588-Page Book of Mormon in Alphabetics

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Word 588 Derives from Word 5170 in the OT Lexicon

According to Strong, word 588 is derived from word 5170, nakhar, which is defined as meaning "to snort or snore; a snorting."  Gesenius defines the root further, as meaning "to breathe hard through the nose, to snore."

With the word "snore," the idea of slumber comes to mind, and the awakening that God seeks to effect through his word.  That concept thematic in the Book of Mormon as illustrated by the fact that it is included in the closing words of the Book of Mormon:

"Awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion..." (Moroni 10:31.)

It also hearkens to Isaiah 29, which says, "The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, and the seers hath he covered."

Then, in the next verse, he says, "The vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed...."

Most Mormons (thinking that this refers to the slumbering Christian world only, and not to themselves as also having fallen into a slumber) commit that verse to memory as evidence of a Biblical prophecy of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.  They also are familiar with an earlier verse in the chapter that says,

"And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust."

One of the features of Alphabetics is to consider the words in alphabetic vicinity, for they almost always have relevance to the word at hand.

Word 5172, in this case, is quintessentially relevant to the above prophecy in Isaiah, which the Mormons proclaim as a prophecy of the Book of Mormon.

5172 nawkhash To hiss, to whisper.
II. a second root, probably signifying to shine, whence brass, etc.

That obvious correlation, with the added allusion to the gold plates upon which the Book of Mormon was engraved, would be happily accepted by the typical Mormon.  Word 5178 derives from this one, and means "brass, i.e. copper, especially as hardened and tempered..."

What follows, though, will put most every Mormon far out of their comfort zone.  The first part of the definition by Gesenius above, goes on as follows:

5172 nawkhash To hiss, to whisper, specially used of the whispering of soothsayers; (1) to practice enchantment, to use sorcery; divination by serpents; (2) to augur, to forebode, to divine.

This is what the enemies of Joseph Smith asserted in his day regarding him, and this is what the opponents of the Mormon Church have held against Joseph Smith down to this day.

Krakauer describes the event in which Joseph retrieved the plates as follows:

"Carefully adhering to the time-honored rituals of necromancy, the young couple were dressed entirely in black, and had traveled the three miles from the Smith farm to the hill in a black carriage drawn by a black horse.  High on the steep west slope of the hill, Joseph again dug beneath the rock in the dark or night, while Emma stood nearby with her back turned to him." (p. 59.)

He describes how at first Joseph used the "interpreters [Urim and Thummim] that were contained with the plates to translate, but after loosing the 116 pages of manuscript and the gift of translation, Moroni returned the plates to them, but minus the Urim and Thummim.

"So to decipher the Egyptian characters Joseph relied instead on his favorite peep stone: a chocolate-colored egg-shaped rock that he had discovered twenty-four feet underground, in the company of Sally Chase's father, while digging a well in 1822.
    "Day after day, utilizing the technique he had learned from Sally, Joseph would place the magic rock in an upturned hat, bury his face in it with the stack of gold plates sitting nearby, and dictate the lines of scripture that appeared to him out of the blackness." (pp. 60,61.)

Adherents usually interpret the the Bible as forbidding such things, and yet the prophecy in Isaiah actually says that this is how the Book of Mormon would come forth.  "Familiar spirits; whispering."

Words 5172, 5173, 5175, 5177 all have to do with "hiss, i.e. whisper a (magic) spell; prognosticate; divine, enchanter; incantation or augury."

Sprinkled in between, words 5170, 5174, 5178, 5179 all have to do with copper/brass, bringing to mind the idea of the gold plates.

The word immediately before word 5170, from which word 588 is derived, means "to be urgent; require haste" (5169 nawkhats).

Krakauer says this:

"He worked at a feverish pace during this second phase of the translation, averaging some thirty-five hundred words a day, and by the end of June 1829 the job was finished." (pp. 61.)

The word before that means "we" (5168) and the word before that means "repenting / merciful" (5167) and the word prior to that means "whom Jehovah comforts" (5166).

A lot of meaning can be read into these words as pertaining to the idea of scripture and their purpose.  The "we" meaning is the one that intrigues me the most.  Who was it that conveyed the words to Joseph?  Who was it that composed the text of the Book of Mormon?  Was it a cosmically synthesized story with some fable and some fact to accomplish a particular purpose that we all helped compose prior to being born onto this earth?

Why would I say such a thing?  And how do I get that interpretation out of the words "we," "repenting / merciful" and "comfort"?

Actually, there are a large number of reasons that have very little to do with this one instance.  It's just that these words gave me an excuse to put that into writing.

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