The Iron Rod is the Word of God

In a recent podcast, Dr. Matthew L. Bowen highlighted an interesting connection between the rod and the word. He highlighted this verse from Nephi about Moses: “Let us be strong like unto Moses; for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither, and our fathers came through, out of captivity, on dry ground” (1 Nephi 4:2). Here Nephi said that it was through words—Moses “spake” to the waters—that they were divided. The account in Exodus, though, says this: “But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea” (Exodus 14:16). Here the account says that it was through the rod of Moses that he divided the Red Sea. Dr. Bowen commented on why this is significant: “In Egyptian, the word for rod and word, and the verb to speak, are the same thing. The Egyptian word medu, which means a rod or a staff, it's also the verb for to speak. And in fact, when it's written in Egyptian, not only middle Egyptian, but later in the Egyptian of Lehi's time, they're still writing it with a rod hieroglyph as a part of the writing.” Egyptian of course was a language that Nephi knew and his record was in, and here for him it appears that rod and word are synonymous.

Nephi again seems to have connected these when he commented on another experience of Moses: “Yea, and ye also know that Moses, by his word according to the power of God which was in him, smote the rock, and there came forth water, that the children of Israel might quench their thirst” (1 Nephi 17:29). So he “smote” the rock with “his word” which to Nephi was the same as “the rod.” The Biblical account reads this way: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel” (Exodus 17:5-6). Moses smote the rock with his rod as described here, and Dr. Bowen commented, “Nephi clearly thinks of rod and the word in identical terms.” The connection of course is seen in Nephi’s interpretation of the vision of the tree of life in which Nephi learned that “the rod of iron… was the word of God” (1 Nephi 15:23-24). We of course sing of this today in one of our hymns: “Hold to the rod, the iron rod; ’Tis strong, and bright, and true. The iron rod is the word of God; ’Twill safely guide us through.” The iron rod is indeed the word of God, and the Egyptian language itself bears this out.  

Dr. Bowen also highlighted this passage from Mormon: “Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked— And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven” (Helaman 3:29-30). You can’t really lay hold upon a word but you can certainly lay hold upon a rod, and Moses seems to be using this same connection of the word being a rod. And just as Moses’s rod/word allowed the children of Israel to pass through a gulf in the Red Sea to lead them to the promised land, so too will the word of God bring us across the “gulf of misery” and allow our escape to an eternal promised land. And it all centers on the word of God that we must hold on to. Just as Moses held on to his rod and was given God’s power to deliver the Israelites, as we hold fast to the word in the scriptures every day we too will be filled with the power of God to conquer all our mortal challenges.