The Condescension of God

 If you have been reading my blog this year so far, you know that I have been asking "When did Nephi learn that the Messiah would be their God, Jehovah, incarnate?"  This week while I was listening to my podcasts I found the answer in 1 Nephi 11.

Nephi has prayed and asked to know the meaning of his father's vision.  He is caught away in the spirit and an angel shows him the scene Lehi described.  First he sees the tree with the fruit (v 8).  The spirit asks him what he wants to know, and he answers "to know the interpretation thereof." (v 11)  The angel then shows him a vision of the virgin Mary and asks "Knowest thou the condescension of God?" (v. 16).

Nephi replies that he doesn't understand that concept, and the angel says, "Behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh." (v 18). Or did he?

Two of the podcasters I listen to mentioned that in the original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon, the verse read, "the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh." (see 1830 version of the Book of Mormon in the Joseph Smith Papers.) They said that Joseph Smith went back later and changed it to the current reading to avoid confusion. Later, in Chapter 11 an similar "clarification" was made.  It now reads, referring to Mary's baby, "Behold the Lamb of God, even the Son of the Eternal Farther!" but it in 1830 it read, "Behold the Lamb of God, Even the Eternal Father." (ibid)  Joseph Smith doubtless made this correction because in his day, people understood that Mary's baby wasn't Heavenly Father, but Jesus Christ.  He didn't want anyone claiming that he was suggesting that Mary's son was Heavenly Father. 

In Nephi's time, however, the Israelites didn't believe that Elohim was one god, and Jehovah was another god.  There was only one god, or elohim, that was called, "Jehovah." They believed a Messiah would come but they also did not know that Jehovah would come to earth and become the Messiah, the suffering servant described by Isaiah (Isaiah: 53)  They had no clue about the condescension of God. It is not until the New Testament that there is an idea of a "Son of God," and really, only John who suggests that Jesus was the creator God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. (see John 1:1-9)

The original translation of 1 Nephi 11 suggests that Nephi got the message centuries before the rest of the world.  It makes it clear that Nephi understood, from very early in his ministry, that Jehovah, himself, the creator of the world, and God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would condescend to become an infant child of mortal woman, and would willingly suffer and die to atone for the sins of his people.