Who is "I" in this verse? 1 Nephi 20:3

Who is "I" in this verse? 1 Nephi 20:3

Asking this question actually leads to another question: Who is "I" in this verse? Isaiah 48:3

Nephi is quoting the book of Isaiah, which would have been about as new to him as the writings of Joseph Smith are to me. That is to say, they were recent scripture for him. They were relevant and quite obviously precious to him. And we share the book of Isaiah with all the rest of Christianity as well as Judaism.

I asked the missionaries this question, and for the first time in several months I got an extremely satisfying answer that made sense to me.

This young missionary (who was not a scholar, it should be noted) told me about an experience he had with reading Moses 1:3-8 where he had the question, "who was speaking to Moses?"

He told me about how he read this in the institute manual, and it is worth quoting directly:

The personage who spoke to Moses was the premortal Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. Being one with Heavenly Father, Jesus at times speaks as if He were God the Father (see Moses 1:6). This is known as divine investiture, whereby Christ is invested with authority to speak for and in behalf of the Father (see also D&C 29:1, 42, 46).

President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: “All revelation since the fall has come through Jesus Christ, who is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. … He is the God of Israel, the Holy One of Israel; the one who led that nation out of Egyptian bondage, and who gave and fulfilled the Law of Moses. The Father has never dealt with man directly and personally since the fall, and he has never appeared except to introduce and bear record of the Son” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56], 1:27).

It's not like my question about "roles" of who is talking is new. Here is another article written by H. Donl Peterson, a professor of ancient scripture at BYU, that I basically just have to quote because it's so clear.

A few years ago a student in one of my graduate classes wished to write a paper clarifying the appearances of various celestial beings upon the earth. He proposed column headings such as “God the Father,” “Jesus Christ,” “Holy Ghost,” “Named Angels,” “Unnamed Angels,” etc. After a few weeks he came back very discouraged, concluding that “a person just can’t do that.”

I tend to agree with his conclusion. Trying to determine which heavenly messenger is speaking in a particular case is often extremely difficult. I do feel, however, that we can clarify the issue by keeping several things in mind.

He then goes on to talk about the nature of the members of the Godhead, their unique roles, their unity in purpose, etc. It is worth reading. But kind of long, so I will just add this last part:

This discussion of roles may help us decide which of the two is speaking at a particular time. However, because the Father and the Son are one in unity and purpose, and since Jesus is authorized to speak for the Father in the first person, distinguishing the two can on occasion be more complicated. “Lord God” is used to designate both the Father and the Son in the scriptures. (See Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed., p. 450.)
In fact, very few sacred titles are used exclusively for one or the other. We can ask, for example, “Who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” We may think first of Jesus since the Father delegated responsibility for this earth to him. (See 1 Ne. 19:10 and 1 Cor. 10:4.) We must keep in mind, however, that some other prophets have understood this and yet they have designated God the Father as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (See Acts 3:15; Acts 5:30; and Acts 22:14.)

So I didn’t wonder that my student reached the conclusion he did. He discovered that with “divine investiture” positive identification is sometimes difficult, if not impossible. As he put it, “Sometimes it seems as if God the Father is speaking and then it seems to be Christ. Even angels speak as if they were Christ.” (See Rev. 22:8–9, 12–16.)
The prophets themselves probably knew to whom they spoke, but the identity of the messengers may have become confused in translation or transcription.

It seems to me, however, that as long as we are persuaded by the Spirit that the message is divine, we should not be overly concerned about the identification of the messenger.

I have really enjoyed highlighting my scriptures to try to find passages with references to Jesus Christ. I will continue to do this because it is fun and interesting for me. However, I feel a lot more confidence now that I know that a. I'm not alone in wondering this, b. divine investiture is a thing, and c. it is certain that I will not be able to fully disambiguate God in the scriptures, and that is okay.