:19; 11:25). When Nephi’s brothers asked him about the meaning of this symbol, he explained that the iron rod represented “the word of God; and whoso would hearken unto the word of God, and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish” (1 Nephi 15:24; cf. 1 Nephi 11:25).¹

Among many ancient societies, the rod was often associated with the authority of a ruler or with the words of the law. As demonstrated by John A. Tvedtnes, this symbolic association between rod and word can be found in the Old Testament:

The use of a rod to represent words or speech is found in Proverbs 10:13 and 14:3. In other passages, it refers specifically to the word of God. In Isaiah 30:31, “the voice of the Lord” is contrasted with the rod of the Assyrians. In a few passages, the rod is compared to a covenant with God which, like a rod, can be broken (see Ezekiel 20:37; Zechariah 11:10, 14). Micah wrote, “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Micah 6:9). Isaiah wrote of the Messiah, “But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).²

Summarizing the views of other scholars, Hugh Nibley stated that “in Egypt as among the Hebrews the staff was specifically the Word of God, and the Word of God was the Matteh ha-elohim or Staff of God.”³ This symbolism may be reflected in the Book of Mormon’s quotation of the prophecies of Joseph who was sold into Egypt. In Joseph’s prophecy, the Lord promised to “raise up a Moses” and “give power unto him in a rod” (2 Nephi 3:17). This imagery seems to be intentionally contrasted with the prophecy about Joseph Smith, of whom the Lord said, “him will I give power to bring forth my word” (v. 11).⁴

Building on the research of Nibley and Tvedtnes, Matthew L. Bowen has found linguistic evidence to further solidify the rod/word connection:

We note that the Egyptian word mdw means not only “a staff [or] rod” but also “to speak” a “word.” The derived word md.t, or mt.t, probably pronounced *mateh in Lehi’s day, was common in the Egyptian dialect of that time and would have sounded very much like a common Hebrew word for rod or staff, maṭṭeh. It is also very interesting that the expression mdw-ntr was a technical term for a divine revelation, literally the “the word of God [or] divine decree.” The phrase mdw-ntr also denoted “sacred writings,” what we would call scriptures, as well as the “written characters [or] script” in which these sacred writings were written.⁵

In light of this analysis, it seems quite plausible that Nephi would have used a form of the Egyptian word mdw (staff/word) for the “word of God” in the following passage: “whoso would hearken unto the word of God [mdw], and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish” (1 Nephi 15:24). According to Bowen, this passage plausibly exhibits a play on words because “one can physically hold fast to a rod but not to a word.”⁶ While this concept of laying hold upon the word of God appears to be absent from the Bible,⁷ it seems to have been picked up by other Book of Mormon writers:⁸

Further evidence of Egyptian/Hebrew wordplay on rod/word can be seen in Nephi’s description of Moses parting the Red Sea: “And ye know that by his word [mdw/mt.t] the waters of the Red Sea were divided.  … And ye also know that Moses, by his word [mdw/ mt.t] according to the power of God which was in him, smote the rock, and there came forth water.”¹⁰ Bowen explained, “Exodus 14:16, Exodus 17:5–6, and Numbers 20:8–11 are the biblical passages to which Nephi alludes. Remarkably, each passage cites the maṭṭeh (“rod”) as the instrumentality through which Moses performed the miracles recorded in Exodus. Thus Nephi’s additional wordplay in 1 Nephi 17:26, 29 is likewise sublime.”¹¹

The following chart highlights the intertextual word/rod substitutions mentioned above by Bowen:

The Book of Mormon’s association between rod and word is consistent with the way that these symbols are connected in the Bible. In addition, the specific way that the term word is sometimes directly substituted for rod in the Book of Mormon suggests an intentional wordplay by authors familiar with Hebrew and Egyptian.

Conclusion

This situation aligns with Nephi’s explanation that he made his “record in the language of [his] father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2) and also with Moroni’s statement that he and his forefathers wrote in “reformed Egyptian” because there wasn’t enough room on the plates to write in “Hebrew” (Mormon 9:32–33). In contrast, Joseph Smith didn’t study Hebrew until well after the translation of the Book of Mormon,¹² nor does it appear that he ever received any secular training in ancient Egyptian languages or scripts.¹³