The Mount Zerin

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit with some wonderful friends who I hadn’t seen in many years.   As I learned about their incredible family with five young boys, I found out that they named their new baby boy Zerin.  The name comes from the reference in Ether 12:30 in which we learn this about the brother of Jared: “For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain Zerin, Remove—and it was removed.  And if he had not had faith it would not have moved.”  So with a name like that, he must be one who will grow up to have great faith like the brother of Jared (and his parents).  This caused me to think about this passage in the book of Ether and what we know about it.  It is the only place in Moroni’s account that mentions the mountain the brother of Jared moved—where was the mountain and when did the brother of Jared move it?

               Of course, we can’t know for sure where Zerin was or when it was moved by the brother of Jared without more revelation, but I think we can make a reasonable guess based on the story we do have.  The Lord doesn’t work miracles without a purpose, and undoubtedly the purpose in moving the mountain was so the group could get through an otherwise impassable place on their journey to the promised land.  It seems that the most likely location where this happened was actually at the beginning of their travels.  When Jared, his brother, and their families first left the place where the tower of Babel was, the Lord said, “Go at the head of them down into the valley which was northward.  And there will I meet thee” (Ether 1:42).  They followed these instructions and “went into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together.”  The account continues, “When they had come down into the valley of Nimrod the Lord came down and talked with the brother of Jared….  The Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:1, 4-5).  So they were in a valley named after the mighty hunter Nimrod, and from there they were to go into an adjacent wilderness where nobody had ever been before.  If this mighty hunter had been there in this valley, why wouldn’t he—a man surely known for strength and courage—have gone on further into the nearby wilderness?  Wouldn’t he have wanted to hunt there to?  How was it still preserved as a place where no man had ever been?  I believe it was because they could not get there—a mountain was in their way.  Since the Jaredites were in a valley at Nimrod, then by definition it makes sense that there would be a mountain next to them.  The Lord needed to get the Jaredites on toward the promised land, and perhaps the way was through that mountain.  If so, then it could have been there that the brother of Jared moved mount Zerin so they could depart from the wicked people into the land never seen.  There is no mention later in Moroni’s account of their travels of anything like a mountain that the Jaredites encountered after passing through Nimrod—to the contrary, the group “did build barges” and “cross many waters” and eventually “came to the sea” (Ether 2:5-6, 13).  This gives at least some weight to this conjecture that the mount Zerin was moved at the beginning of the journey before entering “that quarter where there never had man been.”

               Conjectures aside, perhaps the real lesson here for us is that the Lord will seek to get us to our promised land, no matter what it takes.  If a mountain has to be moved for us to get there, He can do it.  If we need to symbolically go somewhere “where there never had man been,” then He can lead us there.  And even if we falter and waste years on our “seashore” making no progress, the Lord will still urge us onward until we arrive at the spiritual place He wants us to be.