Section 3
A respected and prosperous farmer from Palmyra, New York, Martin Harris, left his home in the spring of 1828 and traveled southeast until he crossed into Pennsylvania. There he wrote as Joseph Smith, Jr., who was about half Martin’s age, translated the abridged Book of Lehi by the gift and power of God.
Meanwhile, Martin’s wife Lucy told neighbors that Joseph had duped her husband into giving him money. She dramatically moved her favorite pieces of furniture out of the house, claiming she did not want Martin to give them away too. Martin resented the damage Lucy was doing to his good name. He asked Joseph to let him take the translated manuscript home to prove that he was no fool.
“The Lord said unto me that he must not take them,” Joseph recalled, “and I spoke unto Martin the word of the Lord.” Dissatisfied, Martin told Joseph to ask again. “I inquired again and also the third time,” Joseph said, “and the Lord said unto me let him go with them.”[1]
The Lord knew what was about to happen. Martin was sure he knew better, and Joseph feared to disappoint him. Joseph struggled to please both Martin and the Lord. He made Martin vow to show the pages only to his wife Lucy and her sister Abigail, his brother and parents. The Lord’s answer made them free agents, but with agency came accountability. They could do their own will instead of God’s, but making that choice meant that Joseph could no longer be the seer chosen to bring forth the marvelous work. Moroni confiscated the seer stones. Sincerely but unwisely, Martin left for a brief trip to Palmyra with the translated manuscript. He did not return as promised.
Finally Joseph went to Martin and learned that he had lost the manuscript.
“It is gone and I know not where,” Martin confessed.
“All is lost!” Joseph despaired. “What shall I do? I have sinned. It is I who tempted the wrath of God by asking him for that which I had no right to ask.” He wept and groaned and paced the floor, forsaken. “How shall I appear before the Lord?” Joseph wondered. “Of what rebuke am I not worthy from the angel of the Most High?”[2]
Back home in Pennsylvania, Joseph went to woods and prayed for redemption, poured out his sorrow, confessed his weakness. Moroni appeared and returned the seer stones. Joseph looked and saw strict words. It’s not clear whose words they are. They could be Moroni’s. They could be the Lord’s, speaking in third person. They said, “Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men. For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him” (D&C 3)
The words pierced Joseph. “You have been entrusted with these things, but how strict were your commandments; and remember the promises which were made to you if you did not transgress them.” Joseph recalled Moroni’s commission to be responsible for the sacred records and powers and the warning that “if I should let them go carelessly, or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them . . . they should be protected.”[3] Joseph had let Martin persuade him to transgress these commands. “You should not have feared man more than God,” the revelation said. Historian Richard Bushman wrote that these words “were hard for a young man who had lost his first-born son and nearly lost his wife, and whose chief error was to trust a friend, but there was comfort in the revelation as well.”[4]
Indeed, notice the way the tone of the revelation changes about halfway through. “Remember,” it says, “God is merciful.” It tells Joseph he is still chosen to translate if he will repent. Then it teaches him why the manuscript is sacred and can’t be taken for granted. The plates were preserved so the Lord could keep his promises (Enos 1:15-18). The Lord explains that by keeping His promise to give Lehi’s descendants their ancestors’ knowledge of the Savior, “they may believe the gospel and rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ,” exercise faith, repent, and be saved.
The revelation in section 3 marked a turning point in the life of the young seer. This was the first time Joseph committed one of his revelations to writing. Only twenty-two years old, he had learned to use the prophetic voice to foretell the fulfillment of the Lord’s promises to the house of Israel. He was the seer chosen to bring forth the marvelous work that would eventually teach all nations “to rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ,” as the revelation said, “and be glorified through faith on his name, and that through their repentance they might be saved” (D&C 3:20).
Moroni kept the plates while Joseph acted on the revelation’s command to repent. Then in September 1828, one year after he first received them, Joseph received the plates again. By choosing to obey the revelation, Joseph was still chosen and again called to the work.
Section 4
Joseph Smith said he was born to good parents who worked hard to instruct him in the Christian religion.[1] It was Christianity generally that Joseph got from his parents, not a particular version of it. They had no church, and that worried them both.
Shortly after moving his family yet again, this time to a new farm in Manchester, New York, Joseph Smith, Sr. dreamed he met a peddler who promised to tell him the one thing he lacked. Father Smith jumped up to get some paper and awoke before learning the secret. Though he toiled hard and wanted badly to know God’s will, Joseph Smith’s father had a gnawing feeling that something vital was missing in his life.[2]
As his understanding of Joseph’s mission grew, Father Smith began to believe that God would reveal the answers through Joseph. Early in 1829, Joseph Senior visited Joseph in Harmony, Pennsylvania, longing to know what the Lord wanted him to do.[3]
In section 4 the Lord spoke the language of a God-fearing farmer who, by his own admission, sometimes drank too much and who wanted to be blameless. Section 4 sounds like it applies to everyone, but it is also perfectly adapted to Joseph’s father. For example, the command to be temperate meant that he should not drink excessively. The Lord’s metaphor of a ripe field ready for harvesting made perfect sense to Father Smith, whose life as a farmer depended on reaping successful harvests, and who knew exactly what it meant to thrust in his sickle and reap all day long.
This revelation turned Father Smith into a farmer of souls. He had been tight-lipped to Oliver Cowdery, the school teacher who was boarding with his family, but when Joseph Sr. returned home to New York he told Oliver about the marvelous work about to come forth.[4] As soon as the Book of Mormon was off the press and the Church of Jesus Christ was restored, Father Smith spent the harvest season visiting his parents and siblings. He found most of them ripe and brought salvation to their souls and his.[5]
Section 5
About a year after Martin Harris went to Pennsylvania to scribe for Joseph, he arrived there again in spring 1829. This time he said his neighbors were gathering evidence for a lawsuit and threatening to put him in jail if he did not condemn Joseph for deception. Martin said he needed to know, really know, that Joseph had plates engraved with ancient, sacred writings.[1]
The Lord spoke to that situation, but not to Martin. In sections 4 and 6 and dozens of others, the Lord spoke through Joseph to his father or Oliver Cowdery or others. In section 5, it seems like the Lord was not on speaking terms with Martin. Rather, the Lord tells Joseph that Martin’s desire for more evidence can be granted if Martin chooses to meet the conditions of humility, faith, and patience.
The Lord tells Joseph to remind Martin that Joseph is under covenant not to show the plates to anyone unless commanded, implying a rebuke to Martin the covenant-breaker who showed off the translation manuscript and lost it, contrary to his solemn promise.
The Lord tells Joseph he intends to select three witnesses to testify. He will show them the plates and their witness will accompany His words to all mankind. However, the Lord makes it clear that seeing is not believing.
This revelation reoriented Martin. He came to the Lord saying show me and I’ll believe. And let me prove to others so they’ll believe. With Joseph as mediator, the Lord explained, in response, that he would show Martin after he chose to believe and to be humble, not before. Martin eventually received the greater witness he sought. He became one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon plates and artifacts. That happened after he chose to meet the conditions the Lord set in section 5, not before.
[1] “History, circa Summer 1832,” pages 5-6, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/5.
[2] “Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845,” p. 131, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 22, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/138. “Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, Page [6], bk. 7,” p. [6], bk. 7, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 22, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/86.
[3] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834],” p. 8, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 22, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/10.
[4] Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 68.
Section 4 notes
[1] “History, circa Summer 1832,” p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/1.
[2] “Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845,” p. 72, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/79.
[3] “Revelation Book 1,” p. 2, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/4.
[4] “Revelation, February 1829 [D&C 4],” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-february-1829-dc-4/1.
[5] On Father Smith’s mission to his family, see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 114.
Section 5 notes
[1] https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-march-1829-dc-5/1#historical-intro.
Brother Harper,
Do we know the timeline of when the seer stones were taken from Joseph? Was it before Martin left for Palmyra with the manuscript?
The sources do not make the chronology or details crystal clear, but it is clear that Joseph lost the gift and power of God to translate when he chose to give Martin the manuscript.
Brother Harper,
Am I mis-reading your comment, or am I to understand that Moroni took the U&T from Joseph before Martin left for Palmyra? Again, maybe I’m reading context into your words, but the sequence (or me) seems to infer there was a trade made, the 116 pages for the U&T, the Martin left.
The comment is,
“ They could do their own will instead of God’s, but making that choice meant that Joseph could no longer be the seer chosen to bring forth the marvelous work. Moroni confiscated the seer stones. Sincerely but unwisely, Martin left for a brief trip to Palmyra with the translated manuscript. He did not return as promised.”
The sources do not make the chronology or details crystal clear, but it is clear that Joseph lost the gift and power of God to translate when he chose to give Martin the manuscript.
You were my Professor at BYU-H back in 2001 and you planted a seed of love for the Doctrine and Covenants. I still read D&C 1:1 “ye that are upon the islands of the sea” and remember all you taught me. Thank you!!!