November 10, 2023

“Encircled About Eternally in the Arms of His Love”: The Divine Embrace as a Thematic Symbol of Jesus Christ and His Atonement in the Book of Mormon

1 hour 3 minutes

Abstract: This study builds upon Hugh Nibley’s insightful observation that several Book of Mormon passages reflect “the ritual embrace that consummates the final escape from death in the Egyptian funerary texts and reliefs” as expressing the meaning of Christ’s Atonement. This study further extends Nibley’s observations on Jacob’s “wrestle” as a divine “embrace” to show that Lehi’s, Nephi’s, and their successors’ understanding of the divine embrace is informed by their ancestor’s “wrestle” with a “man” (Genesis 32:24–30) and reconciliation with his brother (Genesis 33:4–10). Examples of the divine embrace language and imagery throughout the Book of Mormon go well beyond what Nibley noted, evoking the Psalms’ depictions of Jehovah whose “wings” offered protection in the ritual place of atonement. Book of Mormon “divine embrace” texts have much to teach us about Jesus Christ, his love, the nature of his Atonement, and the temple.

Nephi testified that pure love motivates everything Jesus Christ does, including his wholly voluntary atoning work: “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him” (2 Nephi 26:24).1 As recorded in Ether 12:33–34, Moroni said to the Lord,

[Page 110]And again, I remember that thou hast said that thou hast loved the world, even unto the laying down of thy life for the world, that thou mightest take it again to prepare a place for the children of men. And now I know that this love which thou hast had for the children of men is charity; wherefore, except men shall have charity they cannot inherit that place which thou hast prepared in the mansions of thy Father.

The Savior’s words to Nicodemus as recorded in John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”) and to Orson Pratt on November 4, 1830, in D&C 34:3 (“who so loved the world that he gave his own life”) confirm that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the supreme expression of the love of the Father and the Son for humankind.

As David Seely has noted, William Tyndale, the first translator of the Bible into English from texts in the original Hebrew and Greek languages, appropriated the non-religious English expressions atone and atonement as fitting theological descriptions2 of the effect of Christ’s redemptive act. Regarding the Hebrew verb most often translated as atone (kpr), Mary Douglas writes,

According to the illustrative cases from Leviticus, to atone means to cover, or recover, cover again, to repair a hole, cure a sickness, mend a rift, make good a torn or broken covering. As a noun, what is translated as atonement, expiation or purgation means integument made good; conversely, the examples in the book indicate that defilement means integument torn. Atonement does not mean covering a sin so as to hide it from the sight of God; it means making good an outer layer which has rotted or been pierced.3

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