Internal consistency in Ether 4-5

In my post yesterday, I noted that Moroni is quoting Christ in Ether 4:6-19. Afterwards he states

And now I, Moroni, have written the words which were commanded me, according to my memory (Ether 5:1)

The bold part indicates that Moroni has been writing what the Lord commanded him some time before he wrote it, since he was depending on remembering correctly.

4 Behold, I have written upon these plates the very things which the brother of Jared saw; and there never were greater things made manifest than those which were made manifest unto the brother of Jared.

5 Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to write them; and I have written them. And he commanded me that I should seal them up; and he also hath commanded that I should seal up the interpretation thereof; wherefore I have sealed up the interpreters, according to the commandment of the Lord.

6 For the Lord said unto me: They shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord.

In verse 6, Moroni starts writing "the words which were commanded" him that he refers to. It seems that Moroni received certain instructions concerning the record of the vision of the brother of Jared. It also seems that he received the words he quoted in chapter 4 along with those instructions. Since he has already recorded the vision of Jared and sealed it up at this point, these commandments were given in the past and Moroni had to recall them and write "according to [his] memory".

Another subtle example of internal consistency. In Ether 4:3

1 And the Lord commanded the brother of Jared to go down out of the mount from the presence of the Lord, and write the things which he had seen; and they were forbidden to come unto the children of men until after that he should be lifted up upon the cross; and for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world until after Christ should show himself unto his people.

2 And after Christ truly had showed himself unto his people he commanded that they should be made manifest.

3 And now, after that, they have all dwindled in unbelief; and there is none save it be the Lamanites, and they have rejected the gospel of Christ; therefore I am commanded that I should hide them up again in the earth.

"them" in the bold part is referring to the record of the vision of the brother of Jared. It can either mean the 24 plates that were found by the people of Limhi and later brought to Mosiah or it can refer to Mosiah's translation of them. Even though verse 1 says that Mosiah kept them, there is no reason to believe that he buried them in the earth. But the "again" indicates that they have been hidden in the earth at some point before. The answer is found in Mormon 6:6

knowing it to be the last struggle of my people, and having been commanded of the Lord that I should not suffer the records which had been handed down by our fathers, which were sacred, to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, (for the Lamanites would destroy them) therefore I made this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni.

The "few plates" that he gave to Moroni were the plates of Mormon. The Jaredite plates and Mosiah's translation were most likely among the plates that Mormon hid in the hill Cumorah. So they have indeed been hidden in the earth. Trying to trace the events here, we have the following timeline:

• Not long before the final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites at around 385 AD, Mormon hides all the records in the hill Cumorah except for the plates of Mormon that he gives to Moroni
• At 400 AD, some years after his father's death, Moroni finishes his father's record on the plates of Mormon (Mormon 8-9)
• Some time later, Moroni digs up the plates and obtains at least the Jaredite history. He first engraves the vision of the brother of Jared on the plates of Mormon and seals them up (as we have noted, this has already been done when he abridges the Jaredite history in Ether 4)
• Then he abridges the Jaredite history on plates of Mormon in the unsealed part before presumably hiding them in the earth again.
• Some time later, at more than 420 AD, he realizes he has time to write some more even though he didn't intend to (Moroni 1:4), before also finally hiding the plates of Mormon

The history of the various records is not straight forward and is not always told in detail in clear terms, but we get small hints and they typically turn out to be in agreement.