Have You Ever Wondered? – Part I

For those who read the scriptures a lot, the question arises from time to time, “have you ever wondered…” what a particular phrase or verse or thought might mean? Or, wondered why it was written that way, or why it was included at all? 
    One of those type verses is found in Ether: “And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish” (Ether: 2:17).
    Let’s take the clause toward the end that states: “and the length thereof was the length of a tree.” In a verse that was describing the water-tight integrity of the barges, it seems odd that the subject veers off to include the length of the vessel and likens it to the length of a tree. This, then, raises the question “how long (high) is a tree?” The odd thing about the comment is that trees in general have no specific height—they vary. Take any forest, it is made up of several vertical layers: 1) the forest floor; 2) the shrub layer; 3) the understory; and 4) the overstory, or canopy.    

There are actually four growth height of trees in most forests and trees within it can vary from about 10-15 feet in height all the way up to 150-feet in height

So why the comment? Perhaps it is because the Lord was telling the brother of Jared that depending on the tree they chose to use, the length would be determined by how tall or long that particular tree was, i.e., “And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof will depend on the length of the tree you choose; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish.”
    Consider that in this passage, the brother of Jared is explaining what the barges were like (obviously a carryover from what the Lord told him they would be like), and outlined how water tight they were—an important factor in light of the later knowledge we learn about these being submersible vessels, capable of being totally immersed in the depths of the sea. As it was written: “I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth“ (Ether 2:24), and “that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?“ (Ether 2:25), and especially “And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea“ (Ether 6:6).

Obviously, as the future readers, Moroni in his abridgement was making sure we understood that these barges the Lord showed the brother of Jared how to make into submersible vessels, could withstand being like submarines, that is, could exist completely beneath and within the ocean depths.
    Now in this single sentence explanation, two things were introduced that were different from the main points covered, which was the watertight nature of the barges, and also: 1) the shape of the ends, that is the front (top) and rear (bottom), i.e., they were peaked; and 2) the length of the barges. 

In this sense, peaked can mean either rounded, as shown above, or pointed, like a pencil

First of all, the fact that the ends were peaked adds to the understanding of how they were able to become submerged and rise out of the depths of the sea on their own, which has to do with their being watertight and fits in with the rest of the sentence—however, the length issue is a separate thought. So why was it included within the overall sentence that appears to have dealt entirely with a separate issue?
    The only reason can be that it is somehow connected. And since the overall subject matter is “structure,” or the capabilities of the barges to become submersible, the length was viewed by the original author and Moroni in his abridgement to compliment that same subject. 

A forest of unique trees, called Baobab—a common name for each of the nine species of tree in the genus Adansonia

  
This brings us back to the so-called construction of the vessels. While this is explained in great detail in the book Who Really Settled Mesoamerica in the several chapters about the Jaredites, we can outline it here briefly by saying that the barges were not constructed like a normal ship, by taking various materials and building a vessel by connecting them together with nails, sewn with rope, etc., as did Nephi when he built his ship. The barges were actually one-piece submersible vessels—the only kind of submersible wood vessels that could have existed in building technology and construction capability at the time of the Jaredites—and were, in effect, a single tree, hollowed out to form a vessel capable of being submerged in the depths of the sea, withstanding depth pressures, and also float on the surface and remain afloat.
    It was a very special tree indeed, called today the Baobab tree, of which is found almost exclusively in Australia, Africa, and Madagascar, including India and Sri Lanka. However, there is a single forest outside these normal indigenous areas where the Baobab has always grown and that is in Dhofar (Oman), along the Salalah Plain, just east of Khor Rori.

Thus, the length of the tree was included when the Lord explained this to the brother of Jared, so the latter would understand that the trees they chose would determine the sizer of the barges they would remove from the ground and gutted to make ready so they would float.
    In this brief clause within the run-on sentence we learn how the barges were made, which then allows us to know and understand what was meant by cutting a hole in the top and the bottom, since at first reading without full understanding would cause one to think that the vessel would be rolling over and over, which of course, under no circumstances, would it have since people and animals would be constantly placed in jeopardy, not to mention the supplies inside the barge continually being tossed about.
    Quite often, the answers to our questions are right before us in the text of the scriptural record, but we simply do not take the time to fully understand what it is we are reading, which leads to another type of question and that is, if these barges were trees, how did they have sides? That is, why was a round tree trunk, becoming the body of the vessel or barge, be described as having sides?
   Again, this is easily answered if one takes the time to realize what is being said and described in the scriptural record and not just start thinking of their own meaning for the words. As an example, the terms Moroni uses are: bottom, top, ends, and sides. Yet, a tree is seldom described in that manner, though a ship, or barge is. So how do we correlate those words?
(See the next post, “Have You Ever Wondered? – Part II,” for an explanation of how the terms used to describe a ship or barge apply to describing a tree?)