“I See His Face with Pleasure”

Brant Gardner

Reference: Enos concludes with a final testimony that emphasizes both the redemptive aspect of the Messiah’s mission and the resurrection. His language echoes two King James texts: “My mortal shall put on immortality” is certainly patterned after 1 Corinthians 15:53–54: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” Similarly, Job 19:26 is the source of the phrase “see his face”: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

Like similar allusions to King James English in the Book of Mormon, these parallels simply indicate the presence of those phrases in Joseph’s mind as ways for translating the meaning. Enos understood and attested to the reality of the resurrection of the body. Joseph Smith couched Enos’s meaning in phrases of similar meaning; their familiarity indicates nothing more than the well-known fact that the literary cadences of the Book of Mormon are intentionally patterned after the King James Version.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 3

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