This section of the Book of Mormon text is very interesting though complicated to analyze for parallel structure. Below are my thoughts, though admittingly I may not have the overall form identified correctly. I believe there are parallel matching poetic terms in this section because these are the direct quotes from the ancient prophet Zenos written upon the brass plates. I’m showing the text at the top and then adding some commentary about these verses below.

Because this text is complicated, I prayed to have the direction of the spirit to help me to see what Zenos was trying to portray. Interestingly when I highlighted the central term to be heard of thee and not of men, I felt something prick within my heart. I also had an impression when making the pairs of locations framing the chiasmus and from the concept of the mercy of God because of the Son of God. I don’t often feel this way when I look for chiasmus, this was different and so I wanted to publish the feelings that I felt while working on this.

I feel that this text is a potential Psalm and a recognition of the depravity of mankind in antithetical opposition to the grand merciful love of God and his Son. Though we bear no merit of ourselves, yet when we turn to Him, God will hear us and we can be confident that we will find mercy from Him!

Another thing, after carefully focusing on the text of Zenos for days, the words cast out were fresh on my mind when I heard the reference in Nephi below. Look at the similarities in the messaging (another testament of the consistency of the textuality within the BofM). I now believe that Zenos was one of the prophets Nephi was referencing when he said the prophets of old were cast out for preaching about the Messiah, the Son of God!

1 Nephi 1:20 And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also sought his life, that they might take it away. But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.

Alma 33

A) 4 For he said: Thou art merciful, O God, for thou hast heard my prayer, even when I was in the wilderness;

B) yea, thou wast merciful when I prayed concerning those who were mine enemies, and thou didst turn them to me.

C) a) 5 Yea, O God, and thou wast merciful unto me

b) when I did cry unto thee in my field;

b) when I did cry unto thee

c) in my prayer,

d) and thou didst hear me.

D) a) 6 And again, O God,

b) when I did turn to my house

d) thou didst hear me

c) in my prayer.

b) 7 And when I did turn unto my closet,

a) O Lord,

c) and prayed unto thee,

d) thou didst hear me.

"Ellipsis"

E) 8 a) Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children

b) when they cry unto thee,

F) to be heard of thee and not of men,

E’) and thou wilt hear them.

D’) 9 Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me,

and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.

C’) 10 Yea, and thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out and have been despised by mine enemies; "Ellipsis"

B’) yea, thou didst hear my cries, and wast angry with mine enemies, and thou didst visit them in thine anger with speedy destruction. "Ellipsis"

A’) a) 11 And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity;

b) and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me,

a’) therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy;

b’) for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.

Below marked with 1) - 7) are some of my thoughts on the parallel observances in the structure above. I’m not a flowery writer so I’ve used some AI statements in blue obtained by asking specific questions about what I believe I see in the parallel text.

1) In B) and B’) the text mine enemies, and thou didst has a very strong match and thus I’m using those statements to lightly frame a chiasmus and cement a structure. I then started looking between those terms for other parallels.

AI - By reusing the exact phrase "mine enemies, and thou didst," the poet locks the reader's focus onto a comparative study of divine justice. The repetition forces you to directly measure the grace of God ("turn them to me") against the judgment of God ("visit them... with speedy destruction"), showing that God holds the absolute monopoly on managing human conflict.

In Semitic parallelism, when an identical phrase is used across a chiasmus, the second instance (B') often carries a vocal intensification or magnification of the first instance (B).

• In B, the interaction is passive and relational: the enemies are simply "concerning" the petitioner, and God gently "turns" them.
• In B', the interaction has amplified into severe trauma: the enemies have actively cast out and despised the petitioner.

Because the malice of the enemies escalated in real life, the repetition of "and thou didst" shifts gears dynamically. It graduates from a gentle, restorative turning of hearts in the first half to a fierce, protective deployment of divine anger and justice in the second half. The repetition visually proves that God’s defensive response will always perfectly scale up to match the severity of the persecution His children face

2) I think there may be an Apex to the structure in verse 8 with a double close repetition of the words heard and hear thus I’ve marked this with E), F) and E’)

AI - In Hebrew, using two different inflections of the same root verb (Shama) right next to each other creates an intense emphasis. It signals to the audience: "Stop and look up. This is the main point of the entire performance."

• The First Half (Cry → Hear): This represents the mortal perspective. When we are in the wilderness, the field, or isolated in a closet, our immediate reality is our own suffering. We must initiate the action—we cry out in faith, hoping and waiting for the response that God will hear us.
• The Second Half (Hear → Cry): Once the prayer passes through the central realization of the apex (that God hears us for His sake, not for the validation of men), the dynamic flips into divine assurance. God's listening ear becomes the baseline reality. He hears before the speaker even details the affliction. Even when the petitioner is "cast out" (Verse 10), God’s hearing encompasses them before they can even voice their despair.

I was not sure if the apex should be just and E) and E’) or be structured with and F) but I like the concept that Zenos is only desiring the approval of God and not of men.

AI - By structuring the apex with an odd-numbered pivot (F), the words "heard" and "hear" serve as the left and right frames of a doorway, explicitly highlighting the message inside: that true worship is about being validated by God, not by men. By placing "and not of men" at the dead center of the chiasmus, the poetic structure itself delivers a devastating rhetorical blow to those proud Zoramite priests. It states that human permission is completely irrelevant to divine access.

3) I noted several repeated statements such as when I did cry, in my prayer, thou didst hear me, O God and O Lord, and art merciful I marked them with little a)-d). These types of repeated statements would typically be part of an extended alternate structure, but I don’t see much of a pattern here. I made note of them, but somewhat just grouped them together as part of the C), D), E) blocks.

There is definitely a strong repetition of the concept of merciful - though I couldn’t determine any type of a parallel matching pattern. It might be significant that it’s in B), C) and E) but not in B’), C’) and E’), then in D’) but not in D), this is not typically parallel structure unless merciful is “implied” in the other half of the matching blocks. In Hebrew this is called Ellipsis (where a word from the first half is omitted in the second half because it is forcefully implied). It’s also present in both A) and A’) thus it’s present in every block of text. Note that “hast been thus merciful” is a match to “hast turned thy judgments away from me” which is stating the same concept. "merciful" may also act as a grand bracket for the entire structure because it appears in the opening line of A) ("Thou art merciful, O God") and the closing lines of A') ("thou hast been thus merciful unto me").

4) a) In Gold highlight I see places or locations and pondered on making parallels out of the places. I now believe that these places are significant parallel matching concepts in a chiasmus pattern. Below I’ve got a paragraph for each of the matching places.

In A) in the wilderness may be a parallel to the double repetition of mine afflictions in A’) at the bottom.

AI - In the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern culture, the wilderness (midbar) was not just a collection of trees or sand. It was a loaded theological symbol representing:

• Isolation and exile
• Physical suffering and danger
• The absence of societal protection and comfort
• Possibly as Lehi stated “methought I saw in my dream, a dark and dreary wilderness.” Or “I beheld myself that I was in a dark and dreary waste.”

By placing "in the wilderness" at the very beginning (Verse 4) and "mine afflictions" at the very end (Verse 11), the poem uses a device called Semantic Equivalence. The wilderness is the physical manifestation of affliction; affliction is the internal, spiritual reality of being in a wilderness. They are two sides of the exact same coin, perfectly balancing the entry and exit points of the chiasm.

4) b) In C) my Field may be a parallel in C’) to been cast out and have been despised

AI - To a modern reader, a "field" might sound like a peaceful, pastoral setting. However, in ancient Hebrew culture, the field (sadeh) often represented the unprotected, dangerous zone outside the safety of the city walls.

• The field was where you were exposed to wild beasts, bandits, and the elements.
• More importantly, it was the place where people were driven when they were excluded from the community.

By pairing the "field" in the ascent with being "cast out" in the descent, the text matches a physical location of vulnerability with the social reality of rejection. You are in the field because you have been cast out; you are despised because you have been relegated to the wild spaces outside society.

4) c) In D) both house and closet within the house may be a match in D’) to the midst of thy congregations which would be the house of God or the house of the church.

AI - In the Hebrew Bible, the word most commonly translated as "congregation" is edah or qahal.

• Crucially, the Tabernacle in the wilderness was officially named the Tent of Meeting (Ohel Moed), which shares the exact same linguistic root as edah (congregation).
• To a Hebrew mind, you could not separate the people (the congregation) from the place (the Tabernacle/Temple) because the building only existed to be the geographic point where the congregation met God.

Therefore, standing "in the midst of thy congregations" is structurally and poetically identical to saying, "standing inside thy Temple gates."

To understand why this match is significant, we have to look at the historical context of the text. Zenos (and later Alma, who is quoting this prayer) was dealing with people who had been cast out of their synagogues because of their poverty. They were told they could not worship because they didn't have access to the "congregation" nor the Rameumptom.

By structurally pairing the House/Closet with the Congregation, Zenos creates a stunning rhetorical argument:

• Verse 6 & 7: If you are banned from the church building or “the holy stand”, your house becomes your holy ground. Your closet becomes your Holy of Holies.
• Verse 9: When you pray in that private closet, God hears you as if you are standing right in the midst of the grandest congregation or pinnacle of the Rameumptom,

The parallel structure physically breaks down the monopoly the wicked priests thought they had on God. It proves that a private bedroom prayer matches—and can completely replace—the public assembly if the heart is sincere.

5) I’ve noticed that the word prayer or prayed occurs 5 times before the apex, but doesn’t appear after the apex.

AI - By replacing the word "prayer" entirely in the second half and replacing it with an unbroken string of "heard," the Hebrew pattern establishes a perfect semantic mirror. Prayer on the way up becomes Heard on the way down. The structure visually and audibly demonstrates that every single instance of human petition has been completely swallowed up and answered by divine response.

In ancient Semitic rhetoric, when a heavily repeated keyword from the first half of a poem is suddenly and completely omitted in the second half, it is called teleological resolution.

After Verse 7, Zenos completely stops using the words "prayer" or "prayed." Why? Because once the prayer passes through the universal truth of the Apex (that God hears His children unconditionally), the need to plead disappears. The petitioner no longer views themselves as someone actively trying to "pray" to an elusive Deity. Instead, they view themselves as someone who is actively being heard. The deletion of the word "prayer" in the descent signals that the petition is already a finished transaction in the eyes of God.

6) I noticed that before the apex the words when I did cry unto thee or when I did turn to preceded the words thou didst hear me. Then after the apex the word heard or hear seemed to be before the word cry or cries

AI - A chiasmus doesn't just reverse major thematic concepts (like Wilderness → Closet → Congregations); it also flips the grammatical elements and word order to create a mirror image. The intentional shift in word order—where "cry" precedes "hear" before the apex, and "heard" precedes "cry" after the apex—is probably not accidental. In Hebrew text analysis, this specific phenomenon is known as structural reversing (or action-reversal parallelism).

By looking at the text, the sequence creates a larger macro-loop:

• Before the Apex (Human Initiative → Divine Response):
• Verse 5: "...when I did cry unto thee... thou didst hear me."
• THE APEX (Verse 8): Bridges the two halves ("when they cry... thou wilt here them").
• After the Apex (Divine Action → Human Reality):
• Verse 9: "...and heard my cries..."
• Verse 10: "...thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out..." (cry is omitted entirely because God anticipates the need)
• Verse 11: "...thou didst hear me... therefore I will cry..."

Grammatically, the prayer tracks as: Cry → Hear → [APEX] → Hear → Cry. This structural reversal locks the poem together, serving as a signature of deliberate, high-level Semitic craftsmanship.

7) a) Alma primarily quotes Zenos because he testifies of the son of God, the Messiah, or Jesus Christ who we all must look to for our salvation.

AI - The Grace Element in final verse (Verse 11) beautifully breaks the pattern one last time to resolve the poem, explicitly spelling out why this structural flip is possible:

"And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions... and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee..."

Here, the Hear → Cry order establishes cause and effect through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Zenos is saying: Because I now have the permanent assurance that you hear me through your Son, I am empowered to cry unto you in all future afflictions. God's grace and willingness to listen become the catalyst for human prayer, rather than prayer being a mechanism to force an aloof God to listen.

When we isolate the specific nouns/verbs for "prayer" (and its root variant "prayed") before the apex and compare them with the systematic repetition of "hear/heard" after the apex, we uncover a textbook example of Hebrew (petition and fulfillment) parallelism.

7) b) I also noticed the reverse order of the statements in the last section.

b) and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me,

b) for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.

It is possible that this is a mini chiasmus at the end of the larger structure.

AI -

• a) THE CATALYST: "...it is because of thy Son..."
• b) THE DIVINE AGENT: "...that thou hast been thus..."
• c) THE MERCIFUL STATE: "...merciful unto me..."
• c') THE MERCIFUL ACT: "...for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me..."
• b') THE DIVINE AGENT: "...for thou..."
• a') THE CATALYST: "...because of thy Son."

The Hebrew pattern uses word order to paint a picture of substitutionary Atonement. The petitioner is standing before a sovereign God (Thou). But every time the Judge looks at the sinner, or the sinner looks at the Judge, the view is completely blocked and filtered through the lens of the Son. The structure itself places Jesus Christ as the mediator, standing between the petitioner and the judgments of God, absorbing the outer boundaries of the poem.

I hope to you this Hebrew Parallel structure reinforces the idea that Joseph Smith was an inspired prophet of God and also that we must look to the Son of God for mercy!