Moroni takes the oath-making symbol of tearing the garment to make another point. He plays on the torn garment to make a connection to Joseph, and a particular legend about Joseph. The ultimate source of this legend is not known, but Moroni and the people are clearly aware of a legend that suggests that a torn piece of Joseph’s coat had been miraculously persevered over time.
Moroni uses this legend and its tangential relationship to a torn garment to make a point with his new covenant makers. He allows that should they transgress they might be “cast into prison,” a reference to Joseph’s captivity. However, Moroni also uses this example for the positive encouragement, noting that should they be righteous (as Joseph was righteous, by implication) that they should also be “preserved” just as Joseph’s cloak has been preserved. Nibley provides important background to this legend:
“After the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews, many of the sectaries, such as those that once lived around the Dead Sea, moved East to be under the protection of the Persians. Thus groups of Jews representing various sects and shades of belief were scattered all over central Asia in the Middle Ages, and it is from such, no doubt, that Tha’labi gets his amazing fund of information, which is worthy to be set up beside the most enlightening volumes of Apocrypha. Among other things, Tha’labi tells a number of stories, which we have not found anywhere else, about Jacob and the garment of Joseph. In one, Joseph’s brethren bring his torn garment to their father as proof that he is dead, but Jacob after examining the garment (“and there were in the garment of Joseph three marks or tokens when they brought it to his father”) declares that the way the cloth is torn shows him that their story is not true: “Behold, if the bear had eaten him he surely would have rent his garment, and since he would (naturally) have fled towards the gate, verily the garment should have been torn behind.” But since this is not the case it may be that Joseph still lives. Another account is the case of “the vizier” Potiphar, who by examining the tears in Joseph’s garment, knew that he was innocent and spared his life, “for he knew that if he [Joseph] had attacked his wife the tear would have been in front.” So again his torn garment declared that Joseph should live.
Most significant is Tha‘labi’s discussion of the two remnants of Joseph’s garment, from which we quote:
And when Joseph had made himself known unto them [his brethren] he asked them about his father, saying, “What did my father after [I left]?” They answered, “He lost his eyesight [from weeping].” Then he gave them his garment [qamis, long outer shirt]. According to ad-Dahak that garment was of the weave [pattern, design] of Paradise, and the breath [spirit, odor] of Paradise was in it, so that it never decayed or in any way deteriorated [and that was] a sign [omen]. And Joseph gave them that garment, and it was the very one that had belonged to Abraham, having already had a long history. And he said to them, “Go, take this garment of mine and place it upon the face of my father so he may have sight again, and return [to me] with all your families.” And when they had put Egypt behind them and come to Canaan their father Jacob said, “Behold, I perceive the spirit [breath, odor] of Joseph, if you will not think me wandering in my mind and weakheaded from age.” … [for] he knew that upon all the earth there was no spirit [breath, odor] of Paradise save in that garment alone… . And as-Sadi says that Judah said to Joseph, “It was I who took the garment bedaubed with blood to Jacob, and reported to him that the wolf had eaten Joseph; so give me this day thy garment that I might tell him that thou art living, that I might cause him to rejoice now as greatly as I caused him to sorrow then.” And Ibn-Abbas says that Judah took the garment and went forth in great haste, panting with exertion and anxiety … and when he brought the garment he laid it upon his face, so that his sight returned to him. And ad-Dahak says that his sight returned after blindness, and his strength after weakness, and youth after age, and joy after sorrow. [Then follows a dialogue between Jacob and the King of Death].
Note here that there were two remnants of Joseph’s garment, one sent by Joseph to his father as a sign that he was still alive (since the garment had not decayed), and the other, torn and smeared with blood, brought by Judah to his father as a sign that Joseph was dead. Moroni actually quotes Jacob (“Now behold, this was the language of Jacob” [Alma 46:26]) as saying: “Now behold, this giveth my soul sorrow; nevertheless, my soul hath joy in my son” (Alma 46:25). Compare this with Judah’s statement in the Old World account, that the undecayed garment caused Jacob as much joy as the bloody garment caused him sorrow. In both accounts Jacob is described as being near to death—hence Judah’s haste to reach him with the garment and make amends for the evil he has done.
Surely there is “a type and a shadow” in this story, for the particular concern of Israel is with Joseph and Judah and how, after working at cross purposes, they were reconciled after many years by the magnanimity of the one and the remorseful repentance of the other. It is another form of the symbolic story of the Two Sticks told in Ezekiel 37. But aside from the great symbolic force of the tale, there can be no doubt that the story told by Moroni as one familiar to all the people actually was one that circulated among the Jews in ancient times and was taken to the East by them, being like much early Jewish lore completely lost in the West. It was totally unknown to the world in which Joseph Smith lived.” (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 3rd ed. [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988], 220.)