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A Home for the Gods

A Home for the Gods

Last updated on: July 10, 2026 at 3:18 pm by Dan Peterson

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A Home for the Gods 2026-07-10T15:18:23-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A photograph taken at Glacier Bay in 2004 by Quentin Goodman (JanQuen at English Language Wikipedia)

A new article, written by Todd Uriona, went up earlier today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 69 (2026): 183-214. It is entitled “The Iron Rod Reimagined: Revisiting the Meaning of an Enduring Metaphor”:

Abstract: The iron rod, presented so prominently in Lehi’s visionary dream (1 Nephi 8:19–24), has traditionally been conceptualized as a static handrail or balustrade guiding travelers toward the tree of life. While this imagery has provided meaningful theological guidance for many years, the metaphor of the rod of iron can profitably be viewed through another lens: that of the Ancient Near Eastern shepherd-king. From this perspective, the rod functions as a scepter or staff symbolizing Christ’s divine authority and active leadership in gathering his flock. Rather than a fixed handrail lining a predetermined route, Christ’s staff or rod is an instrument of rescue actively extended to travelers as they traverse the strait and narrow path. This article expands on that premise by demonstrating that the iron rod may encompass a deeper, dualistic functionality that is rooted in the Hebrew terms for the word, rod. The central thesis of this paper posits that the metaphor of the rod of iron functions simultaneously on two levels. First, as the Shepherd’s authoritative staff, and second, as an organic branch that is actively extended to the scattered house of Israel to enable their restoration and covenantal grafting. This second horticultural dimension fuses Christ’s roles as the divine Shepherd-King with his role as the True Vine. This coupling allows for an intertextual synthesis. It maps the specific vocabulary of adherence (“clinging” vs. “holding fast”) in Lehi’s dream (1 Nephi 8) onto the established covenantal metaphors found in Zenos’s Allegory of the Olive Tree (Jacob 5), which describes the grafting of a branch as either withering or firmly taking hold.

Todd Uriona’s article is accompanied on the Interpreter Foundation’s website by “Interpreting Interpreter: A Reimagined Rod,” which was written by the remarkable and remarkably generous Kyler Rasmussen:

This post is a summary of the article “The Iron Rod Reimagined: Revisiting the Meaning of an Enduring Metaphor” by Todd J. Uriona in Volume 69 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https:/interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/_OkKTVzmrcI.

The Takeaway: Uriona explores the concept of the iron rod within Lehi’s dream, suggesting that the rod may be best represented by a scepter or staff rather than a handrail and showing how it fits within the horticultural imagery used elsewhere within the Book of Mormon.

A 2014 Wikimedia Commons public domain image of Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park

And — I’ve been somewhat distracted by glaciers and soaring mountains and bald eagles and sea otters — I think that I failed, yesterday, to mention the appearance on the Interpreter Foundation’s long dead and never varying website of “Reprint: Abram Meets Melchizedek, with Joseph Smith at the Reader’s Side,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw”:

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/abraham-and-his-family.

“‘Abram Meets Melchizedek.’ Though the title of this essay is simple enough, the Genesis chapters that relate this story are full of enigmas. It has been claimed that ‘no chapter in the Bible has been more widely studied than Genesis 14’ and, going further, that the episode in which Melchizedek and Abram meet is ‘the most complex within this chapter.’ Scholars are divided about whether the battle scenes in the first twelve verses of the chapter—chock full of explicit historic details—are real or are intentionally fake history. ‘This is a chapter rife with unique literary devices, including explanatory glosses, plays on words, etymological significance of names, and even a possible use of gematria.’ The prevalence of these devices attest not only to the chapter’s importance, but likely also its sacred character.”

Another image from Glacier Bay National Park, this one taken by Diego Delso delso.photo, License CC BY-SA

I note with interest and enthusiasm the establishment of the Sharon Institute and the launch of its Journal of Faith and Scholarship. The similarity between the title of the Sharon Institute’s journal and the subtitle of the Interpreter Foundation’s journal might indicate that we’re fishing in the same waters — which, in a sense, we are — but the leadership roster of the Sharon Institute and the contents of the first issue of its new journal suggest that, while our loyalties and commitments align, our areas of focus are quite distinct. I wish them every success.

A group of tourists aboard a cruise ship in Glacier Bay back in 2004.

After posting my blog entry yesterday, we boarded one of two rather large catamarans and approached more closely than the cruise ship could to the enormous Hubbard Glacier, the largest tidewater glacier in the world (so far as I’m aware), which is located next to the significantly smaller Turner Glacier at the end of Disenchantment Bay, within eastern Alaska’s Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It was Alessandro Malaspina who gave the bay its name (“Puerto del Desengano”) in 1792 when, having first thought that he had finally found the long-sought Northwest Passage, he realized that, yet again, he hadn’t. Up by Anchorage, it was the otherwise ubiquitous Captain James Cook who expressed similar disappointment when Cook Inlet’s Turnaround Arm didn’t pan out.

Hubbard Glacier falls within the domain of the Tlingit people. In fact, the two catamarans that we used are apparently owned, in some sense, by the Tlingit or, at least, by people of Tlingit background. (I’m not precisely clear on that.) We maneuvered between and over bergy bits and growlers (see yesterday’s entry), and watched several instances of glacial calving.

We spent today cruising in Glacier Bay National Park, which is likewise Tlingit country. (We didn’t go ashore, but sailed very slowly through the very large bay. This is a grand, magnificent, and inspiring landscape. But it’s also an austere one, and quite inhospitable in many ways. It is not, I think, fitted to mortal humans but, rather, to the Gods. I can certainly understand why peoples around the world have thought of mountains as the abode of the divine, and have compared their own constructed temples to “the mountain of the Lord’s house.”

Posted from Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska

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