I basically ended up considering verse 41 closely as a way of thinking through some of the rethinking I’ve done regarding faith and the first seminar question regarding the meaning of faith. Although verses 30-36 don’t explicitly show up in the discussion, these verses actually played a very important role in my rethinking the meaning of faith and the way that it represents a giving-oneself-over to the goodness of the seed, which is what I now think is the major theme of verses 30-36….)

I had to look up the 2 quotations of Isaiah 55:1 (I could only remember 2 Nephi 9:50). I’m presuming you had 2 Ne 26:25 in mind as the other quotation. What caught my interest in looking this up, however, is Alma 1:20 which reads (my emphasis):

Yea, they did persecute them, and afflict them with all manner of words, and this because of their humility; because they were not proud in their own eyes, and because they did impart the word of God, one with another, without money and without price.

Reading this is enough to change me from skeptic to believer—that is, I think the “without money and without price” quotation of Isaiah is strong support for the idea that Isaiah (55:1 in particular) is clearly in the forefront of the mind of the redactor of the Book of Alma.

Also, I think the play on the word word in this verse (1:20) is fascinating in light of chapter 32, esp. in the way the words are used to persecute those that belong to the church, “because of their humility”.

Looking at these larger textual themes will surely be a productive exercise….

(I just noticed that searching at lds.org for the terms “without” and “money” also adds 3 Ne 20:38 as a cross-reference, quoting Isa 52:3: “ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money”—interestingly, 2 Ne 9:50 doesn’t show up with this search, though both terms occur. My confidence in the lds.org search engine has just dropped significantly!)

(1) There is no inherent relationship between the two texts (but we might still profit from reading them in the light of each, some intertextualists and some scriptural hermeneutists would say).

(2) Alma (et al) deliberately crafted the account to allude to the Isaiah text (which presumably they had since 55:1 is quoted 2x in the BoM).

(3) Isaiah was prophesying of this event (a hard sell to be sure but I don’t like to leave it off the table).

(4) As you mention, Alma and Isaiah may be drawing on a common source, although I think this would explain some similarities (word=seed) better than others (trees clapping).

My guess at this point is that I can make a strong-but-not-airtight case for (2), although I think the project has merit even if we just settle for (1).

2 Nephi 26:25-26:

25 Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.
26 Behold, hath he commanded any that they should depart out of the synagogues, or out of the houses of worship? Behold, I say unto you, Nay.

Also, I think the unstated water theme you note with regard to the scorching sun is interesting because of how the Book of Mormon uses fountain imagery, often interchangeably with the tree of life (e.g., 1 Ne 11:25; Alma 5:34) and/or Christ (e.g., Ether 12:28; Moro 7:11).

Regarding “cast out”: On the one hand, unbelief can cause the seed to be cast out (vv. 28, 38). On the other hand, the seed will be cast out, justifiably (presumably), if it doesn’t grow (v. 32). So, whether the Zoramite poor were cast out “justifiably” or not seems to depend on whether the Zoramite poor truly humble themselves or not. I think this is, indeed, very interesting, but I’m still not sure quite sure to make of it (so if it sounds like I’m just restating points you and others have previously made, it’s because I’m just trying to rethink this through aloud…). One thought is that we can read these two casting outs allegorically as the Fall and Final Judgment. Or perhaps we should think in terms of three “casting out” events: the Fall with Adam and Eve being cast out; the Atonement with Christ being cast out; and the Final Judgment with the wicked being cast out.

Thinking more in terms of Final Judgment also strikes me as interesting in light of the theme in this chapter, somewhat implicit, of pre-judging vs. trying the experiment (I think I made a related comment earlier regarding “space” in terms of prolongation: giving place to the seed is parallel to God giving us a space of time to repent in Alma’s later words to his son). If the purpose of this life is to be proven/tried (cf. Abr 3:25), with “space” given to see if we repent, then our proper response to words that messengers deliver to us should be to try them and give them place. Hmmm….

(Note to self: I’ve only responded to comments for vv. 37-38—add more later!)

Your insight about the saying-then-doing sequence in verse 37 as being like the creation account is fascinating. I don’t know what to do with it for now, but I really like it.

Your drawing together the theme of Zoramite clothing and the nourishing of the tree points toward yet another Edenic image (sheesh! will we be doing anything these last few weeks but giving Jenny more fodder for her paper?): Adam and Eve clothe themselves first with the leaves of the (fruit?) trees. The Christic act in the Garden sequence, of course, is the replacement of these clothes with the skins of beasts. Interesting possibilities here.

About the planting of the tree of life (as opposed to its being simply provided in the Garden): isn’t the trick that the tree of life is being planted in the world where only trees of knowledge grow? One could parabolize the visitation of the angels as mentioned in verse 23 by suggesting that they are visitors from a foreign land who bring a seed from a faraway land: were the planter to go visit the faraway country, they would need to do no work to pluck of the fruit, but here, where only the local trees grow for now, a good deal of effort would need to go into producing the fruit.

Your diagramming and discussion of the many “sayings” in the chapter is simply remarkable, remarkably productive. I want to look at each of your comments much more carefully so as to have something much more productive to say than I would right now.

I also want to offer some reflections on the chapter as a whole, but will do that as time permits in another comment.