Sunday, October 8, 2023

Note on the Tower in Mosiah 2:9

  

cf. Hebrew ‘ammud, “pillar, standing place” (II Kg 1114, 23:3, NEB “dais”) at Temple, for the coronation of Jehoash, II Ki 11:17 “And Jehoida made a covenant between the LORD and the king and the people, that they should be the LORD’s people; between the king also and the people”; renewal of the covenant under King Josiah, 23:1-3: “And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the LORD< and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him . .: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD. . . . and made a covenant before the LORD, . . to keep his commandments. . . . And all the people stood to the covenant” (cf II Chron 23:13, 34:2932, Dt 17:14-20); Neh 8:4, “Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood” = Hebrew migdal-‘ets (KJ marg rdg Heb. “tower of wood”—not in the 1828 Phinney or 1979 LDS KJ) || I Esrdas 9:42, “And Esdras the priest and reader of the law stood up upon a pulpit of wood” (III Ezra); Isa 2;15; Neh 3:25-27; note the sixty-cubit high stone Jewish temple tower of ONias IV in Egypt (Josephus, Jewish War, VII, 10, 3 [§427], GK pyrgos]; see TB Sota 7:8 (41:a), Sukka 51b (5:2) on the central Jeiwhs synagogue bima or ‘almemar (= Moslem ‘al-minbar, not only to say minaret, or Vedic yupa), and on the “Portion of the King” spoken from a similar pulpit in the Temple; cf also Alma 31:21, rameumptom . . . “holy stand,” whereon a kind of abbreviated Jewish ‘Amida, “Standing (prayer),” is recited by the Zoramites; cf also 11:13, Eth 1:3, Gen 11:4-5, 35:21. (Book of Mormon Critical Text: A Tool for Scholarly Reference, 3 vols. [Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1987], 3: 365 n. 73)

 

Further Reading:

 

John A. Tvedntes, King Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles