Graven upon the Palms — Isaiah 49
Zion says the LORD has forgotten her. He answers with a nursing mother, a city’s walls, and engraved hands. It is the second song of the Servant, and Nephi’s copy opens with a line our Bibles lack.
“And Again: Hearken, O Ye House of Israel”
In the Bible, Isaiah 49 begins “Listen, O isles, unto me.” In the Book of Mormon it begins earlier, with “And again:” and a preface about the scattered.
Where did that come from? No Hebrew manuscript, Greek version, or scroll has it, but it has a shape, and John A. Tvedtnes laid it out as a chiasm in 1984 (“Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon”):
1 Nephi 21:1 — the preface (Tvedtnes)
A Hearken,
B O ye house of Israel,
C all ye that are broken off and are driven out
D because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people;
C′ yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad,
B′ who are of my people, O house of Israel.
A′ Listen, O isles, unto me.
The King James words are only the last line. Without the preface, A′ has nothing to answer.
What sits at the centre? Not the scattering but its cause — bad shepherds, for the “pastors” of the King James are shepherds. Lehi’s contemporary Jeremiah joined the same words: “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! … Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away” (Jeremiah 23:1–2). And “broken off” is how Nephi had just described his own family, “a branch who have been broken off” (1 Nephi 19:24). He read the chapter to the people it named.
How did the Hebrew lose it? Tvedtnes proposed that a copyist’s eye skipped from the first “hearken” to the second — a proposal only, and he grants no ancient version has the preface. This is why the Book of Mormon’s Isaiah reads as a separate and distinct autograph: it agrees with the Masoretic text at times and the Qumran scroll at times, it is a copy of neither, and it carries readings no one in 1829 had a reason to invent. The full case, with the preface set out five levels deep, is “The Poetry Test” in A Second Autograph.
A Polished Shaft Hid in His Quiver
The Servant was called before birth: “from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name” (49:1). Then verse 2 hides him twice.
Isaiah 49:2 — synonymous parallelism
he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me,
and made me a polished shaft;
in his quiver hath he hid me;
A weapon, then its hiding place, twice: ready, and kept out of sight until needed.
Then comes the puzzle every reader meets. Verse 3: “Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Verses 5–6 give that Servant the work “to bring Jacob again to him” and “to raise up the tribes of Jacob.” How does Israel gather Israel? Some read the Servant as the nation, others as the Messiah, but the chapter allows neither alone, because the Servant does what the name Israel promised and the nation had not done, and those who follow Him carry the name and the work with Him.
The New Testament reads the chapter both ways, as verse 6 will show.
“I Have Laboured in Vain”
“I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and my work with my God” (49:4). The Servant is discouraged. Isaiah 42 said he “shall not fail nor be discouraged” (42:4); is that a contradiction? No. He feels the failure and does not quit, and the verse turns on “yet.” Verse 5 moves the measure: “Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD.” Not the count, but the eyes of the LORD.
And how does the Lord answer a discouraged servant? With a bigger assignment:
“It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”
The work he thought he had failed at is too small for him. And who receives this verse? Simeon, holding the infant Jesus, calls Him “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32). The Servant is Christ. Then Paul and Barnabas, turned out of the synagogue at Antioch, say: “For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46–47).
Commanded US. His messengers claim the Servant’s verse as their own orders. The Lord told priesthood holders the same in 1832 — “a light unto the Gentiles, and through this priesthood, a savior unto my people Israel” (D&C 86:11). One Servant, whose work His servants share; the Latter-day Saint reading of Isaiah 49 is already in the book of Acts.
“Can a Woman Forget Her Sucking Child?”
Verse 13 is a hymn, and verse 14 answers it with a complaint. Why side by side? Because that is how it is lived — the promise sung on Sunday, the silence on Tuesday. The Lord’s reply climbs on one word.
Isaiah 49:14–16 — the complaint and the answer
Zion “The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.”
Question “Can a woman forget her sucking child …?”
Granted “yea, they may forget,”
Answer “yet will I not forget thee.”
Proof “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”
Our arrangement of the repeated word. The strongest human bond can fail; He points to His hands.
Nephi’s copy adds to the complaint: “my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not” (1 Nephi 21:14). He will SHOW. The next verse is the showing.
Most readers pass over the verb. “Graven” is chaqaq, to cut in or inscribe; ink wears off, a cut stays. Isaiah uses it of Shebna, who “graveth an habitation for himself in a rock” (22:16) — a man cutting stone so that he would be remembered (see Two Falls and a Nail). Here God cuts His people into Himself so that He will not forget them. Ezekiel is told to take a tile “and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem” (Ezekiel 4:1), and the verb is again chaqaq. So what is on the Lord’s palms? Not a name only — “thy walls,” the city He means to rebuild.
Isaiah does not mention nails. Where were His hands cut? “What are these wounds in thine hands?” (Zechariah 13:6). Thomas was told, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands” (John 20:27). At Bountiful the multitude felt “the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet,” “one by one” (3 Nephi 11:14–15), and in 1829 He said, “Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet” (D&C 6:37). A resurrected body is perfect, so why does His keep the wounds?
Elder Dale G. Renlund: “The marks in the palms of His hands continually remind Him of you and your circumstances” (April 2021). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, citing verse 16: “Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion and Atonement, I promise you He is not going to turn His back on us now” (April 2006).
Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing Fathers
“Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms … And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers …”
Is this “according to the spirit and not the flesh”? his brothers asked. Both, Nephi said — “things both temporal and spiritual” (1 Nephi 22:1–3) — and then he explains this very passage. The Lord will “raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even upon the face of this land,” and do “a marvelous work among the Gentiles … it is likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms” (1 Nephi 22:7–8). A nation on this land, a Restoration within it, and that work carried back to Israel. Jacob read the same verses (2 Nephi 6:6–7) and came back to them: “the promises of the Lord are great unto the Gentiles” (2 Nephi 10:9).
Last comes “Shall the prey be taken from the mighty?” (49:24–26). Yes — and Jacob’s copy adds the reason: “for the Mighty God shall deliver his covenant people” (2 Nephi 6:17). The captor is mighty, and the Deliverer is mightier.
Four Songs, One Servant
Scholars count four Servant Songs, drawing the edges differently: 42:1–9, 49:1–13, 50:4–11, 52:13–53:12. In order they tell one life: chosen, hidden and sent wider, struck, then slain and exalted.
Isaiah 50 has no page of its own here. The Servant has “the tongue of the learned” to speak “to him that is weary” (50:4), and then pays for it: “I gave my back to the smiters … I hid not my face from shame and spitting” (50:6). The Servant who said “I have laboured in vain” now says, “I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (50:7). The fourth song is The Suffering Servant.
Key References
- 1 Nephi 21 — Nephi’s Isaiah 49 (compare verses 1, 13–15, 17); chapter 22 is his explanation.
- 2 Nephi 6–8 — Jacob reads Isaiah 49:22–52:2.
“My Lord Hath Forgotten Me”
Zion’s complaint is ours. Sooner or later nearly everyone says it, after a prayer that seemed to go nowhere or years of labour that look spent “for nought.” Isaiah does not call it rebellion. He puts it right after a hymn, in the mouth of the people God loves.
And the Lord does not argue with the feeling. He asks about a mother, admits even a mother can forget, and shows His hands, as He did for Thomas and for a multitude at Bountiful who came one at a time.
Is your name there? Isaiah says yes, and the walls of your life with it, “continually before me.” He cannot look at His hands without seeing you.
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