“That They May Once Again Be a Delightsome People”: The Concept of Again Becoming the Seed of Joseph (Words of Mormon 1:8 and Mormon 7:4–5)

Abstract: In Words of Mormon 1:8, Mormon declares, “And my prayer to God is concerning my brethren, that they may once again come to the knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ; that they may once again be a delightsome people.” The expression “that they may once again” plausibly reflects the Hebrew idiom wayyôsipû or wayyôsipû ʿôd. Mormon’s apparent double-use of the wayyôsipû (ʿôd) idiom in Words of Mormon 1:8 (or some Nephite scribal equivalent), like 2 Nephi 5:2–3, recalls language in the Joseph story (Genesis 37:5, 8). The original Lamanite covenant, as an extension of the Abrahamic covenant, involved the complete abandonment of fraternal hatred and the violent means through which they had given expression to it (see Alma 24:12–13; 15–18); Mormon declared that a similar commitment would again be necessary when the descendants of Lehi (“the remnant of this people who are spared,” Mormon 7:1) were restored to the covenant in the future (Mormon 7:4–5). Thus, Mormon’s prayer—in the tradition of the prayers of Nephi, Enos, and others—is that the descendants of the Lamanites (and Nephite dissenters) would, through iterative divine action, regain their covenant identity as the seed of Joseph and partakers of the Abrahamic covenant.

A previous study1 proposes that Nephi permuted biblical wordplay on the name Joseph from Genesis 37:5, 8 (“and they hated him yet the more [wayyôsipû ʿôd]”) as a means of drawing autobiographical parallels between himself and his ancestor Joseph (the patriarch) [Page 166]throughout his small plates record.2 Nephi’s use of this biblical wordplay culminates in the statement that marked a tipping point in his relationship with his brothers, paving the way for a final separation in mortality from them: “Behold, it came to pass that I, Nephi, did cry much unto the Lord my God, because of the anger of my brethren. But behold, their anger did increase [yāsap] against me, insomuch that they did seek to take away my life” (2 Nephi 5:2).

The name Joseph (“may he [God] add”) derives from the verb yāsap, which means “to add” or “increase,”3 but can also have the more nuanced senses “to continue to do, carry on doing” something or “to do [something] again, more.”4 I have further proposed that Nephi used a wordplay on the name of Joseph in terms of yāsap when he juxtaposed quotations from Isaiah 11:11 and 29:14 in 2 Nephi 25:17, 21 (“And the Lord will set his hand again [yôsîp] the second time to restore his people from their lost and fallen state. Wherefore, he will proceed [yôsīp] to do a marvelous work and a wonder among the children of men . . . that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph”) and 2 Nephi 29:1 (“But behold, there shall be many—at that day when I shall proceed [yôsīp] to do a marvelous work among them, that I may remember my covenants which I have made unto the children of men, that I may set my hand again [*wĕʾōsîp yādî] the second time to recover my people”)...