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Enoch and the City of Zion

Scope of this page. Enoch’s account is given in Moses 6–8 (the Pearl of Great Price, a modern-revelation text held in the same corpus as this wiki) — the bulk of it in Moses 6–7, with two verses at the head of Moses 8: his own span, “And all the days of Enoch were four hundred and thirty years.” (Moses 8:1), and the covenant “that Noah should be of the fruit of his loins” (Moses 8:2). This page owns Enoch’s call and preaching (Moses 6), his vision and the weeping of God (Moses 7), the two Moses 8 verses above, and the material on his city — the City of Holiness, called Zion — that was “taken up into heaven” (Moses 7:21), together with the promised latter-day Zion / New Jerusalem it is joined to. The Book of Mormon’s own New Jerusalem passages (Ether 13; 3 Nephi 20–21) and its ideal-society material (4 Nephi 1) are hosted on their own pages; this page registers only the records whose near end is a Moses verse, and cross-links the rest.

Seventh from Adam in the genealogy of the fathers, Enoch is called as a “lad” who is “slow of speech” and hated by all the people, and made a seer whose word turns rivers and moves mountains. He preaches repentance, gathers a people whom the Lord names Zion — “of one heart and one mind… and there was no poor among them” — and builds a City of Holiness that is at last “taken up into heaven.” In his great vision he sees the whole span of the world, hears the God of heaven weep over the wickedness of his creations, questions how a holy God can weep, and is answered; he then sees the flood, the coming of the Son of Man “in the flesh,” the cross, and a latter-day Zion, a New Jerusalem where his own city will meet the Lord’s people at the last day.

Account

The call of Enoch (Moses 6)

Enoch enters the record inside the genealogy of the fathers — “Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begat Enoch… And Jared taught Enoch in all the ways of God” (Moses 6:21) — one of a line the text calls “preachers of righteousness” who “called upon all men, everywhere, to repent” (Moses 6:23). His own call comes as he travels: “as he journeyed, the Spirit of God descended out of heaven, and abode upon him” (Moses 6:26), and a voice from heaven commissions him — “Enoch, my son, prophesy unto this people… Repent, for thus saith the Lord: I am angry with this people” (Moses 6:27).

Enoch answers with a protest of unfitness: “Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?” (Moses 6:31). The Lord’s reply is a promise of enabling power — “Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance… and thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; therefore walk with me” (Moses 6:32, 34) — and a gift of sight: “Anoint thine eyes with clay, and wash them, and thou shalt see” (Moses 6:35), after which “from thenceforth came the saying abroad in the land: A seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people” (Moses 6:36).

His preaching is met first with offense, then with fear: “all men were offended because of him” (Moses 6:37), and yet “no man laid hands on him; for fear came on all them that heard him; for he walked with God” (Moses 6:39). When a man named Mahijah demands “Tell us plainly who thou art, and from whence thou comest?” (Moses 6:40), Enoch delivers a long discourse (Moses 6:41–68) rehearsing the Fall, the plan of salvation, and the baptism of Adam — doctrinal material whose home is elsewhere in the corpus map and which is cross-linked, not registered here.

The vision and the weeping God (Moses 7)

Enoch’s vision opens when, having been told to “get ye upon the mount Simeon” (Moses 7:2), he goes up and beholds “the heavens open, and I was clothed upon with glory” (Moses 7:3) and sees the Lord “face to face”, who says: “Look, and I will show unto thee the world for the space of many generations” (Moses 7:4). What follows is a survey of peoples and wars — the people of Shum, of Canaan, and others (Moses 7:5–10) — and then the great faith of Enoch himself: “he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled… and so great was the power of the language which God had given him” (Moses 7:13).

Careful reading — who weeps, and who asks. The passage is easy to misattribute. At Moses 7:28 it is God who weeps — “the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept” — and Enoch who bears record of it and asks the question: “How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?” At Moses 7:29 Enoch presses the question directly to the Lord: “How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?” The Lord answers at Moses 7:32–37, explaining that his creations were given agency and commanded to “love one another,” but “they are without affection, and they hate their own blood” (Moses 7:33) — “wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?” (Moses 7:37). Later it is again Enoch who weeps, over his brethren: “Enoch… wept and stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned; and all eternity shook” (Moses 7:41); “I will refuse to be comforted” (Moses 7:44). Two weepings, God’s and Enoch’s, run through the chapter and are kept distinct here.

The vision then sweeps forward through the whole history of the earth: the flood and Noah’s ark (Moses 7:42–43), the earth itself crying out as “the mother of men… I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children” (Moses 7:48), the coming of the Son of Man “in the flesh” (Moses 7:47), the cross — “the Son of Man lifted up on the cross, after the manner of men” (Moses 7:55) — and, at the end, the Lord’s promise, “even so will I come in the last days, in the days of wickedness and vengeance” (Moses 7:60).

Zion, and the City taken up

Between the survey of the nations and the sweep of the future, the text records the gathering that gives this page its name. The Lord names his people:

The naming of Zion. Moses 7:18: “And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.”

Enoch then “built a city that was called the City of Holiness, even Zion” (Moses 7:19), and the record shows its destiny: “he beheld, and lo, Zion, in process of time, was taken up into heaven”, whereupon “the Lord said unto Enoch: Behold mine abode forever” (Moses 7:21). The chapter closes on the departure of the city: “And Enoch and all his people walked with God, and he dwelt in the midst of Zion; and it came to pass that Zion was not, for God received it up into his own bosom; and from thence went forth the saying, Zion is Fled” (Moses 7:69). The text also fixes the city’s span: “all the days of Zion, in the days of Enoch, were three hundred and sixty-five years” (Moses 7:68).

The latter-day Zion — “a New Jerusalem”

The vision does not leave Zion in heaven. Near its close the Lord promises a gathering in the last days “unto a place which I shall prepare, an Holy City… and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem” (Moses 7:62), and then the reunion of the two cities: “Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom” (Moses 7:63). This is the point at which Enoch’s Zion joins the Book of Mormon’s own prophecies of a New Jerusalem — the future city the risen Lord names to the Nephites (3 Nephi 20:22; 21:23–24) and that Ether foresaw “come down out of heaven” (Ether 13:3–10). The fuller New Jerusalem doctrine is hosted on The New Jerusalem.

[Textual] — shared name. The latter-day city carries the same proper name in both records:

  • Moses 7:62: “…an Holy City… and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.”
  • 3 Nephi 20:22: “…and it shall be a New Jerusalem.”

The verifiably shared string is the title “a New Jerusalem” — the record is on the proper name, not any larger clause.

Significance

Enoch’s account is the corpus’s fullest portrait of a whole society made righteous — and then removed. The naming is exact and doctrinal: a people become Zion not by conquest or wealth but by unity and equity — “of one heart and one mind… and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18). That definition is what makes the Book of Mormon’s later golden age recognizable as the same ideal restated (see the ⚖️ note below), and what the latter-day “Zion, a New Jerusalem” (Moses 7:62) is promised to restore.

The chapter’s theological center of gravity, though, is not the city but the tears. The astonishment is Enoch’s own — that a God “holy, and from all eternity to all eternity” (Moses 7:29) should weep at all — and the Lord’s answer grounds the weeping in agency and love refused: he gave his creations their agency “in the Garden of Eden” (Moses 7:32) and commanded that “they should love one another” (Moses 7:33), and it is their hatred of “their own blood”, not any failure of his power, that draws the tears. Enoch’s own weeping (Moses 7:41, 44, 49) is the human echo of the divine one — a seer whose “heart swelled wide as eternity” (Moses 7:41) learning to grieve as God grieves.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. Enoch’s Zion and the Book of Mormon’s post-visitation society read as two portraits of the same ideal: a united people with no economic division. The textual facts are two. Of Enoch’s city: “the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18). Of the Nephites after the risen Christ’s ministry: “they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free” (4 Nephi 1:3), a people among whom “there was no contention… because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people” (4 Nephi 1:15). The two passages share no distinctive phrase — “no poor among them” is not “not rich and poor,” and “one heart and one mind” appears verbatim only at Moses 7:18 across the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price. The parallel is thematic, not verbal: the same social ideal — unity, righteousness, no poor — described in two independent idioms. That these two societies were meant to be read as instances of one Zion pattern is a reading offered for weighing, not a claim either text makes.

Key references

The New Jerusalem · Zion · The Two Churches · Messiah · Index · Connections

Sources

Moses 6–8 (the Pearl of Great Price), read verbatim from the frozen source text (Moses 6 and 7 throughout, and Moses 8:1–2 for Enoch’s own span and the covenant concerning Noah). Cross-referenced Book of Mormon passages — 3 Nephi 20:22 (the New Jerusalem naming) and 4 Nephi 1:3, 1:15 (the ideal-society parallel) — read from their own frozen source files. Every quote is cited to its verse and checked character-for-character against the frozen source. The speaker/weeper of each verse in Moses 7:28–49 was checked against the framing before attribution: God weeps (7:28–29) and Enoch weeps (7:41, 44, 49), kept distinct. External, real-world historicity — including any correspondence of Enoch’s city to a real place or event — is out of this wiki’s scope.