1 Ne 11:6 Hosanna to the Lord

“Hosanna. The Spirit of the Lord, contemplating the great faith of Nephi, and his desire for knowledge, cries with a loud voice, ‘Hosanna to the Lord!’ The Hebrew, ‘hoshiah-na’ is an acclamatory prayer for the well-being of somebody, and it means, literally, ‘save now!’ In this connection it is a prayer to the Lord by the Spirit for the preservation of the young prophet in his faith. It is a remarkable illustration of the truth stated thus by St. Paul: ‘The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us…according to the will of God.’ (Rom. 8:26, 27)

“We note that this prayer (or, is it a song?) of the Spirit has the form of Hebrew poetry:

Hosanna to the Lord, the Most High God;

For he is God over all the earth,

yea, even above all.

And blessed art thou, Nephi,

because thou believest in the

Son of the Most High God.

“The chief characteristic of Hebrew poetry is, as is well known, ‘parallelism,’ which means the rhythm of thought, rather than sound, and the arrangement of the words in such a manner that their full meaning comes out first in the second or third line.” (Reynolds and Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 1, p. 80)