He is the only man in the record who believed so completely that the Lord could not keep him out — who came to the veil with such faith that the veil simply parted, and he saw the premortal Christ face to face, finger and form and all, centuries before Bethlehem. And the scripture never once tells us his name.
The Man Without a Name
Start with the strangest thing about him. Across six chapters in which he speaks with the Lord more intimately than almost anyone in scripture, the record calls him only the brother of Jared. His name is not written. We have it, by tradition, from the Restoration — Joseph Smith, the account goes, blessed a child named for him and revealed that the brother of Jared was called Mahonri Moriancumer (the story comes through George Reynolds and the early Saints, not through the Book of Mormon itself, so we should hold it as treasured tradition rather than scripture). But the text leaves him nameless on purpose, identified entirely by his relationship to another man. The greatest visionary in the Jaredite record is introduced, and remembered, simply as somebody's brother.
There is a lesson hiding in that anonymity, and it runs through his whole life. This is a man whose role, again and again, is to be the one who goes to God on behalf of someone else — for his brother, for his families, for his people. He is defined by intercession before he is ever defined by vision. The namelessness is almost the point: he is the brother who prays, and the praying is who he is.
"Cry Unto the Lord"
We meet him at the great tower, in the confusion of tongues — the moment in Genesis when human language fractured and the peoples scattered. And the first thing we learn about the brother of Jared is that Jared trusted his prayers. When the languages began to be confounded, Jared came to him with a request that tells you everything about their partnership: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us, that we may not understand our words (Ether 1:34). And again — cry unto the Lord that our friends be spared, that we be led to a choice land. Over and over Jared says cry unto the Lord, and the brother of Jared does, and the Lord answers.
That is the first miracle of his life and it is easy to skip past: while the whole earth's languages were being shattered, the prayers of one faithful man kept his family's speech intact. The Jaredites are, in the record, the people whose language was not confounded — because one of them had a brother who knew how to pray and a brother who knew to ask him to. The two gifts together are the seed of the whole Jaredite nation.
The Four Years of Silence
But he was not a man of unbroken devotion, and the record is honest about his worst failure — which makes everything after it more believable, not less.
After the Lord had led them through the wilderness to the seashore, to a place they called Moriancumer, they dwelt in tents … for the space of four years (Ether 2:13). And in those four years, the man who could pray the heavens open simply… stopped. The Lord came in a cloud and chastened him for it:
And it came to pass that the Lord came again unto the brother of Jared, and stood in a cloud and talked with him. And for the space of three hours did the Lord talk with the brother of Jared, and chastened him because he remembered not to call upon the name of the Lord. (Ether 2:14)
Three hours of rebuke. The greatest pray-er in the book went four years without praying, and the Lord called him to account for it. We should not rush past this. The man who is about to see God face to face is the same man who, a chapter earlier, let four years of comfortable settlement lull him out of the habit of prayer. His faith was not a constant flame; it was a thing he could neglect and had to be recalled to. That he repented — and the brother of Jared repented of the evil which he had done (Ether 2:15) — is the hinge. The towering faith of Ether 3 is not the faith of a man who never faltered. It is the faith of a man who faltered badly, was chastened, turned back, and then went all the way.
The Sixteen Stones
Then comes the problem that produces the greatest scene. The Lord instructs them to build barges to cross the great deep — vessels tight like unto a dish (Ether 2:17), sealed top and bottom against the crushing water. And the brother of Jared sees the obvious difficulty: sealed barges are dark. In them there is no light; whither shall we steer? (Ether 2:19). The Lord could simply have told him what to do. Instead He does something remarkable — He hands the problem back:
What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? … For ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you … Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light? (Ether 2:23, 25)
What will ye that I should do? God asks the man to bring Him a plan. This is one of the most quietly instructive exchanges in all of scripture about how the Lord works with us — He does not always solve the problem; sometimes He requires us to think, to labor, to bring Him something to bless. So the brother of Jared climbs the mount Shelem and does the work: he did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass (Ether 3:1). He makes them himself, by hand, from the rock. And then he carries them to the Lord with a prayer that is one of the most beautiful blends of humility and boldness ever recorded.
The Prayer of the Stones
Read how he approaches God — first the abasement, then the audacity:
O Lord, thou hast said that we must be encompassed about by the floods. Now behold, O Lord … look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of the rock. And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness. (Ether 3:3–4)
Notice the structure of his faith. First he confesses his nothingness — because of the fall our natures have become evil continually; nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given us a commandment that we must call upon thee (Ether 3:2). He does not presume on his worthiness. And then, from inside that humility, he asks the Almighty to reach down a finger and touch sixteen stones he made with his own hands. It is staggering boldness wrapped in total self-abasement — and the two are not in tension. His boldness is possible precisely because it rests on nothing in himself and everything in God's power and promise. I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power. That is the whole anatomy of great faith: I am nothing, and You are everything, therefore I can ask You anything.
The Finger and the Veil
And the Lord put forth His finger and touched the stones, one by one. And what happened next no one expected — least of all the brother of Jared:
And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was as the finger of a man, like unto flesh and blood; and the brother of Jared fell down before the Lord, for he was struck with fear. (Ether 3:6)
He had asked for light in his boats and got the finger of God. And here the doctrine of the whole portrait turns on a single exchange. The Lord, astonished — if such a word can be used — asks why he has fallen. The brother of Jared answers, I saw the finger of the Lord, and I feared lest he should smite me; for I knew not that the Lord had flesh and blood. And the Lord asks him the question that is the hinge of the entire Jaredite record:
Sawest thou more than this? And he answered: Nay; Lord, show thyself unto me. (Ether 3:9–10)
Show thyself unto me. The boldness again — and this time the Lord asks the question that unlocks everything: Believest thou the words which I shall speak? And the man answers, Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie (Ether 3:11–12). And on that word — I know — the Lord shows Himself entire:
And when he had said these words, behold, the Lord showed himself unto him, and said: Because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence; therefore I show myself unto you. Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ … this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit … and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh. (Ether 3:13–16)
He saw the premortal Christ — the spirit-body of the Lord, whole, the same form in which He would one day be born — and he saw Him centuries before Bethlehem. The Jaredite, at the dawn of the post-Babel world, looked on the face that Mary would not see for thousands of years.
And the record gives the reason in a sentence that is the deepest thing said about him:
And because of the knowledge of this man he could not be kept from beholding within the veil … having this perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the veil; therefore he saw Jesus. (Ether 3:19–20)
He could not be kept from within the veil. This is the doctrine the whole portrait exists to hold up. His faith did not merely earn him a vision as a reward. His faith had become knowledge so complete, so unwavering, that the veil between man and God lost its power to hold him out. The barrier that stands between every mortal and the face of God simply could not function against a man who believed without the smallest residue of doubt. Moroni, gathering this story centuries later, draws the lesson out plainly — there were many whose faith was so strong they could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes the things which they had beheld with an eye of faith (Ether 12:19). The brother of Jared is the supreme case. He looked with the eye of faith so steadily that his eyes of flesh were opened, and faith and sight became one thing.
The Sealed Things
The Lord then showed him all the inhabitants of the earth which had been, and also all that would be (Ether 3:25) — the whole sweep of history, beginning to end — and commanded him to write it, and then to seal it up, along with two stones (the interpreters) by which it could one day be read (Ether 3:21–28). This is the sealed portion — the vision so complete that it was locked away, not to be unsealed until a people of equal faith should arise (Ether 4:7). When Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, a portion of the plates was sealed and he was forbidden to translate it; the Saints have long understood that sealed portion to be, in part, the vision of the brother of Jared. The man without a name wrote the one book in the canon that is too full of God to be opened yet.
There is a sobering symmetry in it. The brother of Jared was given everything because he doubted nothing — and the record of everything he saw was then sealed away from a world that doubts too much to bear it. Ye shall not have them, the Lord told Moroni about that record, until after thy faith hath been tried even as theirs (Ether 12:35, in spirit; cf. 4:6). The fullest revelation waits on the fullest faith. The brother of Jared is the standing proof of what is on the other side of the veil for anyone whose belief becomes knowledge — and the sealed book is the standing reminder that most of us are not yet ready to read it.
What He Was
He was the brother who prayed — for his family's language, for their guidance, for light in the dark. He was a man whose faith was real enough to fail, who let four years of comfort silence him and was chastened three hours for it, and who turned back. He was the man who, told to solve his own problem, climbed a mountain and molten sixteen stones out of the rock with his hands and then asked the finger of God to touch them. And because, when the Lord asked believest thou, he could answer I know — and mean it without the faintest shadow of doubt — the veil could not hold him, and he saw the face of the Redeemer before the world had a name for Him.
He died, at the last, an old man in the promised land, with twenty-two children and a quiet end (Ether 6:29) — the most extraordinary visionary in the record finishing his life in obscurity, still known only as somebody's brother. But he had seen what Moses asked to see and was only shown in part. He had stood, in faith, where the rest of us stand only in hope. And the book he sealed is still waiting for a people who can believe the way he did.
He has no name in the record, only a brother. He prayed his family's language whole through the ruin of Babel, fell silent for four years and was rebuked for it, then climbed a mountain and made sixteen stones from rock and asked God to touch them with His finger. He got more than light: he got the finger, and then the form, and then the whole premortal Christ — because his faith had become so complete a knowledge that the veil simply could not keep him out. He wrote what he saw and sealed it away, too full of God for a doubting world. The greatest seer in the Jaredite record is remembered as somebody's brother who knew how to pray — and that, the namelessness seems to say, was the whole of his greatness.