KnoWhy #234 - Why Did Moroni Conclude His Father’s Record with 22 Commands? (Mormon 9:27)

Moroni concluded his thoughts at the end of his father’s book (Mormon 9) by issuing a long list of admonitions to “those who do not believe in Christ” (Mormon 9:1). In Mormon 9:27–31, depending on how you divide the sentences in this literary unit, there are 22 distinct commandments. Might it be possible that the number of imperatives on this final list was not random but served in some purposeful way? Compositions that are 22 lines or items long appear in Hebrew literature, with that number corresponding to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. As there is strong evidence for the presence of other Hebrew literary phenomena in the Book of Mormon, Moroni’s list of 22 commands might be something loosely comparable, at least in length, to an alphabetical acrostic—a composition in which each line or item begins with and features a letter of the alphabet.