Thoughts on the Words of Mormon

One of the questions I have asked myself about the Words of Mormon is this: when did Mormon write these words?  The first verse seems to answer that question clearly: “And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites.”  He seemed to be saying here that he was just about to give the plates over to Moroni, and thus he would have been done with his abridgment of the large plates.  In other words, he had written what we have now as Mormon 7 and was writing a few words on the small plates themselves as he was preparing to hand them over to Moroni before his own death.  But other verses make me wonder. 

In verse 3 he told us when he found the small plates: “For after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates.”  Mormon didn’t know these small plates even existed until he was halfway through his abridgment of the large plates.  He described this way what he did with them: “I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me” (v6).  Mormon took the small plates, wrote a few things on them, and simply tacked them on the end of his own abridgment of the large plates.  This verse sems to suggest that this may have been done at this time when he found them (i.e. when he reached the part about King Benjamin in his own writing), but from the first verse’s description it seems that he would have had to have been much further along if he was close to giving them over to Moroni.

             In a couple verses Mormon made some comments about finishing his record which seem to suggest that he had some amount more to write.  He wrote, “Wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi…. And now I, Mormon, proceed to finish out my record, which I take from the plates of Nephi” (v5,9).  It is possible that this “remainder” of his record was simply what he was writing in the Words of Mormon, or perhaps he still had a ways to go in his abridgment.  I have written before about two theories on how verse 12-18 fit here in the Words of Mormon, and one explanation could be that Mormon did indeed write those verses on the small plates as its final words.  By “finishing his record” he may have simply meant providing this one last summary of King Benjamin that he was inspired to give us to provide a more seamless transition between the small plates and his abridgement of the large plates.  We may have to wait until the next life to understand all of these complexities, but what is most important is the testimony he gave of the whole Book of Mormon itself: “I know that they will be preserved; for there are great things written upon them, out of which my people and their brethren shall be judged at the great and last day, according to the word of God which is written” (v11).  We will one day be judged by those things written in the Book of Mormon, so we would do well to take them seriously.