The Mountain of the Lord’s House — Isaiah 2–4

Isaiah’s second vision opens with Zion lifted above the mountains and closes with Zion washed and covered by the old pillar of cloud and fire. In between, every proud thing is brought low.

Three Chapters, One Vision

Isaiah did not write chapters. The heading in 2:1, “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem,” covers everything to the end of chapter 4. Its frame shows it. David Dorsey, in The Literary Structure of the Old Testament, laid the vision out as a seven-part chiasm, reproduced at the Biblical Chiasm Exchange:

Isaiah 2:1–4:6 — the structure (Dorsey)

A  (2:1–5) Jerusalem exalted

B  (2:6–9) possessions of proud men

C  (2:10–22) proud men humbled

X  (3:1–15) judgment on Jerusalem: “The Lord standeth up to plead”

C′  (3:16–17) proud women humbled

B′  (3:18–4:1) possessions of proud women

A′  (4:2–6) Jerusalem restored

At the centre: leaders who ground “the faces of the poor.”

Proud men pair with proud women, treasures with ornaments. The vision does not blame one sex for a nation’s fall. It holds both to the same measure.

A House in the Top of the Mountains

“The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isaiah 2:2–4). Rivers run down mountains; these nations flow UP one. Why? They say: “he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” The house is a school before it is anything else; the word behind “law” in the same verse is torah, instruction. Only then do they beat their swords into plowshares. Nations stop learning war when they have learned something else. Micah carries the same oracle almost word for word (Micah 4:1–4).

Dedicating the Conference Center in October 2000, President Gordon B. Hinckley quoted it and said, “I believe that prophecy applies to the historic and wonderful Salt Lake Temple. But I believe also that it is related to this magnificent hall. For it is from this pulpit that the law of God shall go forth, together with the word and testimony of the Lord” (“This Great Millennial Year”).

Out of Zion, and from Jerusalem

Isaiah 2:3 — synonymous parallelism

for out of Zion shall go forth the law,

and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Zion answers Jerusalem; law answers word. Read plainly, one place named twice.

That is the plain reading, and a fair one. Zion was Jerusalem’s temple hill, and the Church’s Scripture Helps says the phrase uses parallelism, “where two lines express the same idea using different words.” One city is a correct reading.

Why, then, read TWO? Because the Lord later quoted the couplet and set its halves apart: “he shall utter his voice out of Zion, and he shall speak from Jerusalem,” and three verses on, “the land of Jerusalem and the land of Zion” are two lands, each in “their own place” (D&C 133:21–24). Ether saw a New Jerusalem on this land and the Jerusalem “of old” rebuilt (Ether 13:3–11). Zion goes “upon the American continent” (A of F 1:10). And President Joseph Fielding Smith: “These two cities, one in the land of Zion and one in Palestine, are to become capitals for the kingdom of God during the millennium” (Doctrines of Salvation 3:71, in the D&C Student Manual).

One city or two? BOTH. The couplet was true of one city when Isaiah spoke it, and revelation shows the same words opening into two world capitals under one King.

Wherein Is Man to Be Accounted Of?

Verse 5 is the hinge: “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Israel is not walking in it. “Their land also is full” of silver and gold, of horses, of idols. What follows is one huge parallelism. The Biblical Chiasm Exchange, building on A. H. Bartelt, shows a refrain at both ends of a list:

Isaiah 2:11–17 — refrain and anaphora

11  The lofty looks of man shall be humbled … the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

12–14  upon every one that is proud … all the cedars … the oaks … the high mountains … the hills

15–16  upon every high tower … fenced wall … ships of Tarshish … pleasant pictures

17  the loftiness of man shall be bowed down … the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

Ten lines open with “upon,” from what God grew to what men built.

The repeated words show the climb: tallest trees, tallest hills, the walls men raise for safety, then the merchant fleet. “Lifted up” comes three times in three verses. Is the day of the Lord aimed at cedars? No. It is aimed at what cedars and towers mean to a proud man.

Then the landing: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isaiah 2:22). Who is man, that he should even be thought of? A man whose life hangs on his next breath is a poor thing to trust. Why say the refrain twice? Because a people who will not humble themselves will be humbled, and Isaiah wants them to hear it before the day, not after.

What Nephi’s Copy Keeps

The King James has 2:9 as “the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.” Why refuse to forgive men who humble themselves? Nephi’s text reads “the mean man boweth not down, and the great man humbleth himself not” (2 Nephi 12:9). The King James can be defended (after verse 8 the bowing may be to idols), and the Septuagint agrees with it. But Nephi’s reading fits the refrain: the men who will NOT humble themselves in verse 9 are the men who “shall be humbled” in verse 11.

Verse 16 is the famous one. The Hebrew has “ships of Tarshish,” the Septuagint “every ship of the sea.” Nephi has both: “upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish” (2 Nephi 12:16). Sidney Sperry read it as the fuller original. Dana Pike and David Rolph Seely of BYU answered that the extra line breaks the run of couplets and the Greek may just render “Tarshish” as “sea” (JBMS 14/2, 2005). The question is open. The fact under it is not: a Greek reading stands in a book dictated by a man who read no Greek. More at Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.

Children for Princes, and the Daughters of Zion

Chapter 3 takes away “the stay and the staff,” every kind of competence a city leans on. “I will give children to be their princes” (Isaiah 3:1–15). A man grabs his brother, “Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler,” and the brother swears, “I will not be an healer.” Owning a coat is qualification enough, and still no one will take the job. At the centre stands the charge: “the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor?”

The daughters of Zion follow, and their sin is the one chapter 2 already named: “haughty,” with “stretched forth necks,” the lofty looks of 2:11 shown in how a person walks and dresses. The list of ornaments is no rule against jewelry. It is a city dressing well while the poor were ground.

Then, “Thy men shall fall by the sword” (3:25), and so: “seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach” (Isaiah 4:1). Seven to one is the arithmetic of a war. The women ask no support, only to escape the reproach of being unmarried and childless, Rachel’s word (Genesis 30:23). The verse describes desolation. It is not a law of marriage, plural or otherwise.

The Branch and the Book of the Living

How are they made holy? The Lord washes “the filth of the daughters of Zion” and purges Jerusalem “by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning” (4:4). The daughters judged in chapter 3 are washed in chapter 4, not left in the ashes. For cleansing by fire is no New Testament invention; John the Baptist promised the One who “shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11).

A Covert from the Storm over Every Dwelling

Israel knew this cloud: “the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night” (Exodus 40:38). In the wilderness there was ONE tent under it. Isaiah puts “a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night” over “every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies” (Isaiah 4:5–6). The vision that began with nations climbing to one house ends with glory over every house. In 1838 the Lord echoed verse 6 term for term:

D&C 115:6 and Isaiah 4:5–6

Isaiah  upon … mount Zion, and upon her assemblies … a defence … a place of refuge … from storm

D&C  upon the land of Zion, and upon her stakes, may be for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm

Assemblies become stakes; defence, refuge, and storm carry straight across.

And where does “stake” come from? From Isaiah’s tent. Verse 6 calls sheltered Zion “a tabernacle,” and a tent is held down by stakes: “lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). The gathering places “shall be called stakes, for the curtains or the strength of Zion” (D&C 101:21). Most members say the word every week without knowing they are standing inside Isaiah 4:6.

Key References

• Isaiah 2:2–4 — the mountain of the Lord’s house
• D&C 133:21 — the couplet of Isaiah 2:3 quoted by the Lord and set apart into two lands
• D&C 115:6 — Zion and her stakes, a refuge from the storm

The Tower or the Tent

Proud men build towers and fenced walls, and the day of the Lord brings them down. The Lord builds a tent with a cloud over it. Which holds in a storm? Not the wall. For the glory is the defence, and it rests on homes that have let Him wash them. The invitation between the mountain and the judgment still stands: “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5). Great are the words of Isaiah (3 Nephi 23:1): three chapters, from a hill in Judah to the stake center down the road.

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