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Many publications on the Book of Mormon by Latter-day Saint authors mention that when the resurrected Jesus visited the Americas his teachings included a few verses from the biblical book of Micah.[*] Yet in my experience it seems that many readers of 3 Nephi are unaware of this and likewise are generally unfamiliar with the book of Micah. This is not too surprising since unlike Isaiah, whom Jesus refers to by name several times, Micah is never mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon. Thus, readers unfamiliar with the book of Micah will likely miss the Micah passages quoted by Jesus or give them little thought.

The fact that a small number of verses from the book of Micah appear in a few chapters of 3 Nephi as well as in Mormon 5 may not seem particularly significant. After all, whole chapters and many other verses from the book of Isaiah are quoted in the Book of Mormon, as are prophecies from prophets who are not in the Bible (e.g., Neum, Zenock, and Zenos).[1] However, the fact that Jesus quoted verses from Micah to the Nephites in the Americas suggests they are worth our attention. And, as it turns out, these few verses contain vivid imagery and portray important doctrine about Israelite descendants and Gentiles, thus playing an integral role in Jesus’s teachings in 3 Nephi.

This rather lengthy study, therefore, reviews and analyzes the texts from Micah that appear in the Book of Mormon, with the goal of providing a fuller discussion of their role and value, especially as used by Jesus in 3 Nephi. This includes identifying which passages from the book of Micah appear in the Book of Mormon, giving commentary-like attention to how and why these passages are employed, explaining what imagery they present, and remarking on the curious situation that no mention is made of Micah’s name. For readers to make better sense of this overall situation, we begin with some initial considerations and a brief overview of the biblical book of Micah.

Initial Considerations

1. As has been ably stated, “All faithful explanations [of the translation of the Book of Mormon and related textual matters] begin with the understanding that there were gold plates and that they contained an authentic ancient text that has been translated [with divine assistance] for our benefit.”[2] I subscribe to this position, even though no one can yet answer all questions about the Book of Mormon and how it came to be.[3]

2. All textual studies of the Book of Mormon must deal with the fact that we do not have the original text in its original language. We work with an English translation produced by Joseph Smith Jr. in 1829, a text that was, according to Royal Skousen, “written in a biblical style but also filled with numerous instances of nonstandard English.”[4] This translation exhibits the influence of Early Modern English (1500s–1600s) and includes “phraseology from all over the King James Bible.”[5]

The King James Version (KJV) was the translation of the Bible read by Joseph Smith and his early followers, so it is not surprising that the biblical phraseology in the Book of Mormon displays great affinity with the KJV text. Nor it is surprising that the KJV influenced its readers’ expectations of how scripture ought to read.[6] This study, then, deals with the KJV of the book of Micah[7] and the English translation of the Book of Mormon.

The text of the 2013 edition of the Book of Mormon is utilized herein. There are no changes of consequence between the earliest Book of Mormon text of the pertinent Micah passages and the current version (with one exception, discussed below).[8] This study does not directly engage questions of what type of translation the Book of Mormon represents and thus deals with the text as we have it.[9] Furthermore, knowing the Hebrew text of Micah is important but ancillary in this study because of the role of the KJV Bible in the early Restoration and its appearance in the Book of Mormon translation.

3. The term Nephites is employed throughout this paper to refer to the people Jesus taught in the Americas after his resurrection. This is because Mormon refers to them as “the people of Nephi” (3 Nephi 10:18; 11:1). At this point in the narrative Nephite was no longer a genealogical term but rather a religious designation for the “people of God,” those who accepted and followed the Book of Mormon prophets (see, e.g., 3 Nephi 2:12–16; 3:14; and, in hindsight, 4 Nephi 1:2).

4. Even with only a few passages from Micah included in the Book of Mormon, there is more that can be said about this topic and related issues than can feasibly be covered herein. Furthermore, the majority of verses quoted from Micah in the Book of Mormon occur in Jesus’s teachings in 3 Nephi. This is not a full-scale study of Jesus’s discourses per se, but an examination of the Micah materials in those discourses.[10]

The Biblical Book of Micah

Although there are a few different people named Micah in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), including in Judges and 1 Chronicles, the Micah who is important here is the prophet after whom the book of Micah is named. Little is known about him, but according to the superscription to the book (Micah 1:1), he lived in the kingdom of Judah and was prophetically active in Jerusalem during the latter part of the 700s BC.[11] Micah was thus contemporary with Isaiah, and the books attributed to Isaiah and Micah share several analogous themes. The book of Micah likely reached its final form after Micah’s death, and there is real diversity of opinion as to when that final form occurred.[12]

The book of Micah has been described as “a brilliant piece of ancient Hebrew rhetoric,” which demonstrates “an unusual depth of theological vision and sophisticated literary artistry.”[13] There is some disagreement on the details of the structure of the book, but many scholars suggest dividing it into three major portions, each with several subunits and each open to differences in interpretation and application:[14]

chapters 1–3 include strongly worded prophecies of judgment and doom against Samaria (capital of the northern Israelite kingdom, named Israel) and Jerusalem (capital of the southern Israelite kingdom, named Judah), because of the “sins of the house of Israel” (Mic 1:5), and especially because of the iniquity of their political and religious leaders;

chapters 4–5 relate a prophesied future reversal of fortunes for a remnant of Israelites and for Jerusalem, that Jerusalem will become a center of righteousness and peace and will have a godly messianic ruler, and that despite ongoing challenges for Jehovah’s people the day will come when he and his people will destroy the enemies of Israel; and

chapters 6–7 contain Jehovah’s indictment of his people for violating their covenant with him and the resulting consequences (thus, a covenant lawsuit; Hebrew ryb), but the book ends on a hopeful note, promising Jehovah’s deliverance of Israel from enemies and sin.

It is not surprising that, according to this outline, the Micah passages that occur in the Book of Mormon come from the future-looking prophecies in Micah 4 and 5.[15]

Passages from the Book of Micah in the Book of Mormon

Jesus included allusions to and modified quotations from Micah during the first two days he appeared to the Nephites. Mormon’s account of Jesus’s first visit to covenant Israelites in the Americas following his resurrection is narrated in 3 Nephi 11–18. His departure is noted in 3 Nephi 18:39, and his return the next day is reported in 19:4, 15. Jesus’s “second-day” teachings and activities are narrated in 3 Nephi 19–26, although Mormon does not provide a clear indication of the termination of Jesus’s second-day activities (see 26:13–16). Chapter 26 does, however, provide a statement important for this study. Mormon claims that “there cannot be written in this book even a hundredth part of the things which Jesus did truly teach unto the people,” and that he (Mormon) included in his account the “lesser part” of the account written on the “plates of Nephi” (3 Nephi 26:6–8). We are thus left to proceed with an analysis and draw conclusions on data that is not complete.[16] Therefore, anything that is claimed about the Micah passages in the Book of Mormon must be understood to be somewhat tentative, based on what has been provided to us by Mormon.

The following chart indicates the verses from Micah in the order they appear in the Book of Mormon:[17]

As this chart illustrates, only two passages from Micah occur in the Book of Mormon—Micah 4:12–13 and 5:8–15, with an emphasis on 5:8.[18] Also, they occur mainly in Jesus’s second-day discourse (3 Nephi 20:10–23:6), and since 3 Nephi 22 is a rendition of Isaiah 54, the Micah passages are found in 3 Nephi 20 and 21.[19]

Micah 4:12–13 and 5:8–15 occur in the unit of that book that focuses on Jehovah’s future gathering and deliverance of Israelites and their triumph over their enemies. As prophesied in Micah 4:13 and 5:8–9, Israelites themselves will act as human agents in their eventual successful deliverance from their enemies by means of Jehovah’s power. Therefore, these verses fit well with what Jesus taught the Nephites, especially in 3 Nephi 20–21.

How Micah’s Words Are Used in 3 Nephi

A major purpose of this study is to review and assess how the passages from the book of Micah are used by Jesus in 3 Nephi, and to a lesser extent by Mormon in Mormon 5. Since the greatest use of Micah passages occurs in 3 Nephi 20–21, during Jesus’s second-day discourse, it is more productive to examine those texts first, before returning to 3 Nephi 16.

Overview of 3 Nephi 20–21

Mormon reports that Jesus’s second-day discourse focuses on the “house of Israel,” which historically had been divided and scattered into several different branches.[20] Jesus, as prophets before him had done, teaches that the “remnants” (plural) of these scattered branches will be gathered together again, physically and spiritually (3 Nephi 20:13). Furthermore, he affirms that his Nephite audience was “a remnant of the house of Israel” (vv. 10, 25) and that the Americas will be the land of inheritance for their descendants. If future Gentiles, who will participate in scattering those descendants, do not repent, then this “remnant of the house of Israel” in the Americas will be gathered by the Lord and, quoting from Micah, they will be mighty against the Gentiles in their midst. And with the building of a New Jerusalem, Jesus will be in this remnant’s midst (20:14–28). This basic scenario is recounted again in 20:29–46 but with a focus on Israelite descendants in and around Jerusalem (see vv. 29, 46). Jesus connects Isaiah 52 with this future activity and concludes with a note that “old” Jerusalem will also be inhabited by “my [covenant-keeping] people” of the house of Israel (v. 46).

In 3 Nephi 21, the eventual coming forth of the Book of Mormon record among the Gentiles is given as a sign that God’s plan to gather the various remnants or branches of the house of Israel is underway. Gentiles in “this land” will bring the Book of Mormon to the remnant of Israel in the Americas (vv. 1–7, esp. v. 4). Those Gentiles who do not receive the book and the servant of God who helps bring it forth will be “cut off from among my people who are of the covenant” (vv. 8–11, esp. v. 11). This will result, quoting from Micah, in the Lord’s sending the Israelite remnant against unrepentant Gentiles (see vv. 12–21, esp. v. 12). However, repentant Gentiles will be numbered among his people and will assist with his work to gather the remnants of Israel, help build New Jerusalem, and enjoy Jesus in their midst (see vv. 22–25). Chapter 21 ends with Jesus’s affirmation that remnants of all the branches of the house of Israel, including the branch in the Americas, will be gathered under the direction of Jesus and by his power (see vv. 26–29).[21] Jesus then quotes Isaiah 54, as found in 3 Nephi 22.

Thus, Jesus’s second-day discourse, as presented to us by Mormon, does not focus on individuals or institutions but rather on groups of people—future remnants of Israel and future Gentiles—and their relationship to Jesus.[22] And even a cursory review of 3 Nephi 20–21 shows that Jesus draws heavily from Isaiah 52 (with many alterations; he then quotes Isaiah 54 in 3 Nephi 22). He also includes the two passages from the book of Micah identified above.

With the preceding overview as a framework, the following charts illustrate Jesus’s use of these passages from the book of Micah. Boldface denotes language that is essentially the same in both sources, and underlining highlights the KJV of the biblical book of Micah that has been reformulated in 3 Nephi 20–21. The absence of boldface or underlining indicates text found in only one source. Space permits only brief comments on context, imagery, and the major differences between the text of these passages as found in Micah and in 3 Nephi. The presentation here follows the order of Micah passages as they occur in 3 Nephi 20–21.

3 Nephi 20—Micah 5:8–9

Third Nephi 20:16–17 is based on Micah 5:8–9, which contains four important components: the “remnant of Jacob,” the Gentiles, lion imagery depicting something this remnant is prophesied to do to Gentiles, and the remnant’s cutting off their enemies. In the Old Testament, the word remnant identifies a “part of a nation, tribe, clan, or family which survives a divine catastrophe, whether natural (flood, famine, pestilence) or not (war, exile). This group forms the nucleus for the possible future rebuilding of the community. The remnant, therefore, functions within the theological framework of judgment and salvation . . . [and underscores] the fact that God’s gracious salvation preserves a faithful group.”[23] Ancient Israelite prophets foretold that many Israelites would be scattered (if not destroyed) owing to covenant violations, but that Jehovah would reconstitute his covenant people by means of a faithful future remnant.

The Hebrew word goy (���Dz�î�� in the plural) designates “people” or “nations,” is often used in the Bible to represent non-Israelite peoples/nations, and is often translated “Gentiles” in the KJV.[24] However, this situation is more complex than this simple narration suggests since Latter-day Saints understand that scattered remnants of Israelites are living in so-called “Gentile” nations, so “Gentiles may include those who are of the blood of Israel but who have lost their identity and been assimilated” into other nations.[25] This extra dimension of the terms Israel and Gentile is helpful to remember regarding the passages discussed below.

In Micah 5:7–8, the words of Jehovah (“the Lord”) identify “the remnant of Jacob” in the third person, and in the second person in verse 9 (“thine”). According to verse 7, which does not appear in 3 Nephi, this future remnant of Jacob/Israel will be “in the midst of many people as a dew.”[26] Whether that means Israelites would be surrounded in the land of Israel or whether this remnant would be scattered abroad, or both, is not clear from this passage,[27] but eventually, with Jehovah’s help, this remnant would triumph over all its enemies as a powerful lion (see vv. 8–9; lion imagery discussed below). Since Israelites in the kingdom of Judah were Micah’s original audience, and since “Beth-lehem” is mentioned in verse 2 and the “land of Assyria” in verse 6, Micah’s audience would have most likely understood this “remnant of Jacob” to be Israelite descendants in the land of Israel and the Middle East, no matter how broadly Jehovah may have intended it.

Shifting from Micah 5:8–9 to 3 Nephi 20:16, Jesus specifically addresses his audience as “ye” (three times) and as a portion of the “house of Jacob”—“a remnant”—who will be “as a lion” among the Gentiles. This second-person, direct-speech address continues into verse 17 with thy and thine. Since Gentiles are identified in verse 15, the pronoun them in verse 16 (three times) refers to Gentiles, and in this context indicates more specifically Gentiles in the Americas. Not surprisingly, Jesus “likens” Micah 5:8 to the Israelite remnant in the Americas since he is speaking to an Israelite audience in the Americas (for likening, see 2 Nephi 6:5; 11:2). Therefore, Jesus’s comments are presented not as a correction of Micah’s words but rather as a focused application of Micah 5:8–9 to a different remnant of the greater “house of Jacob,” the family of Israel. This type of application of earlier prophets’ teachings to other situations occurs many times in the scriptures and among latter-day prophets.[28]

The multifaceted concept of a future remnant of Israel—descendants of various groups of ancient Israelites who survived Jehovah’s collective judgments against them—is well attested in the Old Testament (and in the New too), especially in prophetic texts, where it “functions within the theological framework of judgment and salvation.”[29] Prophecies of a future Jerusalem-focused remnant, gathered and redeemed, underlie much of the content in Micah 4–5, and the word remnant itself occurs in Micah 2:12; 4:7; 5:3, 7, 8; and 7:18. Furthermore, this remnant concept features prominently in the Book of Mormon, where the word remnant occurs over fifty times, including twice on the title page. Thus, the notion of a remnant in Micah 5:7–9 is utilized by Jesus in 3 Nephi 20:15–17 to explain and broaden the remnant doctrine in the Book of Mormon (passages from the book of Isaiah are also used to this end).

The lion imagery in Micah 5:8 was something many Israelites would understand, since the “Asiatic lion . . . was once common throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.”[30] Lions were a popular royal image among Israelites and other ancient Near Eastern people owing to lions’ power, strength, majesty, and danger.[31] The Hebrew Bible joins its contemporary ancient Near Eastern texts and artwork by employing lions “as a negative image for the enemy, threat to order, or wicked; [and also] as a positive image for the monarch/mighty one, or victor; or as an image for the gods and/or goddesses.”[32] In addition to sometimes mentioning actual lions, many biblical passages employ lion imagery, especially in prophetic and wisdom literature.[33] Lion imagery is figuratively associated with Jehovah himself in a number of these passages.[34] And some biblical passages attribute to Jehovah the use of real lions to execute his punishment on people (e.g., 1 Kings 13:24–26; 2 Kings 17:25–26).

This latter aspect comes full circle in Micah 5:8, which presents a future Israelite remnant acting “as a lion.” In the poetic parallelism in this verse, a lion // young lion preys on both wild beasts and domesticated animals, signifying that the lion should be feared by every creature. And as has been observed, “in the Hebrew Bible, the most frequently mentioned victims or potential victims of the lion are human beings.”[35]

Regarding a lion “tread[ing] down” (Micah 5:8), the Hebrew verb in this verse is derived from the lexical root r-m-s, “to trample” or “to crush with one’s feet.”[36] The Bible recounts cases of people as well as horses trampling other people to death (e.g., 2 Kings 7:17, 20; 9:33). And in Isaiah 63:3 the same verb is used in reference to the Lord, whom Isaiah represents as saying, “I . . . will trample them [his enemies] in my fury,” as a person would tread on grapes. Thus, Micah 5:8 portrays a powerful, energetic (young) lion tromping or treading on its prey as it subdues it, “and none can deliver.”

Similar treading imagery, minus a lion, occurs in the Book of Mormon before 3 Nephi. For example, people and crops are trodden under foot, usually by other people (e.g., Alma 3:2; 30:59), including treading on conquered enemies (e.g., Helaman 4:20).[37] Especially significant are the passages in which people are accused of figuratively trampling Jehovah and his laws under their feet (see, e.g., 1 Nephi 19:7; Alma 5:53; 60:33).[38]

The lion depicted in Micah 5:8 not only treads on but also “teareth in pieces,” a graphic expression that is fairly common in the Old Testament.[39] Forms of the lexical root ṭ-��-��, “to tear,” occur about twenty-two times in the Hebrew Bible.[40] These are associated with various subjects that do the tearing. Especially in prophetic texts, wild animals, including wolves and lions, are depicted as agents of Jehovah “tearing” or “mauling” people as a consequence of their sinfulness.[41] Thus, the destructive power of lions, both in treading on and tearing to pieces, is utilized in biblical prophetic literature, including Micah 5:8, to communicate divine judgment.

Conversely, the Book of Mormon contains only five occurrences of forms of the word tear (meaning “to rip or shred”), one in a quotation from Isaiah and three in quotations from Micah.[42] However, the Nephite survivors with whom Jesus visited in the Americas presumably understood this use of lion imagery, given the variety of wild cats in the Americas. Thus, Jesus’s statement to them that “ye shall be among them [Gentiles] as a lion, who, if he goeth through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver” (3 Nephi 20:16), would have been a powerful image for them, too.[43]

Two further points relating to Jesus’s use of Micah 5:8–9 are instructive. First, the combination of lion imagery followed by Micah 5:9 // 3 Nephi 20:17—“Thy hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off”—serves to emphasize that the Israelite remnant is envisioned as an active agent having Jehovah’s authorization and power and enacting Jehovah’s justice upon unrepentant Gentiles. In biblical prophetic books, “the term ‘cut off’ or ‘destroy’ (krt hiphil) is a common expression of divine judgment.”[44]

Second, the word then, at the beginning of 3 Nephi 20:16, has no exact counterpart in Micah 5:8. Here it is part of a conditional clause, the first portion of which is in verse 15, a verse that is not in Micah. Jesus makes clear that “if” the Gentiles do not repent, “then shall ye, who are a remnant of the house of Jacob,” tread on and tear them as a lion would. The possibility of future Gentiles repenting and joining remnants of Jehovah’s covenant people is a significant doctrine taught multiple times in 3 Nephi, including here in verses 15–16, but also much earlier in the Book of Mormon (e.g., 2 Nephi 30:2). The rest of Micah 5:8–9, other than a few minor grammatical differences, is similarly presented in 3 Nephi 20:16–17.

3 Nephi 20—Micah 4:12–13

In 3 Nephi 20, Micah 4:12–13 follows immediately after the occurrence of Micah 5:8–9. This obviously alters the order of these passages as found in the book of Micah but has the effect of highlighting, through additional animal imagery, the prophesied impact of future Israelite remnants on unrepentant Gentiles. Additionally, 3 Nephi 20:18–21 contains several significant alterations and additions to Micah 4:12–13.

Contextually, Micah 4:1–5 contains prophecies of a future day (from Micah’s perspective) in which Jerusalem and the Lord’s temple would be a center of widespread peace and righteousness and Jehovah, having gathered scattered Israelites, would “reign [as king] over them in mount Zion” forever (v. 7). This view of an eventual ideal state undergirds the rest of Micah 4–5. But also, current (for Micah), near-future, and more distant future events mentioned in these chapters seem mingled together and have been interpreted differently by various commentators.[45]

In this context, Micah 4:12–13 employs agricultural imagery to foretell Jehovah’s gathering of Israel’s enemies—“many nations [���Dz�î��]” (v. 11), like “sheaves into the [threshing] floor” (v. 12)—at which point the Israelites are commanded by Jehovah to “arise and thresh” (v. 13) the nations that have assembled against them.[46] The imagery of hooves in verse 13 that “beat in pieces” or crush depicts a powerful ox threshing grain, which has already been gathered to the threshing floor, by treading on it.[47] The “horn” signifies the power and danger of an ox that can gore someone.[48] The hope of a role reversal is plainly evident: Jerusalem/Zion, which has been at the mercy of its enemies for so long, will eventually, with Jehovah’s power, triumph over and destroy them all.

As with the lion in Micah 5:8, this imagery of a threshing ox in Micah 4:13 is also violent. The Hebrew verb translated “consecrate” in verse 13, from the lexical root ḥ-��-��, is now often translated “devote,” as in devoting something to the Lord by destroying it.[49] This same lexical root is used in the narrative of the Israelite destruction of Jericho and its inhabitants (see Joshua 6:18, 21; compare 1 Samuel 15:8–9, 15, 18, 20). Thus, here in Micah 4:12–13 “war is pictured as harvest, and harvest is used as a figure of judgment.”[50] This war harvest stands in sharp contrast to the ideal age described in Micah 4:1–5, when nations will flow to the temple in Jerusalem and peace will prevail.[51] That ideal condition presumably postdates the eschatological depiction of Israelites treading on and threshing the nations, metaphorically depicted in Micah 4:12–13.

Because threshing grain was a commonplace in the ancient Near Eastern world of the Israelites, Jehovah and his prophets could effectively employ this imagery as both a symbol of abundance (e.g., Joel 2:24) and a symbol of violence and judgment (e.g., Amos 1:3–4; Habakkuk 3:12; Jeremiah 51:33). Thus, Micah 4:13 employs the imagery of an ox threshing grain to depict Jerusalem eventually threshing, or “beat[ing] in pieces,” those who will gather against it.[52] Even though oxen were often utilized for domestic agricultural activity, their size and strength served as potent reminders of their potentially destructive capabilities.

Regarding the understanding of this imagery by Jesus’s audience in 3 Nephi 20, Nephi reports that his family found “the cow and the ox,” among other animals, when they arrived in the Americas centuries earlier (1 Nephi 18:25), and grain is mentioned multiple times in the Book of Mormon (e.g., Mosiah 21:16; Alma 1:29; 3 Nephi 3:22). So whether “ox” and “grain” in 3 Nephi 20 are exact corollaries to the imagery in Micah or not, Jesus’s audience likely understood the imagery of an animal of some sort treading on grain to thresh it, assuming they processed the grain they grew for consumption.[53]

Although Micah 4:12 refers to Jehovah in the third person (“the Lord . . . he”) gathering future “nations” (���Dz�î��; 4:11) who will be arrayed against Israel “as the sheaves into the [threshing] floor,” Jesus, in speaking personally to his audience in 3 Nephi 20:18, refers to himself and his people in the first person (“I” and “my people”).

A more significant difference here is that Micah 4:12 refers to “the nations [���Dz�î��; 4:11]” being gathered for destruction, but in 3 Nephi 20:18 the object of gather is “my people,” which could be any Israelite descendants, including those of Jesus’s audience. This alteration requires the addition of a simile in verse 18—“as a man gathereth his sheaves”—in order to maintain metaphoric continuity into the next verse, since in both Micah 4 and 3 Nephi 20 it is the unrepentant nations who will be threshed by the Israelites. Micah 4:12 presents a standard agricultural image: the Lord gathering sheaves (the nations) to a floor in order to thresh them. The reformulation in 3 Nephi 20 highlights the theme of the Lord gathering Israelites (a very prominent theme in Jesus’s remarks in 3 Nephi 20–21) who will then thresh their enemies.

Micah 4:13 presents Jehovah as commanding and empowering Jerusalem-area Israelites—the “daughter of Zion”—as the metaphoric ox that will “beat in pieces many peoples.”[54] Rather than the phrase “daughter of Zion,” Jesus uses the phase “my people” in 3 Nephi 20:19 (and also in vv. 18 and 21), which can be construed broadly as any Israelite remnant, including descendants of the people in the Americas to whom he is speaking. While it first seems he is focusing on the remnant in the Americas, his concluding phrase in verse 21, “I will establish my people, O house of Israel,” suggests a more holistic Israelite perspective here.[55] Verses 22–28 certainly focus on an Israelite remnant in the Americas before Jesus focuses more specifically on a Jerusalem-area Israelite remnant in verses 29–48.[56]

Micah 4:13 also contains the phrase “the Lord,” which is used in English translations of the Old Testament as a substitute for the Hebrew yhwh, the divine name of the God of Israel. This name has traditionally been rendered in English as “Jehovah,” but is now more generally rendered as “Yahweh.”[57] It is represented in 3 Nephi 20:19 as “the Lord” instead of “the Lord.” Since this is the case with all passages from the Old Testament containing “the Lord” that are in the translated Book of Mormon, it is not possible to determine with any certainty what was on Mormon’s plates—Jesus’s own divine name, Yahweh, or the more generic title “Lord.”[58]

Lastly, 3 Nephi 20:20–21 has no counterpart in Micah 4. Verse 20 reiterates the point already made in verse 15 (also not in Micah) that it is unrepentant Gentiles who will be the target of the Israelite remnant(s)’ threshing. The rest of Micah 4:12–13, other than a few minor grammatical differences, is similarly presented in 3 Nephi 20:18–19.

Taken together, Jesus’s use of passages from Micah 4 and 5 in 3 Nephi 20 emphasizes the gathering of future remnants of Israelites and the retribution they will dispense to those who have rejected Jehovah and afflicted his people. This involves expected alterations for application to Jesus’s immediate Nephite audience (especially in his use of Micah 5:8–9) as well as changes that alter the sense of Micah, especially 4:12 (Jehovah gathering Gentiles so Israelites can thresh them) as reformulated in 3 Nephi 20:18 (Jehovah gathering Israelites so they can then thresh Gentiles). And there are also expansions in 3 Nephi 20 that generally correlate with the theme of the Micah passages but are not present in Micah passages utilized by Jesus (e.g., 3 Nephi 20:20).

3 Nephi 21—Micah 5:8–15

Following the identification in 3 Nephi 21:1–11 of the Book of Mormon as a sign of the latter-day work of God and of a servant who will help bring about God’s purposes at that future time, the emphasis returns to the Lord’s utilizing the Israelite remnant(s) to fight against future unrepentant Gentiles (see vv. 12–21). This involves the longest quotation from the book of Micah in the Book of Mormon. As illustrated in the following chart, Jesus repeats Micah 5:8–9 but continues with verses 10–15 as well.

Building on the comments made above about Micah 5:8–9, the phrase “the remnant of Jacob” in Micah 5:8 is expanded and somewhat altered in 3 Nephi 21:12 with the addition of “my people who are a remnant of Jacob.”[59] The phrase “my people” can refer generally to Jehovah’s covenant people anywhere at any time, so on the one hand it seems this is not specifically addressed to a remnant in the Americas; but on the other hand, Jesus alters “the remnant” in Micah 5:8 to “a remnant,” perhaps suggesting that in this case the remnant he has in mind are the descendants of the Nephite audience to whom he is speaking in the Americas. This latter option is supported by Jesus’s comments in verses 22–24.

The wording of the lion metaphor in Micah 5:8–9 is essentially repeated in 3 Nephi 21:12–13, but with an interesting reversal in grammatical person. Micah 5:8 begins in the indirect third person (“the remnant . . . if he go through”) and ends in verse 9 with direct second-person address to the remnant (thine, three times). However, 3 Nephi 21:12 begins with first-person speech (“my people”), then includes the third-person use of he as in Micah, but ends in verse 13 with indirect third-person address (their, three times), all in the service of referring to future Israelites. This latter change is necessary owing to Jesus’s use of “my people” to designate a future remnant in verse 13—“their hand” will be lifted against their adversaries.

Third Nephi 21:14 begins with a phrase not found in Micah 5—“Yea, wo be unto the Gentiles except they repent”—which serves to not only reiterate who Israel’s enemies are (v. 13) but also explicitly repeat the doctrinal option for these peoples to repent (already encountered above). If they do not repent, then what is prophesied in Micah 5:8–9 will come to pass. This reinforces Jesus’s additional words in 3 Nephi 20:20, where it says that “except they repent” the sword of his justice will fall on the Gentiles. Interestingly, this expansion at the beginning of 3 Nephi 21:14 complicates our understanding of what follows in 3 Nephi 21 compared to Micah 5.

It is easy to follow the plain flow of the passage from Micah 5:8–9 into verses 10–14, since the second-person thine in Micah 5:9 continues smoothly into the second-person thy in verses 10–14 without an intervening antecedent, and to understand, as many commentators do, that these latter verses foretell a “divine purge of Israel,”[60] through which Jehovah will eliminate those things in which ancient Israelites falsely trusted: military power, represented here by horses, chariots, and strong holds, and false gods, represented here by witchcrafts, graven images, and groves.[61] Micah 5:10–14 thus leads into the divine proclamation in verse 15 that Jehovah will (also) “execute [judgment and] vengeance” upon the “heathen [���Dz�î��],” meaning the non-Israelite nations, who do not repent.[62]

The situation in 3 Nephi 21:14–18 is more challenging. Given that Micah 5:10–14 appears to be directed at Israel and how Jehovah will purge them of reliance on powers of their own making, it is not clear what the antecedent of thy is in 3 Nephi 21:14–18. The expansion at the beginning of verse 14, “Yea, wo be unto the Gentiles,” could plausibly affect the rest of verse 14 and the verses that follow, such that it is the Gentile nations (Gentile being the grammatical antecedent for the repeated instances of thy), rather than the Israelite remnants, that Jehovah will purge from relying on military might and false gods. If so, then Jesus has shifted here to speaking directly to future Gentiles, not to remnants of Israel. However, if the antecedent of thy in verses 14–18 is “my people” in verse 12, who are the Israelites referenced as their in verse 13, then the expansion at the beginning of verse 14 (“Yea, wo be unto the Gentiles”) must be skirted to make this connection back to the Israelites.

Further complicating this matter, 3 Nephi 21:19–20 is another expansion that is not found in Micah 5. Verse 20 indicates that “whosoever will not repent and come unto my Beloved Son, them will I cut off from among my people, O house of Israel.” Jesus appears to be speaking to Israelites here, suggesting that his comments in verses 14–19 are also directed toward Israelites. This view is reinforced in verse 21: “I will execute vengeance and fury upon them, even as upon the heathen” (emphasis added). Here them must be those Israelites mentioned in verse 20 who do not repent and come to the Son, and the phrase “even as upon the heathen” reinforces that those mentioned in verse 20 who do not repent are unrepentant Israelites. So, not only does 3 Nephi 21:14 allow for Gentiles to repent but verses 14–21 warn future Israelites that if they do not repent, their fate will be like that of the unrepentant Gentiles. Although this reading seems to best capture the sense of Micah 5:8–15 as reformulated in 3 Nephi 21:12–21, it still does not remove the awkwardness introduced by the expansion at the beginning of 21:14.

There are two other alterations of note in this block of verses. First, Micah 5:10 reads, “it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord”; however, 3 Nephi 21:14 reads “saith the Father” in lieu of “the Lord” (Yahweh/Jehovah). This alteration is not particularly unexpected since it is analogous to numerous other examples in 3 Nephi in which Jesus references “the Father” by way of deference to the Father who gave Jehovah/Jesus direction to do or say certain things (e.g., 3 Nephi 15:13–20; 16:3–10; 23:1). Thus, “though the revelations came from the Son, yet in the ultimate sense the truths taught were those of the Father.”[63]

Secondly, Micah 5:12 reads, “And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand” (emphasis added; the Hebrew is �����). This is also the reading of this verse on the printer’s manuscript and in the 1830 and 1837 editions of the Book of Mormon. For some unknown reason, whether intentional or accidental, hand was changed to land in the 1840 edition—“I will cut off witchcrafts out of thy land” (emphasis added)—and has remained land ever since.[64] Although both words can make sense in this context, the change from hand in Micah 5:12 to land in 3 Nephi 21:16, from 1840 onward, is a “modern” transmission issue within the Book of Mormon, not an ancient text issue. Thus, this should not be viewed as a case of the Book of Mormon correcting biblical wording.

Third Nephi 21:19–20 is an expansion that has no counterpart in the book of Micah. Verse 19 continues the listing of sinful activity that will be “done away” in the future through God’s power. Verse 20 explicitly declares salvation is in Jesus Christ and, recalling 3 Nephi 20:15, 20, indicates that unrepentant individuals will be “cut off from among my people, O house of Israel,” explaining they will not be partakers of the blessings promised to the faithful.

Micah 5:15 is then paralleled by 3 Nephi 21:21 and at first appears to contain only minor alternations in wording. However, as noted above, the expansion in verse 21, “And I will execute vengeance and fury upon them, even as upon the heathen” (emphasis added), suggests that the verse is directed against unrepentant Israelite remnants, not just against the “heathen” or Gentile nations, as is the focus of Micah 5:15. Significantly, the reading in 3 Nephi 21:21 produces a doctrinal inclusiveness—Israelites and Gentiles, all of whom “will not repent and come unto my Beloved Son” (v. 10), will be judged and punished by God—that is not so explicitly evident in Micah 5:15, although Micah 5:10–14 appears to teach that God will purge the impurities from among Israelites and will do likewise among Gentiles (see v. 15).

Taken together, Jesus’s reformulation of Micah 5:8–15, as reported in 3 Nephi 21:12–21, displays expected application of the language and message to fit his audience, as well as some other alterations, the major one of which is the challenge of identifying the target group in 3 Nephi 21:14–18 (perhaps intentional ambiguity?). It should most likely be read as Israelites, as in Micah 5:10–14, but the lead-in in 3 Nephi 21:14 is awkward. And as also noted in conjunction with 3 Nephi 20, Jesus again provides thematically correlated expansions on the Micah passages, especially ones that emphasize his role as Son and Savior (see v. 20).

This analysis of Micah passages in Jesus’s second-day discourse, as reported in 3 Nephi 20–21, lays a foundation for examining the remaining examples of Micah passages in the Book of Mormon. These are found in 3 Nephi 16 and in Mormon 5.

3 Nephi 16—Micah 5:8

Between Jesus’s initial resurrected appearance in the Americas (3 Nephi 11) and the healings, blessings, and institution of the sacrament (chapters 17–18) later that day, he taught the Nephites assembled in Bountiful. His first-day discourse or teachings included a version of the so-called Sermon on the Mount (3 Nephi 12–14; compare Matthew 5–7), as well as further teachings dealing with the completion of the Mosaic dispensation, “other sheep” that this resurrected Shepherd was then visiting and would yet visit, and the future gathering and redemption of scattered Israel and believing Gentiles (3 Nephi 15–16). Wording from Micah 5:8 occurs in 3 Nephi 16:15 as part of Jesus’s teaching about future patterns of deliverance.

Because of the “unbelief” of many ancient Israelites, in the latter days God will first send the “truth” to the Gentiles (3 Nephi 16:5–7). “But wo, saith the Father, unto the unbelieving of the Gentiles” (v. 8), for they will lose the teachings and blessings of the Lord (see vv. 9–10). In this context, God will then gather Israelites and “bring [his] gospel unto them” (v. 11). If the Gentiles do repent, they will be “numbered among my people, O house of Israel,” and “my people” will not “go through among them, and tread them down” (vv. 13–14, drawing on language from Micah 5:8).

At this point in his remarks, Jesus, using language from Micah 5:8, affirms that future repentant Gentiles will not be “tread[ed] . . . down” (3 Nephi 16:14), but “my people, O house of Israel” will “go through” and “tread . . . down” the unbelieving Gentiles (v. 15). Micah 5:8 is the only verse in the KJV that contains both the phrases “go through” and “tread[eth] down.” And since Micah 5 involves future Israelites treading down unbelieving Gentiles, it is routinely accepted (rightly so) that Jesus here utilizes words from Micah 5:8, a passage, as discussed above, that he more fully employed in 3 Nephi 20–21.

But this is only a partial utilization of, or allusion to, Micah 5:8.[65] The lion imagery in that verse that Jesus does include in his second-day discourse (3 Nephi 20 and 21) is lacking here. The image of “my people, O house of Israel,” treading down unbelieving Gentiles still makes his point, but does not convey quite the same graphic force.

Other alterations in 3 Nephi 16:13–15 have already been discussed in connection with Jesus’s use of Micah 5:8 in 3 Nephi 20 and 21, including his teaching that Gentiles who repent will not be destroyed (vv. 13–14), his use of the first-person “my people” in contrast to the third-person references to the Israelites in Micah, and “the remnant of Jacob” in Micah 5:8 represented by an augmented parallel name, “my people, O house of Israel,” in 3 Nephi 16:15.

Also of note is that the rest of 3 Nephi 16:15 includes language found in Matthew 5:13, which figuratively teaches that salt that has lost its savor is tossed out “to be trodden under foot.”[66] Jesus, at least implicitly here, draws together teachings that include the idea of treading on something from an Old Testament prophet, Micah (a lion treading on prey to destroy it), as well as from his own mortal ministry (people treading on salt because it is worthless).

Thus, Jesus’s use of wording from Micah 5:8 in 3 Nephi 16:14–15 appears as part of his preface, or summary introduction of sorts, to expanded teachings on the topics of the future gathering of Israel and relations between Gentiles and Israelite remnants, topics that he more fully develops in 3 Nephi 20–21.

Mormon 5—Micah 5:8

Lastly, Mormon includes wording from Micah 5:8 in comments that are analogous to, or at least reflect, what Jesus taught in 3 Nephi 20–21. Mormon 5:8–24 presents a soliloquy of sorts in which Mormon pauses from recounting the horrors of the Nephites’ destruction and speaks to future readers, both Gentiles and Israelite descendants.

As Mormon states in Mormon 5:12–19, the Book of Mormon record will eventually come forth via the Gentiles to “the remnant of the house of Jacob,” which includes “the unbelieving of the Jews” to help them believe in Jesus Christ and to “restor[e] the Jews, or all the house of Israel” to their land, as well as helping “the seed of this people” to “more fully believe his gospel” (vv. 12–15). According to Mormon, after the Gentiles have scattered and driven the Israelite remnant(s), “then will the Lord remember the covenant which he made . . . unto all the house of Israel” (v. 20). If the Gentiles do not repent and appropriately accept God in that future day, then the figurative lion will come and tear them to pieces (see vv. 21–24).

As opposed to the third-person descriptive presentation about Israelites in Micah 5:8 (they, Israelites, will tear them, Gentiles), and to Jesus’s second-person, direct-speech presentation to future Israelites in 3 Nephi 20 (you, Israelites, will tear them, Gentiles), Mormon’s statement in 5:22–24 is addressed to future Gentiles in second-person direct speech (“ye,” “you” will be torn by them, Israelites). The poetic parallelism of lion and young lion in Micah 5:8 is missing in this adapted quotation in Mormon 5:24, but the constellation of terms, including a lion tearing its adversary to pieces with “none to deliver,” points clearly to the language of Micah 5:8.[67]

This statement is rhetorically potent: Mormon not only intensely expresses encouragement but pleads with future Gentiles to “wake up” and repent. His statement at the beginning of verse 24, which is not in Micah 5:8, also has a conditional basis: “repent . . . lest . . .” Actually, two clauses begin with lest—one is lest God does something to bring “justice,” and the other is “lest a remnant of the seed of Jacob” does something. The parallel construction suggests that this “remnant” will be the agent of God’s “justice.” Finally, this pronouncement is about “a remnant,” which seems to primarily allude in this context to an Israelite remnant in the Americas, although it certainly can refer to all Israelite remnants.[68]

Thus, rather than Micah 5:8 serving to give hope to Israelite remnants that eventually they would triumph over their enemies, as Micah 5:8 is used in 3 Nephi 16, 20, and 21, Mormon’s use of this passage reformulates it into a warning to unbelieving Gentiles: “beware of what is coming if you do not repent.” Mormon, following Jesus, appears to have found the language of Micah 5:8 pointed and powerful in its ability to communicate what he understood would happen regarding the reversal of fortune of the remnants of Israel in the last days.

Wrapping Up

This study has reviewed the few verses from the biblical book of Micah that appear in the Book of Mormon, especially as found in Jesus’s teachings in 3 Nephi 20–21, and has sought to assess their imagery, role, and value in that volume. By way of summarizing the results of this review, prominent concepts discussed above are included in the following items.

First, from the text charts and observations above it is obvious that Jesus did not just quote Micah passages in his remarks. True, he incorporated biblical materials into his discourses to his audience in 3 Nephi.[69] But he manipulated and reformulated those biblical texts through revision, expansion, and application as he incorporated their key points and terms into a new context to convey a particular message to his audience. The overall point and purpose of the Micah passages did not change, but these alterations produced some new readings. Thus, in his discourses in 3 Nephi, Jesus used older scriptures, passages from Micah (and also Isaiah), and gave them an inspired twist.[70] This use of scripture is observable elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. These variations from the biblical text suggest (at least to me) that Jesus considered the actual text flexible (although not fluid), that it could be altered to fit the circumstances of his discourses while still maintaining its ancient prophetic connection.[71]

Second, growing out of the preceding point, Micah 5:8, the most oft-repeated verse from Micah, receives a somewhat different reformulation each time it appears in the Book of Mormon, although Jesus’s three uses of this verse are admittedly somewhat similar. Thus, Jesus employed wording from Micah 5:8 in 3 Nephi 16:15 but omitted mention of the lion. Furthermore, only in 3 Nephi 20:16 did he include Micah 5:8 in a conditional expression and explicitly personalize the lion imagery to his American audience, as a branch of the house of Israel, with the addition of ye (three times). And Mormon “speaks” the wording of Micah 5:8 to Gentiles in Mormon 5:24, rather than to Israelites as it occurs in Micah and in 3 Nephi. This demonstrates that the use of Micah 5:8 was not just a cut-and-paste affair, but that the text of that verse was modified in each context to most effectively support and convey the speaker’s message. Thus, Jesus and Mormon adapted the text of Micah to fit their audiences, to make their points with impact and clarity, while still connecting with what the previous prophet had said.

Third, Jehovah’s gathering of the scattered Israelite remnants has a prominent role in several prophetic books in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon. Not surprisingly, both Micah passages that appear in the Book of Mormon, Micah 4:12–13 and 5:8–15, are part of Micah’s prophecies about Jehovah’s deliverance of Israelite remnants. Also, they involve those remnants in executing just judgments against those who fought against his people.

The ox and the lion imagery in these verses from Micah, most likely used for their familiar yet powerful physical symbolism, functions to communicate uncontestable power and inevitability. Such will be Jehovah’s gathering and deliverance of Israelite remnants and the defeat of his/their enemies. These animal images were thus well suited for inclusion in teachings about future Israelite remnants and their longed-for reversal of fortune (see Addenda 1 and 2, below, for more on the nature of this imagery and the timing of the prophesied fulfillment).

Fourth, Jesus’s adaptation of Micah’s prophecies regularly clarified and emphasized that repentant Gentiles, those who faithfully embraced his Sonship and his proffered covenant, would be saved along with the righteous Israelite remnants. This important doctrinal dimension is less developed and clear in Micah 4–5.

Fifth, as mentioned above, Micah’s name does not occur in the Book of Mormon. Jesus cites specific verses from the book of Micah without attribution. Latter-day Saint authors have proposed various explanations for this situation, but a review of these would be too lengthy for the main body of this study (see, however, “Addendum 3” to this study).

Here it is sufficient to understand that in an important sense the lack of Micah’s name in the Book of Mormon is a nonissue. In 3 Nephi, Jesus appeared to the Nephites as the resurrected Redeemer, the Son of God, and God the Son. For his audience, and for future readers of the Book of Mormon, his use of any prior prophet’s words imbued them with supreme authority. So whether Micah’s name was known or whether his writings were previously available to the Nephites is not particularly relevant in assessing the power of Micah’s words, especially in the context of Jesus’s second-day discourse. The focus of those words and the force of that imagery were confirmed and made new by Jesus’s expansive use of them.

In conclusion, the Book of Mormon includes two passages from the biblical book of Micah, both of which involve animal imagery, that serve to emphasize the future divine deliverance of latter-day remnants of Jehovah’s covenant people and the consequences experienced by the rebellious and unrepentant. In his use of these verses from Micah, Jesus explicitly extended to the remnant of the branch of Israel in the Americas (as well as to repentant Gentiles) the promise of gathering to him and to his covenant family. The lack of Micah’s name in the Book of Mormon in no way diminishes the dramatic power of these biblical texts to convey Jesus’s impending plans for all people, both those who come unto him in faith and obedience and those who do not.

ADDENDUM 1: Graphic Imagery—Literal or Figurative?

The graphically striking imagery of both an ox, with horns to gore and hooves to tread on and thus thresh grain, and a lion trampling on and tearing to pieces its prey occurring in Micah and 3 Nephi forcefully serves to teach what future Israelite remnants would successfully do to their enemies, with Jehovah’s help. But is this language meant to be taken literally, or does it play a figurative role in prophesying something other than war and carnage? Will future Israelites really be going among unrepentant Gentiles as well-armed paramilitary forces killing and maiming all who resist them?[72] Or is this figurative language intended to convey spiritual concepts rather than martial ones? Or some of each? Since this particular question is not the focus of this study, and since much more can be written about this topic than space allows, the following brief comments in this addendum are intended as introductory observations only.

As much as this violent language may disturb modern readers of the scriptures, it is clearly prevalent in ancient times and texts. Life for most ancient people was harder and more violent than what many people in the world today experience (although there are, sadly, many exceptions to this even today). Compare, for example, this statement in Isaiah 49:26: “And I will feed them that oppress thee [Israelites] with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour.” In fact, Isaiah 49:24–26 is another reversal-of-fortune passage and is conceptually similar to portions of Micah 4–5. Thus, Micah 4:12–13 and 5:8–15 function in 3 Nephi as a second witness of sorts to teachings from the book of Isaiah that appear elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 21:26; 2 Nephi 6:18).

Given their historical and social contexts, it is likely that Micah’s audience (in the kingdom of Judah around 700 BC) and Jesus’s audience (in the Americas shortly after his resurrection) would have generally considered this imagery in martial terms. After all, the Israelite scripture tradition contains accounts of Israelites participating as agents of Jehovah in the destruction of Jericho as well as other cities and people (see, e.g., Joshua 6; 1 Nephi 17:32–33; 1 Samuel 15:8–9).[73]

Modern readers, however, are more likely to view the imagery in Micah 4:13 and 5:8 as symbolic of spiritual realities, in harmony with the imagery of scriptures such as those that depict Jehovah’s/Jesus’s word as a “two-edged sword.”[74] Leslie Allen, for example, recognizes the language of “war” in Micah 5:8–9, but as a Christian he explains this as akin to one donning the “armour of God” to contend “against spiritual wickedness” by using the “gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:10–17).[75]

In a related vein, consider the language of Doctrine and Covenants 35:13–14, which seems to draw at least in part on Micah 4:12–13 and 3 Nephi 20:18–20: “I call upon the weak things of the world . . . to thresh the nations by the power of my Spirit; and their arm shall be my arm, and I will be their shield and their buckler; and I will gird up their loins, and they shall fight manfully for me; and their enemies shall be under their feet; and I will let fall the sword in their behalf.” Commenting on Doctrine and Covenants 35:13, Stephen E. Robinson and H. Dean Garrett write, “The testimony of such as these [ones who are weak by the world’s standards] will thresh the nations—it will cut through all arrogance, pretense, and deception like a threshing machine to separate the grain that is gathered from the stubble and chaff that is left behind to be burned” (emphasis added).[76] Although they do not mention Micah 4:12–13, the connection of threshing with that passage is clearly correlated. The qualifying phrase in Doctrine and Covenants 35:13, “thresh the nations by the power of my Spirit,” suggests a more spiritual and less martial undertaking, despite the military language in verse 14. Both of these two commentaries (Allen, Robinson and Garrett) present the fulfillment of Micah 4:13 and 5:8 as occurring in the last days through the preaching of the gospel.

Similarly, the language of 1 Nephi 22:8 may be germane here. Nephi teaches that “after our seed is scattered the Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles, which shall be of great worth unto our seed; wherefore, it is likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms and upon their shoulders.” If the spiritual blessings, the “marvelous work,” extended to the remnant of Israelites in the Americas through the Gentiles can be viewed as feeding and carrying them, then perhaps the depiction of Israelite remnants threshing, treading, and tearing unrepentant Gentiles is likewise a figurative expression of spiritual truths (compare Doctrine and Covenants 122:4). So perhaps this imagery in Micah of a horned ox threshing and of a lion trampling and tearing is intended to function in a way corollary to language explained in Doctrine and Covenants 19:5–12, being “more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts” of people (v. 7).

Taking a different slant, Bruce R. McConkie has asserted that the imagery in Micah 5:8–9 portrays “the desolations and ultimate burning that shall destroy the wicked at the Second Coming. . . . [I]t will be as though the remnant of Israel overthrew their enemies as a young lion among the flocks of sheep” (emphasis added).[77] Similarly, Brant Gardner has stated—regarding the content of 3 Nephi 16:14–15, which draws on Micah 5:8—that “these destructions are symbolic”; they “are not predicting a future uprising of Jews against Gentiles, but rather the Triumphant Messiah’s final coming.”[78] Other Latter-day Saint commentators have claimed that the ox imagery in Micah 4:13, quoted in 3 Nephi 20:19, represents “the power of Christ and his destroying angels to cleanse the earth of all . . . �ɾ�������Ա����.”[79] However, such interpretations remove the Israelites as active agents from the prophetic equation, which alters the texts as we have them by presenting Jesus and his angels as the ones doing the destroying (similar to accounts in Genesis 6–8, 3 Nephi 8–9, and Doctrine and Covenants 88:81–91), rather than Israelites, metaphorically depicted as an ox and a lion.

Clearly, the inherent, lingering ambiguity of how this prophecy will be fulfilled produces fascination and differing interpretations. But none of the approaches just mentioned mitigate the divine justice expressed in these passages. As Daniel Simundson has articulated, “A God who is never angry would be a God who has no compassion and empathy for those who suffer at the hands of others. God’s anger is the other side of God’s love and concern. To be in relationship with a God who truly cares about people and what they do means running the risk that God may sometimes be angry. The good news is that anger is never the last word.”[80]

ADDENDUM 2: When Will These Things Happen?

A perennial question that arises in connection with the previous point is when these prophecies in Micah 4–5, 3 Nephi 16, 20–21, and Mormon 5 will be fulfilled. Micah prophesies a future day in which Jerusalem and the Lord’s temple will be a center of widespread peace and righteousness, with others coming peacefully to it and with Jehovah reigning over his gathered people (see Micah 4:1–8). These events have not fully occurred yet and thus are usually understood by most Latter-day Saints as millennial conditions. However, a careful reading of the rest of Micah 4 and the first few verses of Micah 5 suggests that then-current, near-future, and distant-future situations may be represented, allowing for some aspects of these prophecies to already be fulfilled or to be fulfilled more than once.[81] The two passages quoted in the Book of Mormon, Micah 4:12–13 and 5:8–15, are generally considered as not completely fulfilled yet.

Among those commentators venturing a suggestion on the time of fulfillment, Bruce Waltke, in the Christian-oriented New Bible Commentary, has stated regarding Micah 5:8–9 that “its time of fulfilment [is] after the coming of the Messiah” (emphasis added).[82] Similarly, in addition to Bruce McConkie’s statement that Micah 5:8–9 refers to the destruction of “the wicked at the Second Coming [of Christ],” he also stated that the passage “I will gather my people together as a man gathereth his sheaves into the floor” (3 Nephi 20:18, a reformulated version of Micah 4:13) signifies “the great gathering destined to occur after our Lord’s return. . . . The Millennium is Israel’s day.”[83]

Whether one interprets the timing of the ultimate fulfillment of these prophecies as the last days, the early Millennium, or both, the ideal conditions and the complete reversal of Israel’s fortunes prophesied in the specific passages of Micah 4–5 and reiterated by Jesus in 3 Nephi have yet to be completely fulfilled.

ADDENDUM 3: Why Is Micah’s Name Not Mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and Does It Matter?

First, as already mentioned above, we are entirely dependent on Mormon’s abridged account of Jesus’s teachings in 3 Nephi to answer all questions about what was said or done during those visits from the resurrected Savior (see 3 Nephi 26:6–8). This means we are ignorant about anything that did not make it into our translated form of Mormon’s record, including whether Jesus actually mentioned the name of Micah in his discourses but it was not recorded by Nephi, or whether Mormon had access to Micah’s name in Nephi’s record but did not include it, or whether Jesus never did include Micah’s name in his comments. Given the economy of Mormon’s report of Jesus’s discourses, we simply cannot tell if Jesus ever actually mentioned Micah’s name. All we can say for sure is that it did not make it into Joseph Smith’s translation of Mormon’s abridgment of Nephi’s report of Jesus’s discourses.

Secondly, Book of Mormon readers are somewhat conditioned to expect Micah’s name to appear in 3 Nephi, since the names of prophets such as Isaiah, Zenos, and Zenock are mentioned in connection with quotations of their writings in various parts of the Book of Mormon. Jesus even minimally identified Malachi when he quoted Malachi 3–4 to the Nephites at Bountiful, now found in 3 Nephi 24–25.[84]

However, two considerations undercut this expectation of readers. The first of these is that, as with the other prophetic figures from the Old World whose teachings are referenced in the Book of Mormon, the preserved prophetic words (meaning the contents of the messages) were more important to Book of Mormon authors and redactors than were the actual prophets and their original historical contexts. And the second is that, in reality, very few of the prophets and other major figures in the Old Testament as we have it are even mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon. And other than Isaiah, very few of the words of canonical Old Testament prophets or books are quoted or even alluded to in the Book of Mormon.

Illustrating this latter point, the prophet Jeremiah’s name occurs only five times in the Book of Mormon (three times in one verse), with no quotations from the book of Jeremiah, despite the real plausibility that Lehi knew, or at least was aware of, Jeremiah before the Lehites left Jerusalem for the Americas, and despite Nephi’s report that “many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” were on the brass plates (1 Nephi 5:13).[85] Furthermore, none of the names of the twelve so-called minor prophets in the Old Testament—Hosea through Malachi—are mentioned in the Book of Mormon, with the sole exception of Malachi, whose name is cited by Jesus in 3 Nephi 24:1 when he gave the Nephites the words we know as Malachi 3–4. Viewed from this perspective, we would not expect Micah’s name to appear in the Book of Mormon, except that passages from his writings are quoted by Jesus.

On the other hand, the name Moses occurs eight times in 3 Nephi 15–28, which is a small but significant subset of the more than sixty times the name Moses occurs in the Book of Mormon as a whole. So there is no surprise that in 3 Nephi 20:23 and 21:11 Jesus mentions Moses’s name in connection with something Moses “said” in Deuteronomy 18.

Similarly, the name Abraham occurs over two dozen times in the Book of Mormon owing to the significance of the covenant relationship that Jehovah initiated with Sarah and him. So, again, it is not surprising that Jesus mentioned the name Abraham in 3 Nephi 20:25, 27 when emphasizing the Nephites’ covenant ancestry by referencing Genesis 12:3. And the name Isaiah occurs over a dozen times in the Book of Mormon, and Isaiah’s writings, especially what became chapters 48–52, were a powerful source of orientation in the Nephite scriptural tradition.[86] So it is not surprising that during his second-day discourse Jesus mentions the name Isaiah and quotes from his writings. The significance of the experiences or writings of these three biblical figures is amply illustrated in the Book of Mormon.

This, however, is not the case with Micah. His writings are not referenced in the Book of Mormon before Jesus’s first-day appearance to the Nephites at Bountiful, reported in 3 Nephi 11–18. Given the absence of Micah’s name or prophecies before 3 Nephi 16, it is not surprising that Jesus did not mention his name when using words from his book, whether the Nephites already had access to Micah’s prophetic pronouncements or not (see below). Micah does not appear to have been a significant enough biblical figure to mention by name in Jesus’s discourses. The perceived lack of significance of naming Micah in Jesus’s discourse is supported by Mormon’s lack of citation of Micah’s name in Mormon 5:24, although he does mention Abraham in Mormon 5:20. Since Jesus and later Mormon did not reference the name Micah (as least in the record as we have it), this suggests that Mormon, in Mormon 5:24, was likely quoting Jesus’s quoting of Micah, not quoting Micah himself.

Questions about the lack of Micah’s name in 3 Nephi have often led to the question of whether Micah’s teachings were available to the Nephites on the brass plates. Many Latter-day Saint authors assume that the writings of Micah were on the brass plates brought from Jerusalem and were thus known to the Nephites of later generations, as was the case with the writings of Isaiah.[87] This position is based on the assumptions that the writings of Micah, who prophesied in Judah around 700 BC, were available to Israelites in Jerusalem by the late 600s BC in a form at least somewhat similar to how we have them and that these writings were copied onto the brass plates before the plates left Jerusalem with the Lehites.

This makes some sense. About 608 BC, officials in the kingdom of Judah referenced Micah, who lived and prophesied about a century earlier, when they spoke to Jerusalemites in defense of the prophet Jeremiah: “Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts . . .” (Jeremiah 26:18, based on Micah 3:12). So Micah and at least some of his writings were known to some people in Jerusalem around 600 BC. Nephi indicates that the brass plates “did contain the five books of Moses . . . ; and also the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” (1 Nephi 5:11–13). Although Nephi’s claim in 1 Nephi 5:13 that “the prophecies of the holy prophets” were on the brass plates does not prove the writings of Micah were on the plates, it is certainly suggestive of that.[88]

If the writings of Micah were on the brass plates, then Jesus in 3 Nephi may have been doing what others have done elsewhere in scripture by quoting an earlier text but not providing a citation, with the assumption that his audience already knew to what or whom he was referring. This is Brant Gardner’s perspective on why Jesus did not mention Micah by name.[89] Although it may have been possible for certain Nephite scribes or prophets to bring to mind Micah’s words if they were on the brass plates, it is doubtful to me that many lay Nephites would have known Micah’s teachings, if they were actually available, six centuries after the arrival of the Lehite group in the Americas, especially given the creation of their own Nephite scripture tradition that extensively built on the older scriptural tradition preserved on the brass plates.

Other writers have wondered, in light of Jesus’s use in 3 Nephi 20–21 of Micah in conjunction with Isaiah combined with the lack of attribution to Micah, if the words we have in the biblical book of Micah that are quoted in 3 Nephi originated with Isaiah or at least were also in the book of Isaiah at some point in antiquity. So, for example, Monte and Farres Nyman claimed it is “highly plausible” that wording from the book of Micah, especially Micah 4:13, “was probably originally in the book of Isaiah as well as in the book of Micah” since Jesus did not bother to distinguish them as Micah’s words.[90] This perspective is in part based on the fact that Micah 4:1–3 is very similar to Isaiah 2:2–4, so there is some precedent for a passage to appear in both of these biblical books.[91] Also, Daniel Belnap has suggested that Jesus’s discourse in 3 Nephi 20–21 “has the effect of incorporating the Micah material into the larger Isaianic block, which brings up an intriguing possibility that what is presumed to be Micah material was originally Isaianic.”[92] However, in my opinion, suggestions that these words that look like Micah’s were (also) originally in the book of Isaiah are more complicated and require more “what-ifs” than the standard assumption that Jesus used words from the book of Micah but did not reference Micah as the source.

Additionally, there is the possibility that the text of the book of Micah (or portions thereof) was not included on the brass plates. If this is the case, then questions arise about why Micah was not included, but of course none of these can be answered definitively.[93]

Obviously, all these suggestions are attempts to deal with the question of why Jesus did not mention Micah by name when citing these ancient prophetic words (again, according to the record as we have it). And just as obviously, we are not able to know for sure the answers to these questions. Whether or not the writings of Micah were or were not on the brass plates brought from Jerusalem, the lack of citing Micah has no real downside as far as the impact and effectiveness of Jesus’s discourse for the audience listening to him. The imagery employed by Micah, woven into the whole of Jesus’s teachings, conveyed Jesus’s points vividly and effectively.

On a related point, even Jesus’s use of the name and prophecies of Isaiah is interesting. He first mentioned Isaiah by name at the beginning of his remarks on his second-day visit, saying, “Ye remember that I spake unto you, and said that when the words of Isaiah should be fulfilled—behold they are written, ye have them before you, therefore search them” (3 Nephi 20:11). Then, after quoting various passages from Isaiah, including Isaiah 54 (in 3 Nephi 22), without any reference to Isaiah’s name, Jesus says in 3 Nephi 23:1, “I say unto you, that ye ought to search these things . . . ; for great are the words of Isaiah.” Thus, on the one hand, Jesus acknowledged that the Nephites had Isaiah’s writings that they could and should study. On the other hand, Jesus did not even specifically attribute various passages or even a whole chapter of Isaiah to Isaiah but let his general command to search Isaiah’s writings serve as sufficient citation. The Micah passages, like several from Isaiah’s writings, were part of a discourse whose content was delivered orally and whose rhetorical power took precedence over references to individuals such as Micah, with whom most Nephites were likely not very familiar, if at all.

A related question to consider is, Do we read the text any differently knowing Jesus is quoting from Micah? In other words, Jesus quoted passages from Micah to invoke their imagery and to make his theological point to the immediate Nephite recipients of his message, but his audience may not have even been aware of these passages via a historical process of textual transmission. If this was the case, Jesus’s lack of citation could be because connecting the name Micah with his words was not so explicitly relevant for the audience to whom Jesus was then speaking, but the connection with Micah may be viewed as relevant to future recipients of his discourse: the latter-day readers of 3 Nephi who would have the biblical book of Micah and know Jesus was quoting from that source. For latter-day readers of the Book of Mormon, Jesus’s use of Micah’s words serves not only their original purpose—powerful imagery about the gathering and the role of Israelite remnants against unbelieving Gentiles—but also serves as a reiterated second witness to the concepts preserved in the book of Micah.

This minor supporting role of several verses from Micah’s prophecies is different from the case with the biblical book of Isaiah, which Jesus and other Nephites did reference, since Isaiah’s prophecies played such a major role in shaping the Nephites’ understanding of who they were as a scattered branch of the house of Israel, in outlining the role their descendants would play as a latter-day remnant, and probably even influenced the overall purpose and organization of the Book of Mormon as we have it.[94]

I think it likely that at least some of the writings of Micah were on the brass plates brought from Jerusalem. But Micah was not a significant enough figure or set of writings, compared to his contemporary Isaiah, to warrant inclusion in the Book of Mormon by Nephite authors and redactors. Only certain top-tier biblical figures attained that honor. In the end, as noted above, the question of why Micah’s name is not cited in the Book of Mormon cannot presently be answered and in some ways is a nonissue. In 3 Nephi, Jesus appeared to the Nephites as the resurrected Redeemer. His use of any prior prophet’s words imbued them with an authority that surpassed their previous prophetic authority. Yes, a few major biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah are mentioned by name multiple times in the Book of Mormon, but most other biblical prophets are not. So whether the writings of Micah were on the brass plates and known to generations of the Nephite population, or were known only to the limited circle of Nephite prophets and scribes, or were not on the brass plates at all does not appear too relevant in the context of assessing their use and their power in Jesus’s post-Resurrection discourses in the Americas.[95]

Notes

[*] I express appreciation to the editors of this volume, the anonymous reviewers of my paper, and my wife, Jane Allis-Pike, for their feedback on previous drafts of this study. [Typesetter: This is an unnumbered note. Pls delete the asterisks here and in the first paragraph above.]

[1] For a convenient overview of the appearance of these names in the Book of Mormon, see the pertinent entries in Dennis L. Largey, ed., Book of Mormon Reference Companion (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003).

[2] Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011), 318.

[3] Other people, of course, take different views, across a spectrum of belief and unbelief, about claims regarding the origins of the Book of Mormon.

[4] Royal Skousen, Grammatical Variation, part 1 of The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, vol. 3 (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU Studies, 2016), 3. See also Skousen, The Nature of the Original Language, parts 3–4 in History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, for the evidence relating to nonstandard English, including Early Modern English (part 3) and the language of the KJV (part 4).

[5] Royal Skousen, “The Language of the Original Text of the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2018): 104. This article provides an accessible summary of Skousen’s claims about the influence of Early Modern English on the original translation of the Book of Mormon (see the previous note for further details). For more on the occurrence of KJV passages in the Book of Mormon, see Skousen, The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, part 5 of History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. See also Gardner, Gift and Power, 164, 192, 225, 302.

[6] See, e.g., Gardner, 192; Daniel L. Belnap, “The Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper, New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 143–44; and Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 5–6. For contextual background on this topic, see, e.g., Mark A. Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

[7] Quotations of biblical passages cited herein are from the KJV unless otherwise indicated. The other translations cited or referenced herein are the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989), the New English Translation, 2nd ed. (NET, 2019), and the English Standard Version (ESV, 2016), all as occurring in their current versions in Accordance Bible Software.

[8] This claim is based on a comparison of the 2013 text of the Book of Mormon (available at https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm) and the text as published in Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon, The Earliest Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). I am not here concerned about changes in punctuation and capitalization and the interchange of pronouns, such as which and who and thy and thine. See Skousen, King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, 411–13, 417–19, for the pertinent texts in Micah 4–5 that occur in 3 Nephi 20–2 (presented in parallel columns) as well as the charts included below in this study.

[9] The nature of the translation of the Book of Mormon is an interesting topic for which there is not adequate space in this study. On this topic, Gardner, in Gift and Power, provides extensive citations to others’ views besides detailing his own; see also Skousen, “Language of the Original Text of the Book of Mormon,” 107–8; and Royal Skousen, “The History of the Book of Mormon Text: Parts 5 and 6 of Volume 3 of the Critical Text,” BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2020): 107, 110. Furthermore, Ben Spackman, in “Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed,” Religious Educator 15, no. 1 (2014): 51–52, observes, “One’s view of the relationship between the KJV and the Book of Mormon will vary greatly based on how one understands the nature of the Book of Mormon translation and process. Several reputable LDS scholars come to differing conclusions, and the wise student will be aware of the range of opinions.” (See Spackman’s accompanying citations.)

[10] For overviews and discussion of Jesus’s discourses recounted in 3 Nephi, see, e.g., Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, 191–209; Victor L. Ludlow, “The Father’s Covenant People Sermon: 3 Nephi 20:10–23:5,” in Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture, ed. Andrew C. Skinner and Gaye Strathearn (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2012), 147–74; and John W. Welch, “3 Nephi 20–26,” John W. Welch Notes: Come Follow Me (Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central, 2020), 991–1001.

[11] Micah was from the town of Moresheth, probably Moresheth Gath, located about twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem (compare Micah 1:14). Since Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah are mentioned in Micah 1:1, and since Samaria is mentioned in addition to Judah, it is most likely that Micah’s prophetic ministry extended from about the 730s to the 690s BC, although certitude about actual dates is not possible.

[12] For summary comments regarding the authorship and redaction of the book of Micah, see, e.g., Marvin L. Chaney, “Micah, Book of,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 4:73–75; Carolyn J. Sharp, “Micah,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan, (New York: Oxford, 2011), 2:78–79; and Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Micah, A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2015).

[13] Sharp, “Micah,” 78. For basic information on Micah, his book, and his time period, see any reputable commentary, including Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976); and John Goldingay, ��Dz�����⾱������ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021).

[14] For a slightly different structural division than given here, see, e.g., Joseph M. Spencer, “The Prophet’s Remnant Theology,” in Prophets & Prophecies of the Old Testament, ed. Aaron P. Schade, Brian M. Hauglid, and Kerry Muhlestein (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), 213–17, as well as the citations he provides. Furthermore, not everyone divides the subunits within these larger units the same way. For similar but not identical approaches, see, e.g., Sharp, “Micah,” 80; Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1199; and Daniel J. Simundson, “The Book of Micah: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible—Old Testament and Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 7:539–40.

[15] Well-known passages in the book of Micah include 4:1–3 (compare Isaiah 2:2–4), 5:2 (used in reference to Jesus in Matthew 2:6), and 6:6–8, none of which occur in the Book of Mormon. Of course, Isaiah 2:2–4 // Micah 4:1–3 occurs in 2 Nephi 12:2–4, but there it is cited as coming from Isaiah, not Micah.

[16] Relatedly, Mormon claims that Jesus “did teach the people, for the space of three days; and after that he did show himself unto them oft” (3 Nephi 26:13), which further reinforces that notion that we are working with incomplete data.

[17] I agree with A. Keith Thompson, who in “The Brass Plates: Can Modern Scholarship Help Identify Their Contents?,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 45 (2021): 97n43, states that of the several “footnote references to Micah in the current [2013 edition of the] Book of Mormon . . . none of them are explicit references to words uttered by Micah.” He further suggests that the “thoughts” contained in these Book of Mormon verses that occur before 3 Nephi 16 could easily be attributable to other prophetic texts. I would add that they need not be specifically dependent on any other canonical passages but rather could represent common stock expressions in the Israelite religious tradition.

[18] Note that the versification in the Hebrew and English here is somewhat different. Micah 4:14 in the Hebrew Bible is 5:1 in English translations, so all the verses in Micah 5 differ by one verse between the Hebrew and English translations. All citations in this paper are to the English versification, unless otherwise noted.

Note also that 3 Nephi 16:15 footnote a reads: “Micah 5:8 (8–15); 3 Ne. 20:16; 21:12 (12–21); D&C 87:5.” And Doctrine and Covenants 87:5 footnote a reads: “Micah 5:8 (8–15); 3 Ne. 16:15 (7–15); 20:16 (15–21); 21:12 (12–21); D&C 109:65 (65–67). TG Israel, Remnant of.” However, Doctrine and Covenants 87:5 has no value for this study, and 109:65–67 is only broadly related to these Micah passages.

[19] As a sidenote, some have claimed that the occurrence of italicized words in the KJV attracted Joseph Smith’s attention, which often resulted in changes to or the removal of such words when he was translating biblical materials in the Book of Mormon or producing the Joseph Smith Translation. See, e.g., Gardner, Gift and Power, 212–18, and the additional citations he includes therein, as well as Skousen, King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, 19, 182–210. In the verses of the KJV book of Micah that appear in the Book of Mormon, only one word appears in italics: the word more in Micah 5:12. That word and the phrase in which it occurs in 3 Nephi 21:16 remain unchanged.

[20] Comments that mention what might be called the “whole house of Israel” thus refer to at least these three major branches of the family tree: (1) the descendants of Jesus’s audience in the Americas; (2) Israelite descendants who gather to and around the land of Israel, now often broadly designated “the Jews”; and (3) the descendants of the so-called lost tribes of Israel, portions of which were exiled from the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in about 720 BC, and others were likely deported from the kingdom of Judah by the Assyrians (701 BC) and later by the Babylonians (590s–580s BC).

[21] See Ludlow, “Father’s Covenant People Sermon,” 166, for his suggestion that the contents of 3 Nephi 20–21 form a chiasm, which accounts for the repeated elements in Jesus’s discourse. Ludlow’s paper is utilized for the discussion entitled “Why Did Jesus Mix Together Micah and Isaiah?,” October 21, 2016, https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/knowhy/why-did-jesus-mix-together-micah-and-isaiah.

[22] Although this is evident in reading Jesus’s teachings, this point is nicely made by Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, 205. Plus, see the summary statement in 3 Nephi 23:1–2.

[23] Kenneth D. Mulzac, “Remnant,” in Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 1117; see the full entry for an overview of the “remnant” concept in the Old Testament. The most common Hebrew words conveying the remnant idea are verbal and nominal forms of the lexical root š-’-��, but other Hebrew words are translated “remnant” as well. See, e.g., Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2000), s.vv. š-’-��, šĕ’ār (hereafter HALOT). For a convenient overview of the Old Testament concept of “remnant” and its implications for use in the Book of Mormon, see Spencer, “Prophet’s Remnant Theology,” 205–30.

[24] See, e.g., HALOT, s.v. “��ō��.”

[25] Monte S. Nyman, “Gentile(s),” in Largey, Book of Mormon Reference Companion, 286.

[26] Commentators have often understood the parallel references to “dew” and “showers” in Micah 5:7 to indicate that this Israelite remnant will be a blessing to those around them, just as seasonal dew and rain are such a blessing in the arid Middle East. See, e.g., Allen, Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, 353–54; Simundson, “Book of Micah,” 574; and Juan Cruz, “Who Is like Yahweh?”: A Study of Divine Metaphors in the Book of Micah (Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016), 69–70. See also D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew C. Skinner, Verse by Verse: The Book of Mormon, vol. 2, Alma 30 through Moroni 10 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 397, quoting D. Kelly Ogden, “The Book of Micah,” in Studies in Scripture, vol. 4, 1 Kings to Malachi, ed. Kent P. Jackson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1993), 73. This reading creates a contrast between Israelites depicted as a blessing for “many people” in verse 7 (dew and rain) and as a destructive force in verse 8 (lions), a contrast also found in Proverbs 19:12: “The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass.” However, a few commentators have read verse 7 as complementing the content of verses 8–9, understanding the dew imagery as having a negative connotation, the way it is employed in battle planning in 2 Samuel 17:12: “We will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground.” Read this way, the content of Micah 5:7 and 8 is parallel. For this approach, see, e.g., Delbert R. Hillers, Micah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Micah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 71; and Joseph M. Spencer, “Prophet’s Remnant Theology,” 216–17. I prefer the first option.

[27] See, e.g., NET Bible Notes, 2nd ed., Micah 5:7n36; and Simundson, “Book of Micah,” 574.

[28] See, e.g., the comments in Dana M. Pike, “Obadiah 1:21: Context, Text, Interpretation, and Application,” in Prophets and Prophecies of the Old Testament, ed. by Aaron Schade, Brian Hauglid, and Kerry Muhlestein (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), 70–72 and associated endnotes.

[29] Kenneth D. Mulzac, “Remnant,” 1117.

[30] Donald Fowler, “Lion,” in Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 811. For biblical support, see, e.g., David’s claim in 1 Samuel 17:34–37, as well as Judges 14:5, 8 and Daniel 6:7–27. See also the satirical portrait of a lazy person’s excuse-laden fear of lions in Proverbs 22:13 and 26:13, based no doubt on reality.

[31] For a brief summary of the imagery of lions in the Old Testament, including their use by royals, see, e.g., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III (Grand Rapids, MI: InterVarsity, 1998), s.v. “Lions.” For a full-scale treatment of lions and lion imagery, see Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Fribourg, Switzerland: Academic Press Fribourg, 2005).

[32] Strawn, What Is Stronger than a Lion?, 281.

[33] E.g., Job 4:10–11; Amos 5:19; Joel 1:6; Isaiah 5:29; Jeremiah 2:30; 4:7.

[34] E.g., Hosea 5:14; 11:10; 13:7–8; Amos 1:2; 3:8; Isaiah 31:4. See also Jesus referred to as a lion in Revelation 5:5. And in 1 Peter 5:8, the devil is compared to a lion.

[35] Strawn, What Is Stronger than a Lion?, 36.

[36] See, e.g., HALOT, s.v., “r-m-s.” Another use of this verb is to describe people tramping on clay to prepare it to make pottery and mudbricks (e.g., Isaiah 41:25; Nahum 3:14).

[37] Also, in the Isaiah passages that Nephi includes in his record, people tread on vineyards and people (e.g., 2 Nephi 15:5; 20:6), although those passages are biblically derived.

[38] I thank Don L. Brugger for his personal comments on this topic.

[39] By way of examples, lion and tear occur together in Deuteronomy 33:20, Psalm 7:2, Hosea 5:14, 13:8, Micah 5:8, and Nahum 2:12; and the phrase “as a lion” occurs in multiple verses, including Numbers 24:9, Psalm 10:9, 17:2, Isaiah 38:13, Hosea 5:14, 13:8, Micah 5:8, and Lamentations 3:10.

[40] See, e.g., HALOT, s.v. “ṭ-��-�� ��.”

[41] See, e.g., Hosea 5:14; Isaiah 5:29; Nahum 2:12; Ezekiel 19:3, 6; Psalms 7:2. Jeremiah 5:6 illustrates this prophetic usage of the imagery of animals tearing: “Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces [ṭ-��-��]: because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings are increased.”

[42] See 2 Nephi 15:25 (“torn”; parallel to Isaiah 5:25); Mosiah 29:22; 3 Nephi 20:16; 3 Nephi 21:12; Mormon 5:24.

[43] Interestingly, although a lion is not specifically mentioned in Mosiah 29:21–22, that passage exhibits the same combination of actions found in Micah 5:8, but in reverse order—tearing and trampling—in Mosiah₂’s claim that an “iniquitous king . . . teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God.” The lion imagery implied here enhances one’s understanding of an “iniquitous king” and his impact on his subjects.

[44] G. F. Hasel, “���������,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. by G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, trans. by David E. Green (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 7:346.

[45] For example, those commentators primarily approaching the pronouncement in Micah 4:11–13 from a historical perspective suggest that the “many nations” gathered against Israel (v. 11) were the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or other ancient powers.

[46] The power of this image is heightened by the fact that later biblical tradition places the Jerusalem temple built by Solomon at the site of a threshing floor north of David’s original city, on a spot where David built an altar and offered sacrifice (2 Samuel 24:16–25; 1 Chronicles 21:18–22:1).

[47] See, e.g., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, s.vv. “Ox” and “Threshing, Threshing Floor.” For brief feminist critical comments analyzing the connection of the female imagery of Jerusalem/the Daughter of Zion acting as a powerful male ox, see, e.g., Julia M. O’Brien, Micah (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 49–52.

[48] There are several passages in the Old Testament in which a wild ox is depicted as goring people, but the image here is more likely intended to depict a domesticated ox, which, of course, potentially had the power and disposition to gore, if it chose to do so. See, e.g., Exodus 21:28–32 for penalties for negligence in allowing one’s ox to gore another person; see also the horn imagery employed in 1 Kings 22:11.

[49] See, e.g., HALOT, s.v. “ḥ-��-��.” See also Micah 4:13 in the New Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version, and the New English Translation.

[50] ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), s.v. Micah 4:12. Additional citations accompanying this quotation include Jeremiah 51:33, Matthew 13:30, and Revelation 14:15.

[51] See Cruz, in “Who Is like Yahweh?,” 68–69, who also cites other authors on this contrast of conditions in Micah 4. Further, Cruz, after discussing the contrast in Micah 5:7–8 between Israel as beneficial dew and a ravaging lion, claims that “a ‘hermeneutics of tension’ is at work in Micah” (71).

[52] See Isaiah 41:12–15, in which Israelites are made a threshing sledge by Jehovah so they may vanquish those who fight against them.

[53] Contrast Gardner, Gift and Power, 234, where Gardner, who favors a Mesoamerican context for the Book of Mormon setting (309) and a generally “functionalist” translation of the text on the plates into English, claims “the threshing of wheat” is one example of an activity “understandable to readers of the printed Book of Mormon but not to the production culture of the plate text.” See similarly Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 5, Helaman through Third Nephi (Sandy, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 527. Gardner’s comment provides a good illustration of the impact that questions about the geographical setting and the nature of the Book of Mormon translation can have on our understanding of the text available to us.

[54] The Hebrew lexical root d-q-q, rendered “beat in pieces” in the KJV, NRSV, and ESV, conveys the sense of “crush” or “pulverize” and is also used in reference to human enemies in 2 Samuel 22:43. See HALOT, s.v. “d-q-q.”

[55] See likewise Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., Doctrines of Salvation (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1955), 2:248–50, where he comments on Jesus’s statements in 3 Nephi 16, 20, and 21.

[56] Jesus thus comments on two of the three major branches of scattered Israel mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The other is the “lost tribes of Israel,” whom Jesus also visited; see 3 Nephi 17:4, as well as 2 Nephi 29:13.

[57] The phrase “the Lord” is the English substitution for the divine name yhwh, which in Hebrew was likely pronounced Yahweh. “Jehovah” is an English hybrid form of the Hebrew consonants yhwh and the vowels of the Hebrew word translated “lord.” For further discussion of this matter, see Dana M. Pike, “The Name and Titles of God in the Old Testament,” Religious Educator 11, no. 1 (2010): 17–31, esp. 19–21.

[58] Examples of this practice in the translation of the Book of Mormon are easy to find. Compare, e.g., Isaiah 48:1–2 with 1 Nephi 20:1–2; Exodus 20:2 with Mosiah 12:34; and Isaiah 53:1, 6, 10 with Mosiah 14:1, 6, 10, as well as multiple verses in 3 Nephi 20–21 with their counterparts in Micah and Isaiah.

[59] The phrase “the remnant of Jacob” in Micah 5:8 was also expanded, but differently, in 3 Nephi 20:16: “Then shall ye, who are a remnant of the house of Jacob . . .”

[60] Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1202. See similarly ESV Study Bible, s.v. Micah 5:10–15: “The Lord cleanses his people from military and cultic idols,” in which “his people” must refer to the Israelites. See also Simundson, “Book of Micah,” 7:575.

[61] See Gardner, Second Witness, 542, for an explanation of why the components mentioned in this Micah passage would have been understandable to Jesus’s audience in 3 Nephi.

[62] Interestingly, a few commentators find this “cleansing” passage ambiguous and interpret Micah 5:10–14 as directed against the nations, the Gentiles, instead of or as well as against Israelites. See Smith-Christopher, Micah, 180, 186–87, for a summary of alternative opinions. Smith-Christopher seems to favor understanding Micah 5:9–15 as referring to Israel’s enemies, not Israel (see esp. 180). See similarly O’Brien, in Micah, 68–89, who cites a variety of opinions but favors understanding “the object of YHWH’s wrath [in 5:10–14] as the nations,” not Israel.

[63] Joseph Fielding McConkie, Robert L. Millet, and Brent L. Top, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1992), 4:110, quoting Bruce R. McConkie, “Our Relationship with the Lord,” March 2, 1982, Brigham Young University devotional, Provo, UT, https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/relationship-lord/. A similar pattern is evident in other Book of Mormon quotations of biblical passages in which the Hebrew reads yhwh, which the KJV renders as “the Lord,” but the passage in 3 Nephi reads “the Father” (e.g., compare Isaiah 52:9–10 with 3 Nephi 20:34–35).

[64] See the discussion and textual evidence collected by Skousen, 3 Nephi–Moroni 10, part 6 of Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, vol. 4, 3477. Skousen favors restoring hand as the reading in the Book of Mormon, as is also presented in Skousen, Book of Mormon, The Earliest Text, 624. It is very likely, as Skousen and others have supposed, that the phrase “I will cut off the cities of thy land” in Micah 5:11 and 3 Nephi 21:15 influenced the change from hand to land in 21:16. And although not determinative, it may be of interest that while verses with the terms hand and witchcrafts do not occur elsewhere in Latter-day Saint scripture, witchcraft(s) and land occur together only in the Book of Mormon, in Mormon 1:19 and 2:10.

[65] Examples of authors who label the wording of Micah 5:8 in 3 Nephi 16:15 as an “allusion” include Grant Hardy, ed., in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Provo, UT: Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020), 490n^a14, commenting on 3 Nephi 16:14. It is worth noting that the only other place the phrase “tread them down” occurs in Latter-day Saint scripture is in Isaiah 10:6 (KJV), which is repeated in 2 Nephi 20:6. However, in that passage Jehovah announces he will bring the Assyrians “against a hypocritical nation,” the Israelites, to “tread them down” because of their covenant violations.

[66] Similar to what is attested elsewhere, in 3 Nephi 16:15 Jesus alters the designation of “salt that hath lost its savor” (compare Matthew 5:13) from believing disciples who do not remain faithful to unbelieving Gentiles.

[67] Hardy, in The Book of Mormon (Maxwell Institute Study Edition), 534n^d24, refers to the occurrence of wording from Micah 5:8 here in Mormon 5:24 as a “paraphrase.” Somewhat differently, Gardner, in Second Witness, vol. 6, Fourth Nephi through Moroni, 93, claims that Mormon makes “an allusion to 3 Nephi 21:12,” which is where Jesus quotes Micah 5:8. For more on this issue, see Skousen, in “History of the Book of Mormon Text,” 90–92, who thinks that the only “real” quotation of Micah in the Book of Mormon is Micah 5:9 in 3 Nephi 20:17 (92).

[68] Mormon references the “house of Israel” in Mormon 5:10, 11; “the remnant of the house of Jacob” in verse 12; and “all the house of Israel” in verse 20. And he refers to “the Jews” and “the Jews, or all the house of Israel” in verse 14 (emphasis added). He also refers to Nephite-Lamanite descendants as “the remnant of these people,” “this people,” and “their seed” in verses 9, 10, 11, and 15. In verses 15–19 his focus is on the Nephite-Lamanite descendants, but in verses 20 and 21 he broadens his comments to “all the house of Israel” or “them.” These remarks provide the context for his exhortation of the Gentiles in verses 22–24. Thus, his comment about “a remnant of the seed of Jacob” in verse 24 can be the Israelite remnant in the Americas, or it could be that this particular remnant functions by way of metonymy to represent what will happen with all remnants of Israel.

[69] Jesus incorporates Micah and Isaiah passages in his discourse recounted in 3 Nephi 20–21. While this whole phenomenon deserves further study, it is enough here to acknowledge that Jesus utilizes Isaiah passages in ways similar to how he employs Micah passages.

[70] This pattern of reformulation of previous prophecies and teachings is also common in the Doctrine and Covenants. See, e.g., Doctrine and Covenants 50:40–46. Although Latter-day Saint critics will likely see here a pastiche of New Testament statements created by Joseph Smith, those who accept his prophetic role will likely see this as a revelation using familiar former-day Bible language to connect with Latter-day Saints regarding similar issues. This creates a bond in the minds of hearers/readers with older and newer teachings.

[71] Other authors have observed this phenomenon as well. See, e.g., Bruce R. McConkie, in “The Bible—A Sealed Book,” in Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, ed. Mark L. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 290, who claimed, “Nephi often did much the same thing [i.e., finding “new meanings” in older scriptures] when quoting Isaiah or Zenos. He gave not a literal but an inspired and interpretive translation. And in many instances his words give either a new or greatly expanded meaning to the original prophetic word.” See also Belnap, in “Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” 158, who observes, “We have already seen in the examples above that the Book of Mormon prophets apparently had no compunction about rearranging, altering, or even excising passages of scripture to emphasize specific doctrinal points. Both Christ’s version of Isaiah 52 [in 3 Nephi 20] and Moroni’s summary of Isaiah 52 and 54 are excellent examples of this textual alternation.” See also Belnap’s similar observations on pages 148 and 161.

[72] Without providing any specific citations, McConkie, Millet, and Top, in Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 4:111, claim that “there has been much discussion concerning its meaning [3 Nephi 16:15, drawing on Micah 5:8]. Many Latter-day Saints conclude that it refers to a type of Lamanite uprising . . . against the Gentiles in America.” At the very least, such an interpretation falsely limits to one remnant those whom the descriptors “house of Israel,” “they,” and “my people, O house of Israel” designate in 3 Nephi 16:12–15.

[73] It is possible that Moses 7:13 is relevant here too.

[74] See, e.g., Doctrine and Covenants 6:2; 11:2; 33:1.

[75] Allen, Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, 355.

[76] Stephen E. Robinson and H. Dean Garrett, A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 1:241.

[77] Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982), 248; quoted approvingly in McConkie, Millet, and Top, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 4:111–12; and in David Rolph Seely, “Micah,” in Book of Mormon Reference Companion, ed. Dennis L. Largey et al. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 541. For potential support for this approach, see Doctrine and Covenants 45:47 and 49:9–10.

[78] Gardner, Second Witness, 5:483.

[79] McConkie, Millet, and Top, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 4:139–40.

[80] Simundson, “Book of Micah,” 569.

[81] Some commentators have taken a more historical view of these prophecies. Perhaps taking a multiple-fulfillment approach is best.

[82] Bruce Waltke, “Micah,” in New Bible Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson et al. (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 828.

[83] McConkie, Millennial Messiah, 248–49.

[84] Since Malachi lived in Israel in the early 400s BC, his writings could not have been on the brass plates and the Nephites would not have previously had access to his book.

[85] This does not count the person named Jeremiah, who was one of the first Nephite apostles or “disciples” chosen by Jesus, named in 3 Nephi 19:4. On the possibility of allusions to the book of Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon, as opposed to full quotations, see, e.g., Hardy, in The Book of Mormon (Maxwell Institute Study Edition), 69n^a34, who, commenting on 2 Nephi 4:34, suggests that 2 Nephi 10:23 contains an allusion to Jeremiah 21:8, which itself is an allusion to Deuteronomy 30:19. This is the only “allusion” to the book of Jeremiah that Hardy cites in his study edition, but he does connect 2 Nephi 4:34 and 28:31 with Jeremiah 17:5. Likewise, Wesley P. Walters, in The Use of the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1990), 74, claims “Jeremiah 17:5 (‘cursed be the man that trusted in men and maketh flesh his arm’) appears to be reflected in 2 Ne. 28:31 . . . as well as in 2 Ne. 4:13 [sic; should be 4:34].”

[86] See, e.g., Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, 59–65; and Belnap, “Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” 144, 146.

[87] See, e.g., Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Dating the Departure of Lehi from Jerusalem,” BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2018): 46. Chadwick suggests that the phrase indicating that “the prophecies of the holy prophets” (1 Nephi 5:13) were on the brass plates “would include prophetic books known and in circulation prior to 609 BC,” which included, in Chadwick’s opinion, the book of Isaiah and likely the books of Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Nahum. See also Gardner, in Second Witness, 5:527, who assumes the book of Micah was on the brass plates.

[88] Note that the same phrase, “prophecies of the holy prophets,” also occurs in 1 Nephi 13:23, in Nephi’s vision of the future “book” we know as the Bible. However, in that context the phrase is preceded by the description “many of,” which implies that some of the “prophecies of the holy prophets” on the brass plates are not in the biblical canon. This, of course, is attested by the Book of Mormon, which mentions such prophetic writings as those of Zenos and Zenock, which are not in the Bible. See comments in Belnap, “Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” 152–53.

[89] See Gardner, Second Witness, 5:527. Gardner refers to the act of not providing attribution as “the Nephite practice.”

[90] Nyman and Nyman, The Words of the Twelve Prophets: Messages to the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990), 82n6. I disagree with their characterization of their assertion as “highly plausible.”

[91] I am not concerned here about the debate over whether the wording in Isaiah 2:2–4 and Micah 4:1–3 originated with Isaiah, Micah, or someone earlier.

[92] Belnap, “Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” 166n4; see this source for further comments and citations bearing on this discussion.

[93] See, e.g., Thompson, in “The Brass Plates,” 100–101, who suggests Micah may have been excluded from the brass plates because “the custodians and recorders on the Brass Plates included only material they considered Josephite in its focus and teaching,” and the book of Micah did not fit those parameters. Thompson gathers a lot of information and references in his wide-ranging article, but I am not currently persuaded by his very hypothetical argument about the relationship between “the so-called E tradition” (101) and the brass plates.

[94] For this latter claim, see, e.g., Belnap, in “Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Concept of Scripture,” 144, who asserts, “Since the references [from Isaiah] span from the earliest records of Nephi to the last page of the record, it seems evident that Isaiah 48–52 is clearly important to understanding the purpose and intent of the Book of Mormon. Yet even among believers this biblical template for the Book of Mormon authors is not recognized.”

[95] The same can be said about the limited role of the bulk of the contents of the brass plates in the Book of Mormon as we have it. Key narrative events and key prophetic figures in the biblical account are what receive most of the attention in the Book of Mormon. And latter-day readers have access to the accounts in the Bible.