Ether
The Book of Ether
The Jaredites rise and fall
Preface · from the original edition
The record of the Jaredites, taken from the twenty-four plates found by the people of Limhi in the days of king Mosiah.
Chapters
- 1Moroni opens the twenty-four plates, runs Ether's line back thirty generations to Jared, and tells how their language was spared at the great tower.
- 2The Jareds carry their flocks, seeds, and a jar of honeybees to the seashore. The Lord tells them how to build barges, but not how to light them.
- 3The brother of Jared brings sixteen molten stones up the mountain. The Lord touches them, and the man sees the finger, and then the body, of Christ.
- 4What the brother of Jared saw is sealed up until the Gentiles exercise the same faith. Come to me and I will show you the greater things.
- 5Six verses to whoever brings the record to light: three witnesses will be shown the plates, and by three witnesses these things will be established.
- 6Eight barges cross in three hundred and forty-four days, buried in the deep and driven by the wind, and the people sing praises the whole way.
- 7Orihah rules justly, and the pattern of the Jaredite record begins: a son rebels, a king is taken captive, and prophets are protected or mocked.
- 8Jared's daughter proposes a dance and a bargain, and the oaths of the ancients return. Moroni breaks off to warn whoever holds this land next.
- 9Akish starves his own son in prison, and war destroys nearly everyone. Later, poisonous serpents and famine drive the people south to the Nephites' land.
- 10Kings rise and fall for generations. Under Lib the people build a great city by the narrow neck and prosper as much as any people ever has.
- 11Prophets come in every reign and are rejected in every reign. The kingdom passes through captivity until Coriantor's son Ether is born in prison.
- 12Moroni's chapter on faith: hope for a better world, the wall of faith the brother of Jared could not stop at, and weakness made strong.
- 13Ether prophesies of a New Jerusalem on this land and is driven out. He writes the rest of his record from the cavity of a rock, watching the war begin.
- 14The curse on the land: a man cannot keep what he sets down. Shiz chases Coriantumr from battle to battle, and no one is left to bury the dead.
- 15Two million dead, and Coriantumr offers his kingdom to stop it. The last twenty-seven fight until only two are standing, and Ether writes his final line.