Tarshish appears once in the Book of Mormon, in Nephi’s quotation of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Day of the Lord: “And upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures” (2 Nephi 12:16). The verse parallels Isaiah 2:16, but where the King James Isaiah reads only “upon all the ships of Tarshish,” the Book of Mormon adds the clause “upon all the ships of the sea.” The prophecy names the ships of Tarshish among the proud and wealthy things to be brought low when the Lord is exalted.
In the Old Testament, Tarshish is a distant place reached by sea and tied to maritime trade in precious goods. Solomon’s navy of Tharshish returned every three years with gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks (1 Kings 10:22); Jehoshaphat built ships of Tharshish to sail to Ophir for gold, but they were wrecked at Ezion-geber (1 Kings 22:48). Silver was brought in plates from Tarshish (Jeremiah 10:9), and Tarshish traded silver, iron, tin, and lead at Tyre’s fairs (Ezekiel 27:12). The exact location is uncertain; the references place it far from Israel and reachable only by large seagoing vessels, the “ships of Tarshish.”