In this verse, some of the new branches have been taken away for preservation in other locations. Historically, Jerusalem’s citizens were removed during both the Assyrian and the Babylonian conquests. The Lehites are clearly one of these branches, as will become plain shortly. In this first stage in the tree’s care, prophets come among the people. The young and tender branches were those who believed their message.
Using Lehi’s family as a possible model, a prophet comes among the people and calls them to repentance. The main body of Israel does not change its ways (the tops of the tree), and God calls the believing body to leave and settle in a new place. This scenario describes both the story of Lehi and that of the Qumran community who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. They also saw themselves as reformers of Israel, separated from the main body so they could preserve their beliefs. The concept of a prophet calling a people out of Israel to preserve the “true” belief is therefore not new to ancient Israel.
Symbolism: The second important image to appear here is the root. To what does “the root” refer? Scholars have had diverse opinions about the root in Paul’s allegory, with perhaps most of them seeing it as the patriarchs, or specifically Abraham. In Zenos’s allegory this definition may still hold, but his parable makes an even a tighter connection with the “trunk” or the main body of Israel. The root remains with the tree while young branches will preserve the “essence” of the root while physically separated from it. Perhaps more than the patriarchs, Zenos’s allegory uses the root as the Abrahamic covenant itself.
In this reading of the symbol, what Yahweh as the gardener is preserving is the original covenant between him and his people. Clearly that initial covenant was “good” and worthy of preservation. In this context, grafting in branches becomes an even more powerful image.
Grafting is the physical process of inserting foreign botanical material into the main tree. The “wild” branches are literally from a different tree. They were not part of the original root, yet their grafting brings them into contact with the nourishment of the root, and the same generative power that the root supplies to the natural branches is carried to the grafted branches.
As a symbol for the covenant between Yahweh and his people, grafting represents the insertion of nonlineal people into a covenant with Yahweh that makes them unique. While not children of Abraham by birth, they become children of Abraham by adoption and, as adopted heirs, receive fully the benefits of the covenant. This reading reinforces the view that the Gentile Christian church is the beneficial grafting of the “wild” branches (a precise parallel with Paul). The Nephites would have seen an even more timely fulfillment of this part of the allegory with the infusion of gentiles into their own population. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 6:13.)