The Root of the Interpretation

Until 1852, the church publicly held to one wife. It even printed that in the Doctrine and Covenants, as we’ll see below. The Book of Mormon was the strongest witness for that position, and Jacob 2 is where it plainly forbids a man to have more than one wife.¹ When Hyrum Smith preached against plural marriage in May 1843, that is where he turned.²

Then, in August 1852, the church announced plural marriage to the world, and the Book of Mormon became a problem. How could the Saints practice what Jacob called abominable? The answer came within months, and it came from Orson Pratt. Before we look at what he wrote, it’s worth knowing who he was and how much influence he had on our scriptures, especially with regards to polygamy.

Orson Pratt

Orson Pratt was given the task of publicly announcing the practice of polygamy in 1852,³ by presenting D&C 132.⁴ In that sermon he leaned on Abraham and the new revelation. He never mentioned Jacob 2. In 1853 he became the first church leader to defend this interpretation of Jacob 2 in print,⁵ and he returned to it in 1859 and again in his 1869 “Celestial Marriage” talk.

In 1874 he was tasked with expanding the Doctrine and Covenants, which was published in 1876. This is when section 101 was removed. The original section 101 is notable because it reads, “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.”

“In 1879, Elder Orson Pratt divided the Book of Mormon into small chapters and verses for easier reference. His numbering system became the standard for all later Latter-day Saint editions.”⁶ These are the chapters and verses that we live with today, and for our purposes we should know that Jacob chapters 2 and 3 were combined as a single chapter in the 1830 edition.

The Seer, 1853

A few months after the announcement, Brigham Young sent Pratt to Washington, D.C., to publish a magazine explaining and defending the church’s doctrines to the nation.⁷ He called it The Seer. In the second issue, February 1853, Pratt took up the Book of Mormon question directly:

Do you believe that the Book of Mormon is a divine revelation? We do. Does that book teach the doctrine of plurality of wives? It does not. Does the Lord in that book forbid the plurality doctrine? He forbid the ancient Nephites to have any more than one wife. … Why were the ancient Nephites restricted to the one wife system? Because, first, the number of males and females among them, at the time the command was given, was about equal. … And lastly, the Lord, Himself, informs them … that if He would have them practice differently from what He had previously taught them, it must be by his command. It reads as follows: “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise, they shall hearken unto these things.” Thus we see, that a man among the Nephites, by the law of God, had no right to take more than one wife, unless the Lord should command for the purpose of raising up seed unto Himself.⁸

This is the earliest use of our conventional interpretation that I’ve found, and it’s all here. The one-wife law was only for the Nephites. It was given because the men and women were about equal in number. And verse 30 is the exception that lets God command more wives “for the purpose of raising up seed unto Himself.” That is the same reading the church gives today.

Notice when it appears. Joseph and Hyrum were killed in 1844. The revelation now in D&C 132 wasn’t made public until 1852, eight years after their deaths, and this reading of Jacob 2:30 shows up nine years after. It comes from Orson Pratt, not from Joseph or Hyrum, and ten years after Hyrum used Jacob 2 against plural marriage. I haven’t found it in anything from Joseph Smith’s lifetime.

Pratt also admits what’s at stake. In the same passage he writes, “Without such a revelation it would be sinful, according to the Book of Mormon, which this church are required to obey.”⁹ He knew the Book of Mormon would condemn the practice unless God had truly commanded it. That is the question this series keeps coming back to.

Pratt wasn’t alone. That March, England’s Millennial Star printed a letter Elder John Jaques had written on January 31, making the same argument, that the Lord gave the one-wife commandment to Lehi’s people “excepting He wished to speedily raise up a people to Himself.” In the same letter Jaques concedes, “In the Book of Mormon we read of persons taking a plurality of wives, though we do not read of the Lord commanding any one so to do, though He had the power.”¹⁰

The reading even found its way into Joseph’s own history. His journal for October 5, 1843, kept by Willard Richards, records that he gave instructions to try those preaching plural marriage: “Joseph forbids it. and the practice ther[e]of— No man shall have but one wife.”¹¹ When that entry was copied into his history, work that began in 1854 under George A. Smith, it gained a phrase: “No man shall have but one wife at a time unless the Lord directs otherwise.”¹² That is Pratt’s reading of Jacob 2:30, put in Joseph’s own voice a year after The Seer.

Polygamy is a Constitutional Right

Six years after The Seer, on July 24, 1859, Pratt brought the same argument home to the Saints in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.¹³ As I read these early sermons, I can’t help but notice that the leaders of the church were constantly trying to justify the practice of plural marriage. It’s as if they were preparing their statements for a future courtroom battle in defense against the United States government. They pushed it as a foundational doctrine, and thus protected by the Constitution, as Pratt states, “Point out in the Bible where polygamy is a crime, and then you may say we have no right to embrace it as a part of our religious creed, and pretend it as a part of our constitutional rights.”

Then he turns to the Book of Mormon. He states,

If the Lord permits what is termed polygamy to exist as a crime among the Latter-day Saints, he will bring us into judgment and condemn us for that thing. It is necessary that we, as Latter-day Saints, should certainly understand this matter, and understand it, too, beforehand, and not wait until we are brought to an account.

Pratt recognizes the potential danger of the practice and that we will be held accountable for our actions. Too often we ignore the warnings in the Book of Mormon. He’s right; we “should certainly understand this matter.”¹⁴ The Book of Mormon has a few things to say about our accountability before God’s judgment bar.¹⁵ “For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.”¹⁶ Pratt continues,

Let us, therefore, carefully investigate the important question—Is polygamy a crime? Is it condemned in the Bible, either by the Old or New Testament? Has God ever condemned it by his own voice? Have his angels ever been sent forth to inform the nations who have practiced this thing that they were in transgression? Has he ever spoken against it by any inspired writer? Has any Patriarch, Prophet, Apostle, angel, or even the Son of God himself, ever condemned polygamy? We may give a general answer, without investigating this subject, and say to the world, We have no information of that kind on record, except what we find in the Book of Mormon. There it was positively forbidden to be practiced by the ancient Nephites.
 
The Book of Mormon, therefore, is the only record (professing to be Divine) which condemns plurality of wives as being a practice exceedingly abominable before God. But even that sacred book makes an exception in substance as follows—“Except I the Lord command my people.” The same Book of Mormon and the same article that commanded the Nephites that they should not marry more than one wife, made an exception. Let this be understood—“Unless I the Lord shall command them.” We can draw the conclusion from this, that there were some things not right in the sight of God, unless he should command them.

Twice in the same paragraph he misquotes Jacob 2:30: “Except I the Lord command my people” and “Unless I the Lord shall command them.” His conclusions seem to be drawn from the “happiness letter,”¹⁷ an unsubstantiated letter attributed to Joseph Smith.¹⁸

Joseph publicly denied writing it, and John C. Bennett, who published it, said it was in Willard Richards’s handwriting.¹⁹ Richards was Joseph’s secretary and later Church Historian, and the same idea, that what God forbids can become right if He commands it, keeps turning up in papers that passed through his hands. Two months before the letter, he wrote to his wife that some things recorded of the patriarchs “which have seemed bad to us” would “appear right” if we knew “the order of God.”²⁰ His draft of Joseph’s March 1842 letter to the Relief Society adds an exception, “unless it be by message del[iv]ered to you by our own mouth, by actual revelation & commandment,” that isn’t in the version the Relief Society recorded.²¹ And after Joseph’s death, the letter he denied writing was later copied into his official history.

I can’t say whether Pratt learned this way of thinking from Richards. They sat in the same councils in 1852, when the announcement was prepared, but I haven’t found any record of them discussing Jacob 2. What I can say is that the idea was already sitting in the records Richards kept.²²

Pratt continues,

The substance of the idea in that book is that—When I the Lord shall command you to raise up seed unto myself, then it shall be right; but otherwise thou shalt hearken unto these things—namely, the law against polygamy. But when we go to the Jewish record, we find nothing that forbids the children of Israel from taking as many wives as they thought proper. God gave laws regulating the descent of property in polygamic families.

Again he misquotes the verse, but the idea is the same one he laid out in The Seer, the now commonly accepted conventional interpretation. Orson Pratt was considered the scriptorian of the day.²³ Here he opens the same loophole for the Saints at home, still delicately.

You cannot condemn us temporally, or spiritually, or by the civil law; neither can you condemn us by the Bible. There is no law that condemns us, unless the law in the Book of Mormon does so; and I have already shown that the Book of Mormon does not, provided the Lord has commanded it. But if we have not been commanded in regard to this matter, then there is one thing that will condemn us, and that is the Book of Mormon. This is a little more strict than any other Divine revelation, in regard to polygamy.

We ought to reflect on these words and ponder whether or not we have been condemned: “There is no law that condemns us, unless the law in the Book of Mormon does so… But if we have not been commanded in regard to this matter, then there is one thing that will condemn us, and that is the Book of Mormon.”²⁴

I wonder if Pratt knew how universally accepted this interpretation would become, and that it would be the scaffolding for official church statements more than 160 years later. As you read his statements, you can see he won’t commit 100%. In 1853, and again in 1859, he has to state honestly that the potential for condemnation exists. Over the next decade, that warning disappears, and I haven’t found anyone raise it again.

Pratt’s talk in 1859 was titled “Polygamy,” and in 1869 he returns to the title, “Celestial Marriage.” Again, he begins with an exploration of whether it is legal or not, “In the first place, let us inquire whether it is lawful and right, according to the Constitution of our country.” Finally, he gets to the Book of Mormon account starting with Lehi:

Let us now come to the record in the Book of Mormon, when the Lord led forth Lehi and Nephi, and Ishmael and his two sons and five daughters out of the land of Jerusalem to the land of America, the males and females were about equal in number. There were Nephi, Sam, Laman and Lemuel, the four sons of Lehi, and Zoram, brought out of Jerusalem. How many daughters of Ishmael were unmarried? Just five. Would it have been just under these circumstances to ordain plurality among them? No. Why? Because the males and females were equal in number and they were all under the guidance of the Almighty, hence it would have been unjust, and the Lord gave a revelation—the only one on record I believe—in which a command was ever given to any branch of Israel to be confined to the monogamic system. In this case the Lord through His servant Lehi, gave a command that they should have but one wife.

It’s the same reasoning he gave in The Seer: God commanded monogamy among Lehi’s posterity because there just weren’t enough women. Were there no more righteous souls in the city of Jerusalem available to bring along?

By and by, after the death of Lehi, some of his posterity began to disregard the strict law that God had given to their father, and took more wives than one, and the Lord put them in mind, through His servant Jacob, one of the sons of Lehi, of this law, and told them that they were transgressing it, and then referred to David and Solomon, as having committed abomination in His sight. The Bible also tells us that they sinned in the sight of God; not in taking wives legally, but only in those they took illegally, in doing which they brought wrath and condemnation upon their heads.

The Nephites “began to disregard the strict law” after the death of Nephi, not Lehi, as Lehi had been dead for 25 years.²⁵ The timeline is important to understand; we’ll come back to it in Part 2.

I want to point out that I’m noticing a common theme from our previous post, legally vs. illegally, or authorized vs. unauthorized. The reasoning is the same: it’s acceptable when God allows it.

But the Lord in Jacob doesn’t call it unauthorized marriage; he calls it whoredoms. And Nephi tells us plainly what God commands about whoredoms: “the Lord God hath commanded… that they should not commit whoredoms; and that they should do none of these things; for whoso doeth them shall perish. For none of these iniquities come of the Lord.”²⁶ If I could ask Elder Pratt one question, it would be this: would God command his people to commit whoredoms?

But because the Lord dealt thus with the small branch of the House of Israel that came to America, under their peculiar circumstances, there are those at the present day who will appeal to this passage in the Book of Mormon as something universally applicable in regard to man’s domestic relations. The same God that commanded one branch of the House of Israel in America, to take but one wife when the numbers of the two sexes were about equal, gave a different command to the hosts of Israel in Palestine.

There is a lot to consider once we introduce the “different command to the hosts of Israel in Palestine.” While the Bible is obviously related to our topic, I won’t address it until much later. For now we have to stick with the Americas, Lehi’s covenant land, and not the land of Israel.

But let us see the qualifying clause given in the Book of Mormon on this subject. After having reminded the people of the commandment delivered by Lehi in regard to monogamy, the Lord says, “For if I will raise up seed unto me I will command my people, otherwise they shall hearken unto these things;” that is, if I will raise up seed among my people of the House of Israel, according to the law that exists among the tribes of Israel I will give them a commandment on the subject, but if I do not give this commandment they shall hearken to the law which I gave unto their father Lehi. That is the meaning of the passage, and this very passage goes to prove that plurality was a principle God did approve under circumstances when it was authorized by Him.

This time he quotes the verse correctly, as he did in The Seer, other than leaving out “saith the Lord of Hosts.” Ten years after 1859, Pratt is confident. He’s read “the qualifying clause” over and over again until he can state, with utmost confidence, “That is the meaning of the passage.” He no longer warns the Saints of the potential for condemnation; only the Nephites were condemned, not us.²⁷

Now that we’ve unearthed the root of the conventional interpretation, the only question is: should we nourish it or root it out?

The Book of Mormon makes it evident that the spirits we hearken unto are like trees growing inside of us. As King Lamoni’s father cried, “What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken? Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy, that I may not be cast off at the last day?”²⁸

Alma suggests we nurture a different seed, or tree, “But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you…”²⁹

This interpretation took root with Orson Pratt in 1853, not with Joseph, not with Hyrum, and not with the Book of Mormon. Before we test it against the text of Jacob 2 itself in Part 2, we’ll look at how it got into our scriptures, and at what Hyrum and Joseph actually said.

Other Talks Referencing Jacob 2:30

Pratt’s writings seem to be the foundation. A few other leaders used the verse the same way before the Journal of Discourses ended, and 1885 is the last mention of Jacob 2:30 and “raise up seed” I’ve found there. Here they are, briefly, for your own research:

• Erastus Snow, June 24, 1883, Parowan. After answering Joseph Smith III’s denial that his father taught plural marriage, Snow quotes Jacob 2:30 and says that in restricting the Nephites, the Lord “intimated that when the time should come that He should raise up seed unto himself, He would command His people.” Journal of Discourses 24:158
• Henry W. Naisbitt, March 8, 1885, Salt Lake City. Says the Book of Mormon required monogamy “in the first colonization of this country… because the sexes were equal,” but that “necessity would give final enlargement to this practical question.” Journal of Discourses 26
• Erastus Snow, May 31, 1885, Provo. Says it is “high time that the Lord, who wishes to raise up seed unto Himself, should command His people,” pointing to the more than fifty thousand Sabbath school children in Utah. Journal of Discourses 26