Gazelem is the name the Lord gives, in Alma’s counsel to his son Helaman, to a servant for whom he would prepare a stone “which shall shine forth in darkness unto light.” Through the stone the Lord would disclose to his people the secret works, works of darkness, and abominations of others (Alma 37:23). Alma ties the stone to a set of interpreters, prepared so that an earlier word of God might be fulfilled: that he would bring all secret works and abominations out of darkness into light to every nation that would later hold the land, and would destroy the unrepentant from the earth (Alma 37:24-25). It is the only occurrence of the name in the record.
Wilford Woodruff later identified “Gazelam” with the stone itself, which he said Joseph Smith found thirty feet underground while digging a well (Discourse 1893-02-22, p. 1, The Wilford Woodruff Papers).
In the first printings of the Doctrine and Covenants, “Gazelam” was used as a code name for Joseph Smith (D&C 78:9; 82:11; 104:26, 43-46). Orson Pratt explained that when the Book of Covenants was to be published, the persecutions in Kirtland and nearby led to changing some of the names: Joseph was called Baurak Ale, a Hebrew phrase meaning “God bless you,” and was also called Gazelam, “being a person to whom the Lord had given the Urim and Thummim,” and Enoch (Journal of Discourses, 16:156).