Textual: These verses have an obvious phrase dependence upon passages from the New Testament. The similarity between the verse in Matthew and in Luke suggests that each is repeating a known saying, although presenting it in a slightly different way:
Matthew 23:37
37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Luke 13:34
34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
Cultural: There is a high amount of repetition in the Book of Mormon account. The phrase that is repeated is the Lord’s lament that he has often wanted to gather them as a hen gathereth her chicks. The repetition suggests some kind of poetic structure or meaning, and the repeated imagery suggests that this is not simply a copy of a New Testament phrase, but rather an image that was current for the New World audience.
For this last observation we should note that the New World would have been familiar with turkeys, but not chickens. Nevertheless, the imagery would be easily transferred. We might therefore expect that what these New World people heard was their word for turkeys, and Joseph Smith simply translated hen on the basis of the New Testament passages.
Literary: The obvious repetition of the same phrase suggests that there may be more parallels in the text. Indeed, they may be extracted as follows:
Stanza 1
O ye people of these great cities which have fallen,
who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are of the house of Israel,
how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you.
And again, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
yea, O ye people of the house of Israel,
who have fallen; yea,
Stanza 2
O ye people of the house of Israel, ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen;
yea, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens,
and ye would not.
O ye house of Israel whom I have spared,
how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.
The Book of Mormon passages may be scanned into two sections. The first has a chiastic form. The second set is a repeated parallel. The presence of the two different types of parallelisms suggests that we may have the poetic elements without a controlling overall poetic structure. That is, there is clearly a single theme, and these verses clearly belong together. They do not, however, form a cohesive poetic structure.
In the first paralleled set, the emphasis is on the comparison between the New World and the Old World. In both cases there are “fallen” who are involved. In the New World it is people and cities that have literally fallen. In the Old World, it was Israel itself who was “fallen” because they would not accept their Messiah.
In the second paralleled set there is a contrast between the Old World and the New. The Old World is “ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen.” In the New World the address is to “ye house of Israel whom I have spared.” The contrast is heightened by the opposition of the “ye would not” and the “if ye will repent and return.”
Even though the entire section does not have a poetic structure that governs the entire set, there is an interesting combination of paralleled and contrasting elements. In the first stanza we have a structure of opposition in the chiasm, but a parallelism in the meaning. In the second stanza we have a parallelism of structure, but an opposition in the meaning.