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Gospel Wiki Connections mos-liahona-ball-director

Mosiah 1:16 · 2 Nephi 5:12

Textual Shared phrasing

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Book of Mormon Mosiah 1:16
"the ball or director, which led our fathers through the wilderness, which was prepared by the hand of the Lord"
Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 5:12
"the ball, or compass, which was prepared for my father by the hand of the Lord"

Shared words: by the hand of the Lord

These are the record's only two definite-article ball appositives — 'the ball, or compass' (2 Nephi 5:12) and 'the ball or director' (Mosiah 1:16); Alma 37:38's 'a ball, or director' is indefinite — and the only two verses joining 'prepared' to 'by the hand of the Lord' (the hand-formula 'by the hand of the Lord' alone appears in twenty-one verses in the record, its only case-strict carriers in the frozen corpus (Exodus 16:3 carries the case-variant 'by the hand of the LORD', the KJV's Tetragrammaton form); the two Mormon legs, 6:6 and 8:26, and three Ether hits — Ether 1:1, 2:6, 10:28 — join neither 'prepared' nor the appositive). Divergences: Benjamin's appositive lacks 5:12's comma, swaps 'compass' for 'director' (Mosiah 1:16 is the term 'director''s only occurrence through Mosiah), and drops 'for my father'. Both verses are relic inventories opening with the engraven-records formula — 'the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass' (2 Nephi 5:12) vs 'the records which were engraven on the plates of brass' (Mosiah 1:16), an on/upon divergence. Middle clause 'which led our fathers through the wilderness' parallels 1 Nephi 16:16 'the ball, which led us in the more fertile parts of the wilderness' (disclosed, not separately registered). Extends the 2ne-liahona-identity chain (2 Ne 5:12 <-> 1 Ne 18:12 'prepared of the Lord') one generation forward.

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The Liahona