Jacob 5:34
1830 Edition
And the servant sayeth unto his master, Behold, because thou didst graft in the branches of the wild olive tree, they have nourished the roots, that they are alive, and they have not perished; wherefore, thou beholdest that they are yet good.
Changes
Simple English
The servant said to his master: 'Because you planted wild olive branches, they fed the roots. The roots are still alive. They haven’t died. You can see they are still good.'
Paraphrase
The servant replied, 'Because you grafted in the wild olive branches, they’ve nourished the roots and kept them alive—they haven’t died. So the roots are still good.'
Notes
In Jacob chapter 5 and 6, an allegory of the tame and wild olive trees is attributed to an ancient prophet named Zenos, who supposedly lived before Lehi’s journey to the New World. The allegory, however, closely mirrors material from multiple biblical sources: Apostle Paul’s discussion of olive trees in Romans 11:17–24, Jesus’ parable of the unfruitful fig tree in Luke 13:6–9, and imagery from Isaiah 5:1–7 concerning a vineyard. In the Book of Mormon, these sources are expanded into an allegory spanning over six pages. As Jerald and Sandra Tanner note, “It is probably the most repetitious part of the Book of Mormon. It gives the impression that the author is deliberately trying to use up as much space as possible. It is very hard to resist the idea that it is merely filler material." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 165.
Similarly, Wesley P. Walters observes, “For a grand finale of his work, however, he returned to this olive tree illustration [given by Apostle Paul] and worked it into a mind-boggling allegory, combining it with Jesus' parable about the unfruitful fig tree (Lk. 13:6–8) and working in the words from Isaiah 5:1–5 about God's disappointment with his grape vineyard. The result is a staggering conglomeration that would perplex a horticulturalist and bewilder an exegete” -Wesley P. Walters, "The Use of the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon," (Master's thesis, St. Louis: Covenant Theological Seminary, April 1981), pp. 152-153.