Revelations Recorded Twice

Two of the shortest sections in the Doctrine and Covenants — one of three verses, one of a single verse — stand almost word for word inside another frozen scripture, where they appear as quoted speech within a first-person narrative. Reading the two copies side by side is what this page is for.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. The frozen Pearl of Great Price account Joseph Smith—History 1 narrates two occasions on which words were spoken, and quotes those words; the Doctrine and Covenants carries the same words as standalone sections. Both are in this wiki’s frozen corpus, so both ends can be quoted and checked. What this page does not do is say which text came first, or how the duplication arose — those are questions about the texts’ history, external and out of scope. What it reports is that the wordings match, and exactly where they do not.

Account

The Elijah promise (D&C 2)

Section 2 is three verses. The narrative account quotes the same words as a passage recited to the narrator, and — this is the account’s own claim, not the wiki’s — recited differently from the Bible: “he quoted the fifth verse thus” (Joseph Smith—History 1:38); “He also quoted the next verse differently” (Joseph Smith—History 1:39).

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 2:1: “Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” - Joseph Smith—History 1:38: “And again, he quoted the fifth verse thus: Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

The sentence is identical in both, character for character. The one difference between the two texts is framing: the narrative supplies an introducing clause (“he quoted the fifth verse thus”) that the section does not, and the section stands as direct address without a reporter.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 2:2: “And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.” - Joseph Smith—History 1:39: “He also quoted the next verse differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.”

Identical, character for character. The narrative verse continues with the sentence that section 2 gives as its own third verse — “If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming” (D&C 2:3; Joseph Smith—History 1:39), likewise identical and registered as its own pair () — so Joseph Smith—History 1:39 carries the whole of D&C 2:2–3 inside one verse. Each of the two sentences stands at exactly two frozen verses in the corpus: the section’s and the narrative’s.

The narrative account calls the recitation a quotation of “the fifth verse” and “the next verse” of a prophet’s book, and names the prophet’s book elsewhere in the same passage. The underlying passage is in the frozen corpus, and the divergence between the two versions is substantial.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 2:1: “Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” - Malachi 4:5: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD”

The second half — “Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” — is word-for-word, with one orthographic divergence: the frozen Malachi text reads “LORD” where the section reads “Lord”. The first half is where the versions part: Malachi’s “I will send you Elijah the prophet” becomes “I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet” — the object of the sending changes from the prophet to a priesthood, and the prophet becomes the means. Reported as a textual fact; what the change means is a separate, interpretive question this page does not settle. The clause stands at five corpus verses: these two, 3 Nephi 25:5 (which reproduces Malachi’s wording), D&C 128:17 (which quotes Malachi by name, “Malachi says, last chapter, verses 5th and 6th”), and Joseph Smith—History 1:38.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 2:2: “And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.” - Malachi 4:6: “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

Here the divergence is larger than the agreement. Malachi’s verse is symmetrical — fathers turned to children, children to fathers — and the revelation’s is not: its first clause plants promises in the children’s hearts, and only the second clause turns hearts, and only in one direction. The shared spine is “And he shall… the hearts of the children… to their fathers” (D&C 2:2). Malachi’s closing threat (“lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”) is replaced in the section by a differently worded consequence at D&C 2:3: “If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.” The turn-the-heart clause stands at three corpus verses: Malachi 4:6, 3 Nephi 25:6, and D&C 128:17 — the section’s rewording matches none of them.

The conferral (D&C 13)

Section 13 is one verse: a conferral spoken in the second person plural to “my fellow servants.” It stands, again, inside the narrative account as quoted speech.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 13:1: “Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” - Joseph Smith—History 1:69: “Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.”

Sixty-plus words, and the only differences in the whole sentence are two commas: the narrative reads “in the name of Messiah, I confer” (Joseph Smith—History 1:69) where the section has no comma, and the section reads “from the earth, until the sons of Levi” (D&C 13:1) where the narrative has none. No word differs. The frames differ as they did for section 2 — the narrative names the speaker two verses later, “his name was John, the same that is called John the Baptist in the New Testament” (Joseph Smith—History 1:72), where the section supplies no speaker at all.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The conferral’s closing clause carries a prophet’s wording: - D&C 13:1: “…and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” - Malachi 3:3: “And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.”

The shared elements are “the sons of Levi” and the offering formula; the word order of the formula differs — the section reads “an offering unto the Lord in righteousness” (D&C 13:1), Malachi “unto the LORD an offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3). Divergences: Malachi’s refining and purging, which the section does not carry, and the section’s condition-and-terminus frame (“shall never be taken again from the earth, until” — D&C 13:1), which Malachi does not carry. “an offering in righteousness” stands at three corpus verses: Malachi 3:3, 3 Nephi 24:3 (which reproduces Malachi’s wording), and D&C 128:24 (which quotes the passage at length). The section’s own word order matches none of the three, and its clause is registered against Malachi as the phrase’s originating carrier in the corpus.

Significance

Two very short sections, and both of them turn out to be doubly attested inside this wiki’s own frozen corpus — quoted in a narrative that says who spoke them and on what occasion, and carried again as standalone revelation without any frame at all. For a wiki whose central discipline is checking one text against another, that is the most checkable material in the range: the reader can lay the two copies side by side and see that the words match to the comma.

The second observation is about the Malachi passage behind section 2. The narrative account claims the recitation departed from the Bible (“differently,” it says, at Joseph Smith—History 1:39), and the frozen texts bear that out — sharply at D&C 2:2, where a symmetrical turning of hearts becomes an asymmetrical planting of promises. The corpus also contains a version of Malachi that does not depart — 3 Nephi 25:5–6, reproducing Malachi’s wording — and a later section that quotes Malachi by chapter and verse (D&C 128:17). Three carriers, two wordings; the wiki reports the distribution and leaves the reasons alone.

Key references

D&C 2:1–3 — the Elijah promise, three verses
D&C 13:1 — the conferral of the Priesthood of Aaron, one verse
Joseph Smith—History 1:36–39 — the recitation, and the two verses “quoted differently”
Joseph Smith—History 1:68–72 — the conferral narrated, and the speaker named
Malachi 4:5–6, 3 Nephi 25:5–6 — the underlying passage, and its Book of Mormon carrier
Malachi 3:3, 3 Nephi 24:3 — the sons of Levi and the offering in righteousness

The First Vision and the Coming Forth of the Plates · Joseph Smith · Baptism · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 2 and 13 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Joseph Smith—History 1, Malachi 3, and Malachi 4; 3 Nephi 24, 3 Nephi 25, D&C 128 cited inside the distribution disclosures.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary — where a narrative verse carries two of a section’s verses inside it, the section side is quoted one verse at a time and the records are split accordingly. Seven connection records are registered here — four [textual] verbatim pairings against Joseph Smith—History and three [textual] shared-phrasing pairings against Malachi, all asserted_by: wiki. Neither Doctrine and Covenants section names a source; the naming is done by the other text, Joseph Smith—History, which says the words were quoted from a prophet’s book, and whether a source-assertion made at the b-end rather than the a-end can carry asserted_by: "source" is an open editorial question, recorded in the project’s verification log; these records carry asserted_by: wiki meanwhile. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing. Which text came first, and how the duplication arose, are questions about these texts’ history and are outside this wiki’s scope.