Wordplay on Garb

In the book of Helaman, readers encounter the story of a chief judge who was murdered just as the prophet Nephi predicted. Concerning this event, the narrator explains: “Now, immediately when the judge had been murdered—he being stabbed by his brother by a garb of secrecy, and he fled, and the servants ran and told the people, raising the cry of murder among them” (Helaman 9:6).

Some commentators have taken issue with this description. Writing in 1887, Martin Lamb mockingly concluded that a “‘garb of secrecy’ is surely a formidable instrument with which to stab a man!”¹ More than a century later, another author echoed this same sentiment: “‘Garb’ is clothing; one cannot be stabbed with a piece of clothing—it would be even more difficult for someone to be stabbed with that!”² Similar comments have been made by other authors.³

It should be noted, however, that the text first says that the chief judge was “stabbed by his brother” and then it provides the prepositional phrase “by a garb of secrecy.” Thus, grammatically speaking, “by a garb of secrecy” appears to function as a description of the general means by which the brother stabbed the chief judge (rather than as a reference to the specific instrument by which the judge was stabbed).

In his analysis of this passage, Royal Skousen has pointed to several other Book of Mormon passages (Alma 27:24; Alma 51:6; Helaman 2:11) in which the preposition by “can be interpreted as meaning ‘by means of’.”⁴ This reading is also consistent with the Hebrew literary background of the text. “As for the preposition ‘by,’” notes John Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, “in Hebrew its range of meaning includes ‘in,’ ‘with,’ and ‘by means of’.”⁵

What is a garb of secrecy? Since the word garb refers to clothing, a garb of secrecy most likely refers to some type of disguise, probably to obscure the identity of the murderer (but perhaps also to conceal the instrument that was used to stab the judge).⁶ The specific phrase “garb of secrecy” is used in several 19th-century texts close to the publication of the Book of Mormon.⁷ So it is not, in and of itself, a novelty.

However, as pointed out by Tvedtnes and Roper, the phrase is especially meaningful in an ancient Hebrew context, where “the Hebrew word beged means both ‘garment’ or ‘garb’ (e.g., Genesis 39:12–13) and ‘treachery’.”⁸ This added meaning of “treachery” is intriguing because the murderer happened to be the chief judge’s very own brother! The narrative context thus evokes a Hebrew idiom in a way that the English phrase “garb of secrecy” doesn’t capture on its own, thereby rendering it as “an obvious word-play” when read in light of the Book of Mormon’s claimed ancient literary background.⁹

Royal Skousen with the collaboration of Stanford Carmack, The Nature of the Original Language, Parts 3–4 of The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Volume 3 of The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU Studies, 2018), 462–463.

John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, “One Small Step,” The FARMs Review 15, no. 1 (2003): 172.

David E. Bokovoy and John A. Tvedtnes, Testaments: Links between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible (Toelle, UT: Heritage Press, 2003), 204.

BibleGenesis 39:12–13Isaiah 24:16, Jeremiah 12:1Zephaniah 3:4Book of MormonAlma 27:24Alma 51:6Helaman 2:11Helaman 9:6

Bible

Genesis 39:12–13

Isaiah 24:16,

Jeremiah 12:1

Zephaniah 3:4

Book of Mormon

Alma 27:24

Alma 51:6

Helaman 2:11

Helaman 9:6