The hunter whose hunt became a wrestle, whose wrestle became a pardon, whose pardon turned outward into intercession, and whose intercession secured the survival of the very record his prayer is preserved on.
What He Gave Us
Begin with the deepest fact of his witness. The Book of Mormon is in our hands today because Enos asked for it.
Wherefore, I, knowing that the Lord God was able to preserve our records, I cried unto him continually, for he had said unto me: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it. And I had faith, and I did cry unto God that he would preserve the records; and he covenanted with me that he would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time. (Enos 1:15–16)
Read those two verses with the awareness of what you are doing as you read them. You are holding a record that exists because a man in the second generation after Lehi, in a forest at the land of Nephi sometime around the middle of the fifth century BC, prayed for the record to be preserved and brought forth to the Lamanites in some future day. The covenant was given. And he covenanted with me that he would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time. The Lord's due time arrived in 1830. Three centuries before the birth of Christ, more than two thousand years before the publication of the Book of Mormon, Enos prayed for the very pages you are reading. The act of reading them is the answered prayer.
This is one of the most providence-disclosing self-references anywhere in scripture. The record contains the prayer that produced the record. Lehi prayed for his seed (1 Nephi 1:14). Nephi prayed and his words cry from the dust (2 Nephi 33:13). Jacob commended the plates to Enos in Jacob 7:27. Each of the founding generation prayed in some form for the record's survival. But Enos is the one who got the covenant in writing. The Lord covenanted — the Hebrew kāraṯ bĕrîṯ, the cutting of the covenant, the binding form of irrevocable promise — that He would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time. Enos is the prophet to whom the Restoration's chain-of-custody on the Nephite record was covenantally guaranteed. The Book of Mormon's existence in modern hands is, in the most literal sense, the keeping of a covenant the Lord made with Enos.
That is what he gave us. The covenant of preservation.
It is not the only thing. Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee (Enos 1:5) is his — the BoM's clearest articulation of the personal-pardon-by-voice doctrine. Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen (Enos 1:8) is his — the BoM's clearest articulation of the pre-incarnational faith-in-Christ doctrine. I shall see his face with pleasure (Enos 1:27) is his — the BoM's clearest pre-Pauline articulation of the beatific-vision-and-resurrection doctrine. Mortal shall put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53) is in Enos 1:27, six centuries before Paul wrote it to the Corinthians. The mansions Christ would name to His apostles in the upper room (John 14:2) are in Enos 1:27, six centuries before the upper room. Enos is the BoM's quietest pre-quoter of Christ. The disciple in the forest is given to know, by direct voice, the language Christ Himself will use in mortality.
He has the smallest book in scripture and one of the densest in pre-Christological revelation in the entire Old Testament era.
The Name He Carried
Enos in Hebrew is Ĕnôš (אֱנוֹשׁ), the name of Adam's grandson — Seth's son, Genesis 5:6–11 — and a Hebrew common noun meaning mortal man, frail human being. The name carries a particular weight. Enosh is what the Hebrew Bible calls humanity in its mortality and frailty (Psalm 8:4 — what is man (Enosh) that thou art mindful of him?; Psalm 103:15 — as for man (Enosh), his days are as grass; Job 7:17 — what is man (Enosh) that thou shouldest magnify him?). To bear the name Enosh is to bear the name mortal. To be called Enos is to be called the frail one.
Now read Genesis 4:26.
And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.
The naming of Enosh in Genesis is the moment when, according to the Hebrew text, men began to call upon the name of the Lord. The verb is qārāʾ bě-šēm Yhwh (קרא בשם יהוה) — to invoke the name of Yahweh, the technical Hebrew phrase for liturgical invocation, public prayer, the act by which a worshipper places himself under the covenant of the name. Enosh is the man whose generation began the calling on the name. The name itself names a prayer-vocation. Enosh and invocation are linked at the foundation of the Old Testament's account of worship.
Jacob named his son Enos. He named him after Adam's grandson, the man whose generation began the calling on the name. He named him after the patriarch of worship by invocation. He named him the frail one who calls upon the name.
And the chapter that bears Enos's name in the small plates is the chapter of the wrestle which I had before God (Enos 1:2), of I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens (Enos 1:4), of I did pour out my whole soul unto God (Enos 1:9), of I cried unto him continually (Enos 1:15). Enos is named for calling on the name. Enos calls on the name. His chapter is the calling-on-the-name. The naming was prophetic. Jacob, in giving his son the name of Adam's grandson, gave him a vocation. The son lived into the name his father had given him.
There is more. Enosh — the frail one — is also the name the Hebrew Bible uses for humanity in need. Enosh is the man who needs God. Enos's prayer is the prayer of need. He kneels because his soul hungered (Enos 1:4). The hunger of the soul is the enosh-condition. Enos enters his name when he kneels. He becomes what he was named for.
The Hunt That Became A Prayer
The setting is one of the most beautifully framed in the small plates.
Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. (Enos 1:3)
Enos goes out to hunt beasts. He is hunted by his father's words. Sunk deep into my heart — the verb is the slow vertical motion of a thing settling at last where it has been wanting to settle for years. The words his father Jacob had spoken — about eternal life and the joy of the saints — had been heard often. Enos had heard them his whole life. They had not, until that day in the forest, taken hold. On that day, alone with bow and quarry, the words finally sank.
This is one of the truest portraits of conversion in scripture. Conversion ambushes ordinary life. The Spirit waits in the trees for the moment of solitude when the long-heard truth can at last settle. Enos was not in synagogue. He was not at the temple in Nephi. He was not at his father's bedside. He was in the woods with a bow in his hand. And the Spirit was waiting for him.
The reversal of the hunt is the chapter's quiet brilliance. Enos goes out to hunt; he becomes the hunted. The animal of the forest is not what is taken that day. What is taken is Enos. The Spirit hunts him. Saul on the road to Damascus is the New Testament's great hunter-becomes-hunted scene (Acts 9:1–6) — Saul rides out to hunt Christians, and Christ hunts him from the cloud. Enos is the Old Testament's quieter version of the same scene, six centuries early. The reader leaves the verse seeing not Enos's bow but Enos's knees.
And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens. (Enos 1:4)
He kneels. The hunt is over. My soul hungered — the prophetic-Beatitudinal phrase, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6), is the spiritual diagnosis Enos is naming for himself six centuries before the Sermon on the Mount. The soul that is going to be filled is first the soul that hungers. Enos hungered. The vigil begins.
All the day long. He kneels at morning. He is still kneeling at sunset. When the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens. He prays through the day and into the night. This is the Lukan all-night-prayer pattern — he continued all night in prayer to God (Luke 6:12) — placed in a forest at the land of Nephi, on the lips of a single hunter, half a millennium before Luke wrote his Gospel. The deep prayer of the new dispensation is durational. The Lord opens deep things to the soul that is willing to hold the door open through the day and into the night. Enos is the BoM's first sustained-prayer-narrative. He sets the model.
The Wrestle
The chapter's master-thesis-statement is Enos 1:2.
And I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins.
The wrestle. The Hebrew of the verb — ye'āḇēq (יֵאָבֵק), he wrestled — is the verb of Genesis 32:24, of Jacob wrestled with a man until the breaking of the day. The cognate noun is āḇāq (אָבָק), dust, the dust raised by two men wrestling on the ground. Enos's vigil is described with the language of his patriarchal namesake's vigil — Jacob's wrestle at the ford of Jabbok, where the angel touched the hollow of his thigh and put it out of joint, and where Jacob would not let the angel go until the angel blessed him, and where the angel renamed Jacob Israel, one who has striven with God and prevailed (Genesis 32:28).
Two generations of Jacobs. The first Jacob — Adam's great-grandson Jacob, the patriarch of Israel — wrestled an angel through the night at Jabbok and was renamed Israel. The second Jacob — Lehi's son, prophet of the Nephite priesthood, Enos's father — gave the chapter we are now reading the wrestle-vocabulary, almost certainly because the wrestle-vocabulary was already on his lips from the patriarchal Jacob. And Enos, son of the second Jacob, takes the wrestle-vocabulary into his own forest and re-enacts the Peniel-wrestle there. He wrestles where Jacob wrestled. Like his namesake, he is changed by it.
He is not renamed. The Hebrew Bible would have renamed him. But Enos has already been named. He has been named Enosh, the frail one who calls upon the name. The naming has already done what Peniel did for Jacob. Enos's wrestle does not require a new name; it requires that the name he has be fulfilled. And it is. I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins. The wrestler becomes the one whose name had said calling on the name. He becomes what his name had foretold.
The wrestle is the BoM's master-image of deep prayer. The chapter teaches that prayer at its deepest is not petition; it is struggle. The soul does not request and wait. The soul fights before God for the gift God already intends to give. Ye'āḇēq is the work of the dust-raising wrestle. The disciple kneels until the soul, like the patriarch's thigh at Jabbok, is touched and changed. The blessing comes only on the far side of the night. The Restoration would later teach this same doctrine in Joseph Smith's Liberty Jail cry — O God, where art thou? (D&C 121:1) — and in Joseph's own grove-prayer (Joseph Smith—History 1:14–17). The wrestle is the open form of prayer to which the new dispensation is, again and again, invited.
The Voice of Pardon
The blessing comes.
And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed. And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away. And I said: Lord, how is it done? And he said unto me: Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. And many years pass away before he shall manifest himself in the flesh; wherefore, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole. (Enos 1:5–8)
Sit with each line. There came a voice unto me. Not a vision; a voice. The voice-only theophany is the form God takes in the deep night. Same form as Samuel at Shiloh, of whom 1 Samuel 3:4 says only the Lord called Samuel — a voice, in the dark, calling him by name. Same form as Elijah at Horeb, of whom 1 Kings 19:12 says a still small voice — the form in which God came after the wind, the earthquake, and the fire had passed. Enos hears the same voice. Enos, the voice says, calling him by the name his father gave him, the name that means the frail one who calls on the name. The voice answers the call.
Thy sins are forgiven thee. The pardon is personal-by-name. God does not pardon humanity in the abstract; God pardons Enos. The Hebrew Bible's nāśāʾ ʿāwôn (נָשָׂא עָוֹן), to lift away iniquity, is the underlying form. Iniquity is carried away, not erased; God lifts the weight off the shoulders of the petitioner and carries it. My guilt was swept away — Isaiah's I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins (Isaiah 44:22) is the same image. The cloud is dispelled by the wind. The dust is swept by the broom. The guilt that has lain on Enos for as many years as he had been ignoring his father's words is gone in the span of a sentence.
Lord, how is it done? The disciple's honest question. Enos does not know the mechanism of his own pardon. He had not, until that day, even understood that his soul was hungry. He certainly does not understand by what means the hunger has just been satisfied. He asks the simple question — how is it done?
Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. This is the BoM's most striking pre-Christological pardon-verse. Enos has faith in Christ — Christ by name, Christ in the form the Lord Himself will take six centuries later — and that faith is the ground of his pardon. He has the faith without ever having heard the name in the form Christ will bear in mortality. He has the faith without ever having seen Christ in the flesh. The faith is operative anyway. The atonement, six centuries before it is wrought, is already applicable on the strength of pre-incarnational faith.
This is the doctrine Hebrews 11 will later articulate in the famous faith chapter of the New Testament. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them (Hebrews 11:13). Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses — the patriarchal faith-list of Hebrews — all had faith in Christ without having seen Him in the flesh. Enos is in that list. The BoM is teaching the same doctrine Hebrews will later teach: faith in the Christ-who-is-to-come is sufficient for pardon, sufficient for sanctification, sufficient for the indwelling presence of the Spirit. The new dispensation is, in this doctrine, identical to the old. Same Christ, same faith, same atonement, same Spirit, across the centuries. What changes is only the historical fact of incarnation. The substance is the same. Enos in the forest is on the same ground as Paul in the prison at Rome.
Thy faith hath made thee whole. This is the phrase Christ Himself will use, verbatim, six times in the Synoptic Gospels — to the woman with the issue of blood (Matthew 9:22), to the woman who anointed His feet (Luke 7:50), to Jairus's daughter's parents in some manuscripts (Luke 8:48), to the leper of Samaria (Luke 17:19), to the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Luke 18:42), and to others. Thy faith hath made thee whole. The phrase the mortal Christ will use to heal His petitioners in Galilee is the phrase the pre-incarnate Christ uses, in voice, to pardon Enos in the forest at the land of Nephi. The Christ who heals the woman in Mark 5 is the same Christ who pardons the hunter in Enos 1. The voice in Enos 1:8 is the voice of Christ. There is no other reading the text supports.
This is the BoM's most direct pre-quotation of Christ. The Lord pre-quotes Himself across six centuries to a hunter in a forest. The voice that will heal Galilee speaks first to the wrestler at the land of Nephi.
The Concentric Arc
Now the chapter's master-pattern unfolds. Enos's prayer does not stop at his own pardon. It moves outward.
Now, it came to pass that when I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them. (Enos 1:9)
The first fruit of personal pardon is intercession. The pardoned soul does not hoard its pardon; it turns immediately outward to the people it knows. The Hebrew Bible's šāp̄aḵ leḇāḇ (שָׁפַךְ לֵבָב), to pour out the heart, is Hannah's prayer-form at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:15), the Psalmist's prayer-form at Psalm 62:8, the prophetic-prayer-form of intercession on behalf of others. Enos uses it. The vigil that began as my own soul now extends to the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites.
The Lord answers. The covenant is conditional — I will visit thy brethren according to their diligence in keeping my commandments (Enos 1:10) — and tied to the promised-land doctrine of 1 Nephi 2:20 and 2 Nephi 1:5–11. Enos prays for the Nephites; the Lord answers with the same conditional-covenant-of-land that Lehi was given. The intercession is honored. The covenant is given.
And then the prayer moves outward again. The chapter's most striking moment.
And after I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites. (Enos 1:11)
My brethren, the Lamanites. The same Lamanites who swore in their wrath that, if it were possible, they would destroy our records and us, and also all the traditions of our fathers (Enos 1:14). The Lamanites who, two verses later, will be described as wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness (Enos 1:20). Enos prays for them. He calls them my brethren.
This is the Sermon-on-the-Mount doctrine of love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you (Matthew 5:44) in pre-Sermon-on-the-Mount form. Enos does it before Christ teaches it. The pardoned heart eventually intercedes for the enemy. The conversion-arc that begins with self moves through kin and reaches enemy. This is the deep movement of the gospel. The pardoned soul, given long enough on its knees, comes to pray for the people who would destroy it.
And out of this enemy-intercession, the plate-preservation covenant is given. Read the connection: Enos prays for the Lamanites; the Lord covenants that the record will be preserved that it might be brought forth at some future day unto the Lamanites, that, perhaps, they might be brought unto salvation (Enos 1:13). The plate-preservation covenant is the answer to the enemy-intercession. The Book of Mormon exists for the salvation of the people who, in Enos's day, were trying to destroy it. The covenant of preservation is structurally inseparable from the prayer for enemies. The two are one act. The BoM is the Lord's answer to Enos's prayer for his enemies.
This is the most beautiful theological fact about the book the reader is holding. The Restoration of the Book of Mormon to the Lamanites in the last days is the answered prayer of a man who, in mid-life, in a forest, after the longest day of prayer he had ever prayed, asked the Lord to remember his enemies and to find some way to give them, through the record, a chance at salvation. Brought forth at some future day. The future day was 1830. The Lamanites of Enos's mid-life were the ancestors of the millions of native peoples of the Americas whose descendants in our own century are coming, one by one, into the Restoration. Enos's prayer is being answered every week. It is being answered as you read these words.
The Farewell Verse
The chapter ends with one of the most beautiful single sentences in the entire small plates.
And I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer; for I know that in him I shall rest. And I rejoice in the day when my mortal shall put on immortality, and shall stand before him; then shall I see his face with pleasure, and he will say unto me: Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. Amen. (Enos 1:27)
Three pre-quotations of Christ in a single verse, and a fourth of Paul.
First, my mortal shall put on immortality. This is 1 Corinthians 15:53, verbatim. Paul, writing to the Corinthians around 55 AD, will use the same phrase that Enos, writing in c. 421 BC, uses here. The resurrection doctrine, in the formula Paul will give it, is on Enos's lips five centuries early. The phrase did not originate with Paul; the phrase was given by the Spirit to the prophet-disciples of God across the dispensations, and Enos is the BoM's clearest pre-Pauline articulation of it.
Second, I shall see his face with pleasure. This is the beatific vision — Psalm 17:15's I will behold thy face in righteousness; Matthew 5:8's blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God; 1 John 3:2's we shall see him as he is; D&C 93:1's every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me… shall see my face and know that I am. The doctrine is one of the most consistently attested in all of scripture, from the Psalter through the Synoptics through the Johannine letters through the Restoration. And Enos is the BoM's clearest pre-Sermon-on-the-Mount articulation. I shall see his face. The disciple's sure hope of the literal face-to-face presence of the Redeemer.
Third, Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. This is Matthew 25:34, the King's words to the sheep at the right hand at the final judgment — come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. It is also John 14:2, the Lord's words to the apostles in the upper room — in my Father's house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you. Both phrases that Christ will speak in the flesh are here in Enos 1:27 in c. 421 BC. The mansion-doctrine. The place-prepared-doctrine. The come-ye-blessed-doctrine. All of it on Enos's lips, given to him almost certainly by the same voice that pardoned him in the forest. Christ pre-quoting Himself across six centuries to a small-plates record-keeper in his farewell verse.
The fourth pre-quotation is the Hebrews 4:9–10 rest of God doctrine — the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer; for I know that in him I shall rest. The rest of God to which the writer of Hebrews invites the saints is the rest Enos is already named-as-going-into. The doctrine is the same. The author of Hebrews and Enos are speaking from the same well.
Verse 27 is the densest pre-Pauline, pre-Synoptic, pre-Johannine verse in the small plates. It is Enos's farewell. It is also a window into how the Spirit revealed Christ to the ancient saints. The form Christ would take in mortality — the very phrases He would use — were already in the Spirit's hand and were given to the deep-praying prophets of the old dispensation in the form they would eventually take in the new. The unity of revelation across the dispensations is, in Enos 1:27, one of the most strikingly attested unities in scripture.
The Inheritance
Enos hands the small plates to his son Jarom (Enos 1:25; Jarom 1:1) and goes to his rest. The handoff is short — I, Enos, knew that I must soon go down to my grave — but it is the second handoff of the small-plates record. Nephi handed the small plates to Jacob (Jacob 1:1–4). Jacob handed them to Enos (Jacob 7:27). Enos hands them to Jarom (Enos 1:25–27). Jarom will hand them to Omni (Jarom 1:15). Omni will hand them to his son Amaron, who will hand them to Chemish, who will hand them to Abinadom, who will hand them to Amaleki, who will hand them to King Benjamin (Omni 1:25). King Benjamin will hand them to King Mosiah II (Mosiah 1:16). The chain is unbroken from Nephi (in the founding generation) to Mosiah II (in the early reign of judges era).
Enos is the second link in that chain. He is the first link after the founders. He is the proof that the small plates would not stop at the death of the founding generation — that the record-keeping would pass to the next generation and the next, that Lehi's seed, in the third generation onward, would carry the record forward. Without Enos, the small plates die with Jacob. With Enos, the small plates have a second-generation custodian who shows that the work can be inherited, that the calling can be transmitted, that the frail one who calls on the name can carry the record his patriarch-father carried.
This is itself a witness. The Restoration depends on multigenerational stewardship. No one keeps the record forever; everyone keeps it for a season and hands it to the next. Enos is the BoM's first portrait of second-generation faithfulness. He shows that the children of the founders can become founders in their own right. The faith of his father became, by his wrestle in the forest, his own. The small plates of his father became, by his stewardship, his own. The Restoration's pattern of son-after-father, custodian-after-custodian, depends on figures like Enos who take up what their fathers handed them. He took it up.
What He Was
He was the hunter whose hunt became a wrestle in the forest at the land of Nephi. He was the son of Jacob and the grandson of Lehi, the second-generation record-keeper of the small plates, the man whose father had named him Enosh — the frail one who calls upon the name — and who lived into the name his father had given him. He was the petitioner whose all-day vigil bled into the night and whose voice rose until it reached the heavens. He was the disciple whose pardon came by voice and whose pardon was rooted in his faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen, six centuries before the historical Christ. He was the intercessor whose prayer began with himself and ended with his enemies, whose enemy-intercession received the covenant of plate-preservation, whose enemy-intercession is the reason the Book of Mormon reaches Lamanite descendants today.
He was the man who, in his farewell, said I shall see his face with pleasure in language Christ Himself would use in mortality. He was the man who handed the plates to his son and walked down to his grave with the certainty of the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer.
He was the second link in the chain of custody that runs from Nephi to Mormon to Moroni to Joseph Smith. Without him, the chain breaks at the founders. With him, the chain extends one generation further, and one generation further, and one generation further, until it reaches us.
He was Enosh. He called upon the name. The name answered him. And the prayer he prayed in the forest is the prayer being answered in our day, page by page, on the desks and lampstands of every Latter-day Saint who opens the book his hand kept safe.
A father gave him a name that meant prayer; he kneeled and lived into the name; a voice called him by the name and pardoned him; his pardoned soul prayed first for his kin, then for his enemies; the Lord gave him a covenant that the record would survive to reach his enemies in some future day; the Restoration is the keeping of the covenant; every page of the Book of Mormon, opened in our hands, is the kept covenant. He is the witness for what one wrestled night in a forest can do across two thousand years.