I agree with Shawn. 2 Nephi 8 is pretty easy to read.Pazooka wrote: ↑January 4th, 2023, 5:11 pmThe BofM version still jives with Gileadi’s translation, except he is kinder to the ignorant and spells it out. The two sons are not people, they are desolation/famine and desolation/the sword. They are what the people give rise to.Shawn Henry wrote: ↑January 4th, 2023, 1:25 pmOf course, Gileadi mistranslates it, he refuses to use the Brass Plates. He omits everything Joseph brought forth so he can stay appealing to secular scholarship.Pazooka wrote: ↑January 3rd, 2023, 12:49 pm Unless that’s a mistranslation of Isaiah. Gileadi renders it: Twofold calamity has befallen you: desolation, ruin - and who laments you? Famine, the sword... rather than these two sons are come unto thee, who shall be sorry for thee (which makes no sense at at within the context of the rest of the verse.
Here's Isaiah off the Brass Plates in 2 Ne 8.
19 These two sons are come unto thee, who shall be sorry for thee—thy desolation and destruction, and the famine and the sword—and by whom shall I comfort thee?
20 Thy sons have fainted, save these two; they lie at the head of all the streets; as a wild bull in a net, they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God.
Their sorrow makes perfect sense, they are lamenting the destruction of a fallen people just as Mormon did.
The Lord anoints and appoints people, not inanimate objects. Let us have Revelation 8 show who is referenced.The two candlesticks.
The two olive trees.
The two anointed ones.
The two witnesses.
The Urim and Thummim are the what all four of these are based on - the two eyes; the seers. I have supposed they are also the sun and the moon but it goes beyond that to what the sun and moon represent. Anointed ones are intended to give light.
3 And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
4 These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.
10 And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
There are typically three lines of leadership the Lord uses, the kingly line, the prophetic line, and the priestly line (hence prophet, priest, and king). They can at times overlap, but more often the Lord uses prophet and priest as a reference to two specific people. I have been following the word links and have found this to be the case.
Read Zechariah 11 and you will have no doubt that the two staves are two people.
You say, "I think one servant would do", perhaps having forgotten those revelation verses. There are two who hold the armies of hell at bay, and they are the same two prophesied about throughout scripture.
The sun and moon are not inanimate objects, they are members of the hosts of heaven and are equated with angelic beings in the prophetic literature. They *have* been prophesying, clothed in sackcloth.
Edit to add: Zechariah has them as literal “sons of oil.” What is oil but light and life. For them to be anointed might only mean as much, since the anointing oil of the heavenly temple was said to make whatever it touched shine with light.
Israelite kings, according to original temple tradition, are priest/kings. They are these “servants” and sons. The Deuteronomists censored some of that out of our cannon because it was too scandalous a thing. I’m gonna start calling them the Deuts-bags, I think...for short.
18 And none to guide her among all the sons she hath brought forth; neither that taketh her by the hand, of all the sons she hath brought up.
Isaiah talks about literal sons before and after 19, why?
The two sons are the two prophets.