Section 29: Foreshadowing the Exodus

 Section 29 is the first eschatological section in the Doctrine & Covenants. Eschatology is the study of the end times. This section is often compared to the book of Ezekiel or the Book of Revelation because they also deal with the end times and have some of the same symbolic images.  One of the podcasts I listened to this week (I think it was Scott and Casey on Scripture Central) pointed out that there is also a lot of imagery here from the book of Exodus. This fascinated me since one of the things I am discovering this year is that the modern church was as much a restoration of the Old Testament worship as it is of the New Testament gospel.  

In the Exodus story, before the people leave Egypt, Moses calls down 10 plagues onto the Egyptians.  They are:, water into blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock dying, boils, hail that turns into fire, locust, darkness, and the death of the firstborn.  Once they left Egypt, the Hebrews were lead by a pillar of fire/smoke to Mount Sinai where they received the law. Let's see how many of these images we can find in D&C 29.

Hail: 29:16 (also and stars falling v. 14)
Flies: 29:18

Lice: (here maggots) 29:18
Darkness: 29:14
Pillar of Fire: 29:12
Mount Sinai: 29:13

It doesn't include all the images, but there is definitely enough that someone familiar with the Exodus story might notice the tie in, especially because of the mention of the Pillar of Fire and the Mount Sinai. Those images are exclusively related to the Moses story.

At this time Joseph Smith was working on the "translation" of the Bible, so maybe these ideas were already in his head when he received the revelation. The thing he didn't know, and nobody knew at that point except God, was that within 20 years the Saints would be making their own exodus from the United States, lead by a modern Moses, Brigham Young, to establish a new home/nation in the American West. As the Old Testament Exodus is the foundation story of the People of Israel, the Doctrine and Covenants is the foundation story of the modern church. Was the Lord intentionally foreshadowing?  Probably.  He loves to do that. Did anyone pick up on it at the time? Probably not.