Introduction to Mosiah 18

[pam]

The twenty-four plates were called The Book of Ether after its author. (Ether 1:2) Their discovery was not an accident. For, when Ether had finished his record, "He hid them in a manner that the people of Limhi did find them." (Ether 15:33)

Before the Jaredites left Moriancumer, their camp in the Old Country, the Brother of Jared was given indescribable visions on Mount Shelem. The Lord instructed him not to make them public during his lifetime, but to place them on record before his death, in the language commonly spoken before the building of the Tower of Babel but no longer known by later generations. This record was to be sealed. He also received two stones, prepared so as to magnify, or make clear, "the things which ye shall write." These were also to be sealed. (Ether 3:21-24, 27, 28)

From the information given by Moroni, we know that King Mosiah, the son of Benjamin, had the writings of the Brother of Jared, and that he kept them in case the time for their publication should come. We also know that those writings, together with "the interpretation thereof"—the translation by Mosiah—had come into his (Moroni's) possession, as also the interpreters. (Ether 4:1-5)

There is, then, no doubt that Mosiah, the son of Benjamin, was the custodian in his day of the Jaredite records and the stones of interpretation. (Mosiah 28:11-16)

The Jaredite record was part of the twenty-four plates of Ether which came providentially, into the hands of Mosiah through the expedition of Limhi. In all probability he received the interpreters from his father, Benjamin, who may have received them from Mosiah the First, his father.

(George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, edited and arranged by Philip C. Reynolds, 7 vols. [salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1955-1961], 2: 283.)