A Video Supplement for
Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 11:
Be Reconciled unto God through the Atonement of Christ (Jacob 1-4)
Transcript
In Jacob chapters 1-3, Jacob gives his first and only recorded discourse after the death of Nephi. Jacob 1:15-16 lays out the problems that he will address:
15 And now it came to pass that the people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices, such as like unto David of old desiring many wives and concubines, and also Solomon, his son.
16 Yea, and they also began to search much gold and silver, and began to be lifted up somewhat in pride.
17 Wherefore I, Jacob, gave unto them these words as I taught them in the temple, having first obtained mine errand from the Lord.
We learn that the Nephites are straying in several important dimensions from their founding charter. First, hardening of the heart. Second, some Nephite men have violated the commandment given to Lehi (presumably recorded in a portion of the brass plates that are not presently available to us) that his descendants should not take additional wives in the promised land. Third, social divisions are arising because some have been more prosperous than other.
In discussing this section of Jacob’s record, I will draw heavily on Brant Gardner’s “Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon Volume 2: Second Nephi through Jacob.” Whenever I reference “Gardner,” it is this book and its author that I am referencing, and much of what I say here without explicit citation will paraphrase Gardner. His books are a seriously useful and informative resource and I can’t recommend them highly enough. Jacob has announced at the end of these few verses that he is giving this discourse in that temple in an official capacity. To modern readers, it may seem strange that pride, gold, and violation of a prohibition against plural marriage should end up in the same talk. That may strike some modern readers as a little bit eclectic, but to an ancient person this would make much better sense. Quoting Gardner [pg. 481],
“It is not by chance that Jacob’s discussion of mutiple wives and his indication that his people ” began to search much gold and silver” come close together. Each statement is a manifestation of increasing wealth and emphasis on the trappings of wealth. Even in societies where it is allowed (or even encouraged), maintaining multiple families requires greater control of substance. Thus, it tends to be practiced by those societies’ wealthier members.
The appearance of the practice among the Nephites at this point, perhaps seventy years after leaving Jerusalem and after sixty years in the New World suggests that the Nephites have not only manged to become wealthy, but also that the supply of marriageable women made more than one wife a social possibility. Once again, both the wealth and the availability of desirable women of the proper age, sufficiently removed from the kin group, provide strong confirmation of native populations with whom the Nephites interacted.”
Taken together the issues Jacob addresses all point collectively in one direction: the Nephites’ problems have to do with the way in which they are interacting with outsiders, and the way this is impacting their relationships within the community and with the Lord. In Jacob 2:12-13, Jacob makes his initial charges against the Nephites who have sinned:
12 And now behold, my brethren, this is the word which I declare unto you, that many of you have begun to search for gold, and for silver, and for all manner of precious ores, in the which this land, which is a land of promise unto you and to your seed, doth abound most plentifully.
13 And the hand of providence hath smiled upon you most pleasingly, that you have obtained many riches; and because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they.
So the Nephites have found gold and become rich. At least this is what a modern person would think. However, a moments thought reveals that it isn’t that easy. Imagine for a minute that you are stranded on a desert island with you and several hundred of your closest friends trying to survive, and no plans or expectation of ever leaving. Someone finds that on the other side of the island there is a ridiculous quantity of gold. Is this guy now rich? Well, it depends on what people will trade for it and the trade value is usually inversely proportional to how much of it there is. Here, now, is a highly fictionalized account of how the conversation might have gone: “Wait, you’re saying the metal “doth abound most plentifully,” right? So you’re saying you want me to trade my coconut for your yellow rock. How does your rock taste? Wait… … your saying there are a bunch more just like it on the other side of the island? And you want my coconut? I had to climb up in a tree to get this, I’m not giving you my coconut.”
So metal by itself would have been nearly worthless to the Nephites unless they could do something with it. Now we know Nephi did do something with it. He made it into books. We also know he made tools prior to constructing his boat, which means that he had enough capability in refining and metalworking to do those projects, and we can possibly assume that his people also learned these skills from him; it is, after all, a small town. But if the Nephites are isolated, then this just means everyone goes around wearing decorative objects, but these objects don’t become truly valuable because anyone can make them out of the abundant gold, and besides that they were effectively made by the kid down the street. It’s like baseball cards, if everyone has access to the same ones, they are all worthless. However, if the Nephites learned metalworking from Nephi and found an abundant resource of raw material, and they are the only ones in the area that can do metalworking of a certain type, and can sell the newly made fine goods to others outside of their community that do not have these capabilities, then they have the makings of a golden ticket. There is evidence that metalworking was largely unknown in the early Americas, so a Nephite monopoly on the techniques actually makes sense.
A few steps later, we end up with Nephites wearing costly apparel, which is in some ways a smoking gun (or a smoking jacket, perhaps) because this is something we have no record of them making themselves at this period. When Nephi talks about clothes he is either prophesying, documenting a vision, or quoting Isaiah. And note also that Jacob’s concern is not how much gold and silver they have, it is their costly apparel, which is both how one projects wealth in the ancient world and likely not a native Nephite good. Notice the causality in Jacob’s speech “because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel” so the order of causality is “obtained more abundantly” causes “costly apparel” causes “lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads”. It’s the clothes that are the problem here. [John S. Henderson, The World of the Ancient Maya, quoted in Gardner] makes the connection explicit, “Jewelry and other goods made from exotic raw materials indicate increasing prosperity, expanded economic ties to distant regions, and sharper differences in wealth and social status;…”. Gardner adds, “What he adds is the missing piece in Jacob’s discourse: the acquisition of wealth through trade of the “jewelry and other goods made from exotic raw materials.” The wealth occurs not because of the possession of unworked and undervalued ore, but because the ore could be worked into exotic goods that could be exchanged with other communities. While Jacob does not state it, the economic situation he describes cannot be explained without understanding its context of trade with other communities.” Trade is then what is driving the social differences and where the exotic costly apparel is coming from that is driving Nephite vain imaginations of inequality.
Later on in verse 23-24, Jacob reaches his other line of rebuke, “But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.”
Here, actually, is yet another indication of Nephite contact with outsiders. There are plenty of revered characters who practiced run-of-the-mill plural marriage. There is Abraham, the father of all the faithful, and there is Israel, also their ancestor and the namesake of their home nation. Yet they pick David and Solomon instead of their own ancesters. Why? They are descendants of Joseph, and the Davidic kings were not as popular among the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh as in the tribe of Judah. David and Solomon end up being more tragic and far less exemplary than one might reasonably desire if you really want to justify a practice unless there was something about what the Nephites are doing that they couldn’t justify by appeal to Abraham and Israel. Given that Jacob mentions this happened during the reign of the second king it could indicate that the king had made a tacit appeal to executive privilege which might also make the royal precedent of David and Solomon more appealing.
What then do we know about David and Solomon’s plural marriages that could explain their appeal as precedent? 1Kings 11:1-3 states, “But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; Of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.” So the problem with Solomon’s plural marriages was not their number so much as the fact that they introduced apostasy into Israel because he married outside of the covenant.
Gardner makes a strong point here: “So how can Jacob describe as “whoredom” the same relationship in which he calls the participating woman a “wife”? And in what way could David and Solomon be guilty of “whoredom”? They had many wives, but their relationships with these legal partners could not be whoredom. Nor can this condemnation be construed to apply to any non-monogamous relationship since verse 30 indicates that polygyny is sometimes acceptable. I suggest that, even though David and Solomon had legal plural wives, many of these wives taken to cement political alliances were not, according to Israelite law, eligible marriage partners because they were “strange” (i.e., foreign) women.” By this rationale the marriages would not have been valid under Israelite law and David and Solomon would have been guilty of whoredom in their illegal political marriages. Doctrine and Covenants 132 supports this reading when it says of David and Solomon, “David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.” If these foreign wives were considered ineligible marriage partners under Israelite law then it logically follows that they are within the set which the Lord asserts “they received not of me.”
As it turns out political marriages are often reciprocal, which explains one of the few remaining mysteries in Jacob 2, the Lord’s concerns about the chastity of women. Plural marriages, when authorized are just as much marriages and just as chaste as single ones. However, if the Nephites were giving their daughters in marriage to rulers in neighboring lands in order to cement trade relationships, then those marriage relationships would have also been contrary to the same principles of law that forbade marrying outside of the covenant. To send daughters into such a situation for financial gain fully justifies Jacob’s accusation of whoredom and his express direction that they, “shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms, like unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
Understood in this way, the reasoning for the Lord’s original command to Lehi to forbidding his sons to practice plural marriage in the promised land comes into focus in a new light. The Lehite colony arrived in a continent which was not empty and preserving the purity of the newcomers in the land required that they not adopt marriage patterns that would lead to mixing with and adopting the religious practices of the surrounding people as David and Solomon in fact did to their peril. Some have thought this contradicts Doctrine and Covenants 132 because Jacob 2 forbids plural marriage while Doctrine and Covenants 132 commands it. However, in context Jacob 2 is actually precedent for the initial commandment to practice plural marriage because of the allowance in verse 30 which notes the possibility of the Lord giving authorization and also precedent for the Manifesto in that it establishes that the Lord by priesthood authority can forbid classes of marriage even if these are accepted in the wider culture (which seems to be the case among the Nephites neighbors) and even if the Lord would allow them under other circumstances as Jacob 2:30 and Doctrine and Covenants 132 make clear. Taken together this shows how the Lord acted decisively to protect his people from the threat of apostasy and in particular to protect his daughters from exploitation as pawns in the pursuit of money and power by unprincipled Nephite elites.
Jacob’s statement criticizing the Nephites for plural marriage is being overly analyzed. His statement is quite simple. As the article correctly says, Solomon had plural wives who increased paganism in Israel and corrupted Solomon. The article’s quote of 1 Kings 11:1-3 shows this quite clearly. Great scripture quote! It’s that simple.
The article correctly calls Solomon’s wives “political wives,” but incorrectly attributes that same sin as being King David’s main sin. David’s main sin was even worse: while married to several women, David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband Uriah to cover up his adultery, and then married Bathsheba. D & C 132: 39 says that David did NOT sin in his plural marriages except “in the case of Uriah and his wife.” It’s that simple. Jacob is telling the Nephites that their plural marriages are NOT approved because in doing so, they disobeyed the Lord just as David and Solomon had.
The principle of polygamy has always been the same:
Marry as commanded by the Lord. In practice usually that means ONLY one wife. But in some instances it may mean plural marriage. In the case of the Nephites there is NO indication that plural marriage was allowed. It’s possible that the Nephites had been allowed plural marriage but abused it as Solomon and David did. But Jacob makes no mention of the specific abuses that the article refers to. Instead, there is NO indication that plural marriage was allowed among the Nephites. and, therefore, they were disobedient in marrying plural wives.
Obviously Jacob was NOT criticizing plural marriage in general because, otherwise, he would NOT have referred to the most famous disobedient plural marriage husbands (David and Solomon) but would have criticized plural marriage in general or would have criticized Abraham and Abraham’s grandson Jacob (Israel) for their plural marriages, who did obey the Lord.
But no one has addressed or taken into consideration the fact that prior to the Lord’s coming to the Nephites the record describes a major change that took place in the land. As a result, we don’t know today or really have any idea what the geography of the Americas looked like back in the Nephite days. We can make a good guess and that’s all we can do. In other words, the irrefutable archaeological evidence is not so irrefutable when dealing with unknown major changes in the landscape of the two Americas. We only know there were people there on both continents, but we don’t know what the land looked like. In this case, archaeology today is not a representation of archaeology in the past and we won’t know how everything correctly fits until it is revealed to us.
Just a thought, Danny: I think the irrefutable item Hales is referencing is the clear fact that there were groups of peoples in that mentioned sector of the planet “before, during, and after” the Book of Mormon folks played out their lives there. The change in local politics (separating into tribes) in early 3rd Nephi would not have altered that truth.
Danny, 3 Nephi 8:17 says that “and thus the face of the whole earth became deformed.” That is typically the sentence used to suggest that we had a major change in the land that would obscure geography. There are several reasons why that cannot be so. First, the term literally refers only to the surface. That can be checked if you have software that can search for “face of the earth” (without quotation marks, so you find more of them). You will see the context is clearly the surface, which is described as the “face.”
The next reason is that we know a lot about how geology works. The “face” of the land can change without making the land unidentifiable. For example, the “face” of Mount St. Helens is definitely different, catastrophically different. But it is in the same place.
Lastly, we have the testimony of archaeology in the New World. There are large quantities of sites throughout the Americas which existed before, during, and after the Book of Mormon. Even those in the time of the 3 Nephi cataclysm show no disruption that makes them unrecognizable. To be sure, there are sunken cities, there are burned cities, but none of them moved from east to west or north to south. Even though there were great changes, the idea that the cataclysm in 3 Nephi would have changed things so they are unidentifiable is not a viable reading of scripture, geology, or the archaeological record.
Sister B, sister of sincere query! A common pattern I see in sacred Word is that God allows a people to be *adopted* into His household of faith if those persons are willing to make and keep his covenants. I think with that in mind, we don’t need to mutter about that matter, because it then makes beautiful sense. I hope I am reading your question as you intended it.
Be blessed, oblation sister of blessed observation!
If God said that the “Americas were a land preserved for His people, and the Jadeites killed themselves off. Why do all you scholars think that other people were here if God preserved it for His chosen people? Aren’t these really assumptions?
Hi Loretta, you asked “Why do all you scholars think that other people were here if God preserved it for His chosen people? Aren’t these really assumptions?”
The reason that scholars looking at the Book of Mormon in an Ancient American setting conclude that the Nephites were not alone is, to be as direct as possible, because there is irrefutable archaeological evidence that the Americas were broadly inhabited by a variety of distinct peoples and collections of peoples before, during, and after the time period covered in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon also provides a number of evidences that this is the case, but the archaeology is on average a lot easier to explain; e.g., that is someone’s house so we know they lived here; that is someone’s corpse so we know they lived here (or at least ended up here) and so forth. If you are interested in this topic, I can recommend some readings.
I expect you are wondering something along the lines of, “How can the land have been preserved if the continents had all sorts of people?” The short answer is though there were other people on the continent, and evidence that the Nephites interacted with them to some degree, the Nephites nevertheless found land for an inheritance within the double-continent and inasmuch as they followed the Lord they were blessed prospered and preserved in that land. Though there were many nations not so far away, they did not overrun the Nephite’s land before the Nephites came there, and that was indeed a blessing.