Gazelem
Alma 37:23 reads
And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.
The punctuation seems to indicate that Gazelem is the name of the stone, not the servant, but this interpretation is not universal. However, since the punctuation of the Book of Mormon was added later, it is possible that the term may also have been referring to the servant, or perhaps to both.
The actual identification of Gazelem is not certain, but the most likely candidates are the seer stones used by Mosiah2 and Joseph Smith. The Jaredites are the people whose secret works Gazelem is to bring to light, and both Mosiah2 and Joseph Smith are supposed to have used seer stones to translate the Jaredite record.
The Book of Mormon Onomasticon (2016) offers potential Hebrew etymologies for Gazelem that appear to be promising, but does not explore any Sumerian possibilities. There is a fairly direct Sumerian etymology for the word. All time frames listed for the attestations for each word should be interpreted such that the word was probably in use earlier than the time periods listed. As discussed previously, the Book of Mormon words with Sumerian etymology may have some variations in order and syntax based on the New World setting. In addition, it became apparent in the translation of the Caractors Document, that all of the personal and place names contained multiple meanings, sometimes in the complete name and sometimes in a portion of the glyphs. That fact should be kept in mind when approaching any search for meaning in Book of Mormon names.
The multiple Sumerian words from which Gazelem can be derived are:
Constructed Compound Word: Ĝizzalum
It would appear that the definition would not be inclusive of “servant”, favoring the punctuation that implies the name Gazelem refers to the “stone”. However, it should be noted that the word for “priest” in Sumerian is lumah, which is similar to the last syllable. (Jerry D. Grover, Jr., Sumerian Roots of Jaredite Derived Names and Terminology in the Book of Mormon [Provo, Utah: Challex Scientific Publishing, 2017], 15-16)
