2 Nephi 12 parallels Isaiah 2. The introduction of Isaiah, son of Amoz, as the one who “saw” the vision identifies the speaker as though the text began here, not with a previous chapter. It is obviously a new topic, not a continuation from a previous text. In the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, this verse begins a lengthy chapter comprising what post-1879 versions present as chapters 12–15. However, the 1830 edition also includes our current chapter 11, Nephi’s introduction to Isaiah, as the beginning of that chapter. (See“Excursus: Nephi’s Isaiah Quotations,” following 2 Nephi 11.)
History: Isaiah’s immediate concern is for Israel’s future—not a distant future but current events. His predictions of coming disaster would be fulfilled in 705–701 B.C. (during his lifetime), when Assyria also invaded Judah, failed only to take Jerusalem and then fell. Isaiah credits the salvation of Jerusalem to a miracle: “Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh (Isa. 37:36–37). Nevertheless, some of Isaiah’s prophecies do point to an eschatological victory that comes long after the historical invasion.
These events occurred about one hundred years before Lehi’s family left Jerusalem, but Lehi would not have missed the parallels with Jerusalem’s current danger. Nephi obviously saw matters from the same perspective. Babylon, a looming superpower from the East, had already, in 598 B.C., replaced Jehoiakim as king in Jerusalem with Zedekiah as Babylon’s puppet king. Lehi’s prophecies of destruction in Jerusalem paralleled Isaiah’s prophecies of the destruction of Judah. Above and beyond the spiritual messages of Isaiah, Nephi must have felt a tremendous kinship with Isaiah because of their parallel circumstances.
Text: The text of Isaiah 2:1–4 is nearly identical to that found in Micah 4:1–4:
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.
Joseph Blenkinsopp notes:
Every possible explanation of this duplication has been given at one time or another—Isaiah borrowed from Micah, Micah from Isaiah—it entered both books from an earlier, Ikorahite liturgical composition from the late fifth or early fourth century, or from some other source. That variants of the same textual tradition appear in different places is neither strange nor of rare occurrence—compare Obadiah 1–7 with Jeremiah 49:9–10, 14–16 and Psalms 14 with Psalms 53. In this instance, certainty is unattainable, but it seems that the complex of topoi represented in the passage… is more at home in Isaiah than in Micah.
Blenkinsopp translates this passage as the “word” that Isaiah “saw” in vision:
The verse is one of several titles [the introductory material Gee characterized as inquit statements] that employ the verb “see in vision” together with the “word” or “words” or “oracle” and are therefore different from the first title [of Isa. 1], which uses the term “vision” for the book as a whole in keeping with later usage. Since there is no further superscription until 13:1, which introduces sayings against foreign nations, we suspect that 2:1 was introduced at a considerably earlier stage than 1:1 as the title to chapters 2–12 rather than to chapters 2–4 or 2:2–4.
The implication of this difference in titles is interesting for Nephi’s choice to begin with chapter 2 of Isaiah rather than chapter 1. It lends some credence to the hypothesis that the brass-plates Isaiah was organized differently. Unfortunately, the earliest extant text of Isaiah is the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, and that text dates from around 100 B.C. That is too late to provide evidence on how the text might have been differently organized in 600 B.C.