Book of Mormon Poet
Poetry in the BoM

Parallelism · 2 Nephi 2:25

Adam Fell That Men Might Be

Lehi’s most compressed couplet. Two clauses, inverted and complete: the fall is for being, and being is for joy. Hebrew parallelism without a wasted word.

  1. A

    Adam fell that men might be.2:25

  2. A′

    And men are, that they might have joy.2:25

Why the form matters

A model of antithetic-then-synthetic parallel: the disaster of Eden is restated as the condition of joy. The poetry is the theology. Many later sermons in the book are expansions of this one line.