The Book of Mormon often lapses into childish and petty storytelling, nowhere more so than Jacob 7.

Here Jacob debates Sherem, introduced as intellectually formidable but quickly revealed as inept. Sherem’s first misstep is confessing a belief in the scriptures—an immediate contextual failure.

His second blunder is demanding a sign, a hollow gesture that undermines his argument. Jacob replies with a strong apologetic retort, warning that Sherem denies truth because he is of the devil. Yet instead of sustaining this, Joseph Smith takes the low road, staging a supernatural collapse: Sherem falls, lingers near death, revives only long enough to testify, and then conveniently dies. His dying breath is captured for us in Jacob 7:20.

Instead of fueling missionary work, this miraculous turnaround ends in futility.