Doctrine and Covenants 132 is the revelation on plural marriage dictated by Joseph Smith in 1843. Shared in secret during his lifetime and later canonized in 1879, it became one of the most consequential and controversial texts in Latter-day Saint history. The revelation introduced the sealing of marriages for eternity, provided the theological foundation for polygamy, and continues to influence Church teachings about family and exaltation today. In this interview, scholar William V. Smith explores D&C 132’s origins and lasting impact.
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Introduction to the Plural Marriage Revelation (D&C 132)
Why is D&C 132 so significant in our history?
There are many reasons for the ongoing significance of Doctrine and Covenants 132 to Latter-day Saints and their history. Aside from the role it played in the idea of “sealing” human relationships now and in the afterlife, it helped enroll polygamy into the theological landscape of Mormonism (as the term may be used to apply to the post-Nauvoo diaspora), whether a given group of believers accepts its authenticity/applicability or not.
While The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints no longer sanctions men being married to multiple living wives, it still allows for a man to have more than one wife in the hereafter (a widower could remarry and be sealed to a new wife, for example).
Interpretations built in part on the revelation form a textual foundation of some of the more popular sayings in Latter-day Saint publicity, like “families are forever” and “literal child of God.”
What is the historical context for the reception of D&C 132?
I’ll speak to its immediate origin. Some of the answers to the questions that follow this one consider a few of the less obvious links to earlier sources. As a text, the revelation was dictated by Joseph Smith to his clerk, William Clayton, on July 12, 1843, and copied within 24 hours or so by a clerk in Joseph Smith’s store, Joseph Kingsbury.
The motivation for dictating a written revelation was a conversation between Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith. Emma Smith, Joseph Smith’s first wife, had rejected the idea of plural marriage.
Hyrum argued that a written divine confirmation of its legitimacy might convince Emma to return to the fold of believers in the practice.
Clayton’s diary describes her rejection of the revelation text and her anger at the fact that her husband produced it.
Early Reactions and Interpretations
What did Joseph F. Smith say about Doctrine and Covenants 132?
Joseph F. Smith suggested that certain references in the text (probably those that call out Emma Smith) were never meant to be part of a published version of the July 1843 text:
When the revelation was written, in 1843, it was for a special purpose, by the request of the Patriarch Hyrum Smith, and was not then designed to go forth to the church or to the world.
It is most probable that had it been then written with a view to its going out as a doctrine of the church, it would have been presented in a somewhat different form. There are personalities contained in a part of it which are not relevant to the principle itself.
Joseph F. Smith, “Discourse,” Deseret News, September 11, 1878, 498.
What is the provenance for D&C 132?
Reportedly, Emma Smith burned the Clayton text of the revelation. The Kingsbury copy, made on or before July 13, 1843, was usually kept by Newel K. Whitney until Brigham Young requested it during the Latter-day Saint sojourn at Winter Quarters.
Whitney’s daughter, Sarah Ann, became Smith’s plural wife the year before the revelation, while Kingsbury himself engaged in a faux marriage ceremony to Sarah Ann to cover the relationship with Smith. That accounts in part for their interest in the text.
The Kingsbury text was copied by Willard Richards and twice by Whitney’s son Horace. All these early copies survive in the Church History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, and I have carefully examined them all.
The revelation was first published in 1852 in Utah, and the published text is a close match for the Kingsbury manuscript.
Does the current text of D&C 132 accurately reflect what Joseph Smith wrote?
The text of Kingsbury’s copy of the revelation matches Joseph Smith’s private teachings delivered earlier in the year, for example, references found in the diary of Heber C. Kimball. The surviving eyewitness to its dictation, Clayton, vouched for the Kingsbury copy. Later in the year, Hyrum Smith’s public remarks on plurality suggest that the text and Joseph’s sermon a few days after the revelation mention ideas in the text.
The Kingsbury text has internal hints of its validity. For example, near the end of the text (about verse 61 in the currently published version in the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants), the manuscript style changes markedly—especially in the use of abbreviations that did not appear earlier.
There is sufficient contemporary evidence to suggest the current text is an authentic representation of the original.
Kingsbury inadvertently explained this style change in his legal testimony many years later. Hyrum Smith had come to Whitney to retrieve the original text, but Kingsbury had not finished his copy.
Hyrum’s visit explains the subsequent hurried style of the final part of the manuscript. Handwriting analysis shows that the manuscript is in Kingsbury’s hand.
The text of the revelation fits Clayton’s diary evidence. It’s offensive to modern eyes, but it is very clear in its threats to Emma, its defense of Joseph, and its declaration of divine support for him—his exalted status was sure (D&C 132:53–60).
Witnesses of the revelation’s use in teaching polygamy to recruits in Nauvoo are not rare, but their testimony tends to date long after 1843 in reminiscences and affidavits. So much of the testimony about Joseph Smith’s practice and private advocacy of polygamy is late and, therefore, of somewhat lesser value to historians and textual scholars.
Yet, there is sufficient contemporary evidence to suggest the current text is an authentic representation of the original.
Doctrinal and Theological Impacts
How does the Plural Marriage Revelation build on earlier Joseph Smith revelations?
There are several threads of thought from Joseph Smith’s earlier teachings that appear in the text. For example, the idea of sealing shows up in Smith’s 1831 introduction of the high priesthood—as it was called—meaning the office of high priest.
The original purpose of the office was to seal up persons or even whole congregations to “eternal life.” Verses 19 and 26 of the Revelation share in this idea, though in a more specific sense.
Sealing and Salvation in Early Revelations
An 1832 revelation (D&C 76) deploys the idea of sealing in several ways, as well as the “Holy Spirit of promise” (with a more biblical bent in meaning, perhaps). A significant part of the text of the 1832 revelation also speaks of damned souls, and section 132 developed the idea further. Doctrine and Covenants 132 further defines the language of section 76 in terms of ultimate salvation or exaltation.
For example, compare D&C 76:58 with D&C 132:17-20. Both revelations and much of Joseph Smith’s later teaching/preaching have implicit and explicit links to John 5 and, therefore, intertextually, to each other.
Influence of Joseph Smith’s Hebrew Studies
A more obscure dependence of Doctrine and Covenants 132 on Joseph Smith’s earlier experience is related to his study of Hebrew.
From January to March 1836, Joseph Smith studied biblical Hebrew as part of a church-sponsored class conducted by a Hebraist from New York. From his work there, Smith developed a rather idiosyncratic relationship with the language, and his non-standard usage appears in his later teaching, particularly the phrase “eternal lives” (D&C 132:22-24, 55). The plural usage of “lives” and “seeds” probably stems from Smith’s odd fascination with Hebrew plurals.
While it’s possible that his intention was just to register his acquaintance with Hebrew—as he seems to do in the final text of the Book of Abraham)—the words influenced a significant interpretative thread in theological teachings after the Prophet’s death.
(I’ll return to that below.)
How did D&C 132 reshape Latter-day Saint theology?
Polygamy as the Backbone of D&C 132
Naturally, the primary effect of Doctrine and Covenants 132 was the revelatory backbone for the practice of polygamy. For a congregation that believes in ongoing revelation, the presence of a physical and canonical text—one that runs headlong into accepted moral expectations—creates the necessity of interpretation.
And that interpretation was forced to change over time. I’ll point out one lesser-known example among many.
The revelation required its own reason for being.
As the revelation became public and was introduced to new converts, polygamy naturally required its own metaphysics or reason for being. The situation was very much like the near-simultaneous announcement (1852) that priesthood ordination and temple rites must be withheld from people of Black African descent.
The latter had some built-in metaphysics from the Protestant interface with chattel slavery (a cursed ancestry—Cain and Ham, etc.), but it needed more justification because of the teaching that the human soul had a life before Earth life. That need was filled by the idea that the souls of Blacks were somehow less worthy in the pre-earth life.
Building a Metaphysics of Plural Marriage
The polygamy described and mandated by the revelation required something more than justifying Abraham’s marriages as God-ordained. A full metaphysics had to reach back to the soul’s life before mortality.
Doctrine and Covenants 132 teaches that the primary purpose of plural marriage is the increased production of progeny for righteous men, a thought that is famously referenced in the Book of Mormon. This idea might be (and eventually was) written into the antemortal life of the soul by doing three things:
- God as Protohuman: Seeing God as the protohuman “a man like yourselves” (Joseph Smith did this on several occasions in his preaching), having a “physical” body, one that was capable of sex and therefore needed sexual partners (wives).
- God as Polygamist: Reading God into the revelation as the example of the ultimate polygamist (since those with the most wives and children were seen as most glorified).
- Spirit Birth: What would these heavenly unions produce? It had to be human souls or spirits.
Spirit Birth and Eternal Progeny
All this was hinted at in Eliza Snow’s poetry and William Phelps’s story after Smith’s death. The birth of spirits in a pre-earth life became an important justification for plural marriage, and passages in Doctrine and Covenants 132 were interpreted as support, such as an interpretation of the parable of the ten virgins in D&C 132:63. The end of D&C 132:19 came to be seen in that light.
Doctrinal expositors like Orson Pratt mapped out the nature of the exalted afterlife, pointing out that even in heaven, there had to be a gestation time for these spirit children. Hence, polygamy energized the glorification of the patriarchal system; men with many wives were guaranteed greater progeny (which equaled glory) and pressed forward the work of God more faithfully here and hereafter than those who refused polygamy.
This theological web of ideas places heterosexual relations at the base of the pyramid of eternity. Consequently, it must see any other version of sexuality as inauthentic, diversionary, and at best, a temporary condition.
Doctrinal Tensions with Joseph Smith’s Later Teachings
Like the teachings regarding Blacks, this Brigham Young-era metaphysics of polygamy—(1), (2), and (3) above—created its own issues (the former’s issues had some breathing space until the civil rights era).
He interpreted the fatherhood of God in an adoptive sense.
The most important problem for the polygamy metaphysics surrounding spirits born to heavenly polygamist unions was its explicit contradiction of one of Joseph Smith’s most frequent teachings during the last years of his life: the human soul/mind/spirit had no beginning or end.
The Prophet interpreted the fatherhood of God in an adoptive sense. At God’s invitation, spirits chose to come into the family. God wanted to teach them about and share the joys of his existence (see reports of his King Follett Sermon for some examples).
For Joseph Smith—at least from 1839 on—a mind or a soul or a spirit couldn’t have a birth, beginning, or creation in a pre-earth life. In the Prophet’s theology, there was no beginning. Even the non-Mormon public observed these two conflicting cosmologies.
It would take years after Brigham Young’s death to come to grips with the issue. The proposed resolution was never fully accepted and created a very public and lasting doctrinal rift.
Administrative and Leadership Implications
How did D&C 132 affect Church administration after Joseph Smith’s death?
Joseph Smith wore several hats throughout his career as a church leader: First Elder, President of the High Priesthood (later shortened to President of the Church for tactical reasons), and—in the Plural Marriage Revelation—sole proprietor of the rite of sealing one person to another, and so forth.
Sealing had a long evolving history within the Prophet’s teachings, some of which are pointed out above. But its basis was later justified by Matthew 16 as in, “keys of the kingdom of Heaven.” Doctrine and Covenants 132:7 reads:
All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed, both as well for time and for all eternity, and that too most holy, by revelation and commandment through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have appointed on the earth to hold this power (and I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred), are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead.
Doctrine and Covenants 132:7
The revelation provides an explicit interpretation of the “Holy Spirit of promise” and the single anointed individual on earth dispenses it (I’ll call him “Temple Priest” for historical reasons and a convenient shorthand)—who was Joseph Smith. In the revelation, the Holy Spirit of promise is not a testimony of a personal inspiration. It is part of a ritual.
This spiritual hat, worn only by Joseph Smith (according to the text), is one key to the nature of the church’s dispersal after his death. The revelation does not anticipate Smith’s death and, therefore, makes no provision for who, if anyone, wears the hat of Temple Priest after him.
Unresolved Questions of Authority
Is this office just another name for the church president? Who could enter polygamy if Joseph Smith died? Indeed, the revelation placed significant emphasis on plural marriage in relation to salvation, a key teaching in Utah.
Unanswered questions had to be sorted out after Joseph Smith’s death.
How did the 1836 vision of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, kept under cover while they lived (now D&C 110), relate to this?
For the few who knew about the latter at the time, it was seen as just one more warning that the end time was very near. Joseph Smith’s preaching on the “power of Elijah” only began in the last four years of his life (for example, see his January 21, 1844, address delivered near a Nauvoo hotel), but he never mentioned the 1836 vision in his public teaching.
These and other questions were left unanswered and had to be sorted out by insiders after Joseph Smith’s assassination at Carthage, since the church at large was essentially ignorant of the revelation and polygamy.
Did the office of Temple Priest die with Smith? If not, who could claim it?
The Apostolic First Presidency
The secret practice of polygamy by Joseph Smith and others in Nauvoo, combined with the very narrow circulation of the revelation at the time, compounded the issue. Moreover, the nascent temple rites and the associated training ground of what is usually called the “anointed quorum” loomed. How was this connected to the Temple Priest’s office?
The brief story is this: Smith’s past revelations confirmed the idea that the church presidency held the keys of the kingdom, and the Nauvoo church’s August 1844 appointment of the Twelve Apostles as the new First Presidency after his death created an important link.
Several apostles believed it was a shared responsibility.
That possibility is suggested by D&C 112 (though it was not in print), and political considerations kept the apostles from citing it at the time. Establishing an apostolic First Presidency, however, helped resolve some of the uncertainty about who could act as Temple Priest.
Even so, there was debate over whether the role of Temple Priest belonged to a single leader. Several prominent apostles believed it was a shared responsibility and that each could act independently.
Brigham Young Claims the Role
By the end of 1847, Brigham Young had secured enough consensus for his position that, as president of the apostles, he alone was the Temple Priest.
The Temple Priest role was a significant obstacle to Young’s ascension to church president and the establishment of a new three-man presidency within the church.
There was more evolution in the idea (such as how Brigham Young could legitimately be appointed Temple Priest), but Young’s idea was the main hurdle to a succession of the Temple Priest: the president of the church had to be the Temple Priest.
Hence, he was the sole distributor of permission to seal and contract plural marriages. That permission would subsequently be more widely distributed, especially during the Raid of the 1880s, and once given, it would turn out to be embarrassingly hard to take back.
Shifts in Belief After the Manifesto
How did the 1890 Manifesto reshape Latter-day Saint beliefs?
The Manifesto is a remarkable document in several senses. Reaction within the church ran the gamut from relief to horror, depression to joy, and those reactions crossed the boundaries of male and female, leaders, and Latter-day Saint families in far-flung areas.
Many church members thought it was a sign of the end of time, and that Jesus would shortly return (not a hope without evidence, since many were aware that in 1835, Smith himself spoke of the “winding up scene” taking place in 1890-91). Some leaders, from apostles on down, saw it as a mere cover story until negotiations could allow it to be rescinded, and they ignored it as an absolute prohibition.
As noted, the superstructure of teachings around Doctrine and Covenants 132 had clear points to the effect that only those who engaged in plural marriage would achieve “real” exaltation in the afterlife, truly imitating God, who was the greatest polygamist.
Doctrinal Reinterpretations of Section 132
The general church membership saw little of this internal deliberation or logic, and the 1890 manifesto seemed to mean that all of the preaching of previous generations was in limbo. Eventually, section 132 was largely set on a shelf—particularly those parts directly related to plural marriage and Emma Smith.
However, at least some of its post-mortal metaphysics survived: glories could still be compounded in heaven through spirit progeny, and in pre-mortality, God and a wife (or wives) still procreated spirits in heaven.
D&C 132’s teachings about the Temple Priest’s sealing authority remained in the background, while increasing emphasis on family structure elevated the nuclear family as the “real” eternal ideal—retroactively read back into the past.
Polygamy Recedes from View
Joseph Smith’s polygamy practice, his secret teachings, and the recruitment of others into the practice disappeared from view—in part as political safety for the church and in part as a way to gain respect among former social enemies, especially in America.
It was also, in part, a means of preserving the growing emphasis on temple worship.
Contemporary Influence of Section 132
How does D&C 132 continue to shape contemporary beliefs and practices?
One obvious contemporary influence of Doctrine and Covenants 132 is the stance of the church regarding LGBT issues, gay marriage, etc. The textual authority for the ability to seal couples for eternity is an ongoing effect of the revelation. That opened a whole theology with a close connection to proxy ordinances and effective and necessary evangelization of the dead.
Sealing Power and Apocalyptic Urgency
The anxiety about the end times that was present in the church at the time of the Manifesto had been present since the time of Joseph Smith. The power to seal became linked to the famous passage in Malachi regarding fathers and children.
Joseph’s interpretation of that passage meant that one’s duty was to seek after one’s ancestors, exercising this sealing power to connect to those ancestors generation by generation.
The urgency was palpable.
The relevant Malachi passage in the King James Version reads:
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud,
yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch . . .Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Malachi 4:1-6
The urgency was palpable for many, and the project of completing this generational joining was impossible in the short time left.
Moreover, D&C 132 put a group of people outside of this blessing—those who were guilty of murder (D&C 132:19, 26). How could one know whether an ancestor was guilty? Such a link in the salvific chain would be fatal and bring on the curse of Malachi.
This sequence of interpretations led to the practice of ritual adoption. One might be sealed to a parent who had proved themselves, and those in turn to a known eligible grandparent. But beyond that, it may be impossible to be sure. And what if the ancestor chose not to accept a proxy ordinance?
The solution was to seal the last sure link to one of the guaranteed links: Joseph Smith and one of his wives, say, or Brother Brigham, etc.
Woodruff’s 1894 Shift and Genealogical Expansion
This adoption practice continued up to 1894 when Wilford Woodruff made an announcement that led to its end. The end of the world had not happened, the Salt Lake Temple was completed, and Woodruff stated that links of unknown character were no longer to be feared: virtually every one of the dead who heard the message of salvation and sealing would accept it.
The future Christian Millennium would be a time to make any necessary corrections to the linkage of mankind. The eschaton gradually receded into the distant future, and the church became a major engine of worldwide genealogical research.
Some refused to abandon polygamy.
As church teachings on family and marriage shifted, it was inevitable that some would refuse to abandon a practice with such a deep sacrificial past. After 1910, when the church began making serious efforts to bar new practitioners of plural marriage—and later joined with law enforcement to break up enclaves of believers—Doctrine and Covenants 132 still served as a foundation for those who carried on.
For many of these practitioners, the revelation justified separating the offices Brigham Young had sought to unite: by the 1920s, they saw the role of Temple Priest as existing outside the church, while viewing the president of the church as a separate, and lesser, office.
The story continued to evolve in many ways, but interpretations of section 132 are a fundamental part of the arguments.
Future Editions and Scholarly Perspectives
How could D&C 132 be edited in a future edition?
There are a few things that could be done with Section 132. None would require changing its core, but they could make the text more usable for a broader purpose. For example:
- Remove Verses Directed Only to Emma: Joseph F. Smith suggested that some parts of the revelation were irrelevant to any broader purpose beyond persuading Emma Smith to accept polygamy. Eliminating passages that refer specifically to her could be done without doing much violence to the text.
- Revise Verses 19 and 26 (on Sealings): Other minor changes could be made to frame polygamy as a historical artifact, without retaining the specific rules of practice Joseph Smith dictated in 1843. For example, the sealings described in Doctrine and Covenants 132 differ from later practice: after Nauvoo, sealings included a clause making unions conditional on future faithfulness—a requirement absent from the early text. Verses 19 and 26 could be revised to align with that post-Nauvoo practice.
- Preserve the Original: The original text could remain preserved in sources like the Joseph Smith Papers, while a revised edition of D&C 132 might retain only the relevant passages. Such a project is unlikely, but it would not be without precedent in the handling of earlier revelations.
What do you hope people remember from your work on the Plural Marriage Revelation?
I hope the work helps scholars, Latter-day Saints, and others place D&C 132 in its historical and textual context and provides useful background, revealing the origins of some central teachings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mormonism.
Did You Enjoy This?
About the Scholar
William Victor Smith is a leading scholar on the textual history of Doctrine and Covenants 132, also known as the Plural Marriage Revelation. He is the author of Textual Studies in the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Greg Kofford Books, 2018) and contributed a chapter to Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy (Signature Books, 2024). In addition to his expertise on early Latter-day Saint polygamy and scripture, Smith holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Utah and has published in both scientific journals and respected venues of Mormon studies, including Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
Further Reading
- How Did Plural Marriage Evolve in the Church?
- How Many Wives Did Joseph Smith Have?
- What Do Polygamy Skeptics Think About Joseph Smith?
- Who Was Fanny Alger?
- What’s in John Turner’s Joseph Smith Biography?
Doctrine and Covenants 132 Resources
- Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Greg Kofford Books)
- Revelation, 12 July 1843 (Joseph Smith Papers)
- Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
- Doctrine and Covenants Contexts (BYU Studies)
- Q&A with William V. Smith for Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Greg Kofford Books)
