/
RSS Feed
This week covers the efforts to obtain the plates of brass, what the plates of brass contained, and the commandments God gave Lehi on marriage.
1 Nephi 5:10-19
Alma 10:3
Alma 37:3-4
1 Nephi 10:5
1 Nephi 9:5-6
Acts 1:21-26
1 Chronicles 26:20
1 Chronicles 29:8
1 Nephi 7:1-2
Jacob 2:27-34
Jacob 3:5
1 Nephi 16:7-8
2 Samuel 20
2 Chronicles 36:6
Numbers 19:11-22
It looks like you might not be getting as many comments about the Book of Mormon series as the more controversial topics that have been covered to this point. So I would like to thank you for the time and research that continues to go into these weekly podcasts.
This week I especially appreciated the detour into Jacob 2, where you addressed the verse about “raising up seed” to be related to a commandment to live MONOGAMY (the Mosaic law neither commanded or prohibited polygamy). My whole life in the church, this one verse (and the assumption that it refers to a commandment given to Lehi to live polygamy) has seemed so contradictory to the surrounding chapter that I could never wrap my head around what it was saying. It is a reminder to me how we may fail to understand the scriptures when we are looking through them to justify our beliefs and traditions, and by so doing, completely miss what is actually being said. Well done!
The God in Ether 8 appears to say he’s always forbidden the shedding of blood. Laban i Nephi 4 wasn’t innocent blood as you point out. However this is this sweeping verse to consider: Ether 8:19 “For the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man.” Certainly nothing to do with innocence there. This verse makes it pretty clear that 1 Nephi 4 can be true or Either 8 can be true, but not both of them. How does one square this contradiction?
I believe the when you look at that verse and others in context, there is no contradiction. Ether 8:19-19 is talking about secret combinations which used murder to accomplish their goals. Cain himself boasted of knowing the secret of using murder to get gain (Moses 5:31). We need to ask ourselves, when God prohibits shedding blood, is he referring to murder, or any taking of life? If he is prohibiting any taking of life, we have lots of problems with the scriptures.
Alma 48:14 Now the Nephites were taught to defend themselves against their enemies, even to the shedding of blood if it were necessary; yea, and they were also taught never to give an offense, yea, and never to raise the sword except it were against an enemy, except it were to preserve their lives.
In Alma 1, Nehor has just murdered Gideon. Alma declares that Nehor must be killed because he had “shed the blood of a righteous man…and were we to spare thee his blood would come upon us for vengeance.”
In the Old Testament, the phrase “shed blood” is often accompanied by the word innocent – “shed innocent blood”. When searching all the uses of “shed blood”, it appears pretty consistent that it’s talking about murder. I also think an important aspect beyond “innocence” of the victim is the motivation of the perpetrator. If we kill because we are fulfilling the law, that’s different than deciding on our own the world we be a better place without this person. Indeed, God in the Old Testament commanded the killing of large groups of people, in addition to killing a lot of people himself (e.g. Egyptian first borns).
In Deuteronomy 20, we read
16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:
If God wanted Laban dead, he could have chosen numerous ways to kill him. Heart attack, fire from heaven, attacked by lions, swallowed up by the earth, etc. These are all methods that he had used in the past to kill people. I don’t have a problem with God choosing to kill someone using another human instead of a lion. But how does that person know he’s really being commanded by God to kill and not having a mental health issue? And how would anyone else know that person was commanded by God to kill and not just using that as an excuse. That’s the real challenge for me, which is probably why we have so few instances of this in the scriptures.
One final thought. Didn’t God command the shedding of innocent blood when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Yet in James 2:21 we’re told “it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.” It’s for this and the reasons I’ve shared that I believe we have to take each quotation in context. God has forbidden man from making the decision themselves to kill. He has given us guidelines (murders can be killed). And God himself can choose to take life whenever he deems it, even commanding the shedding of innocent blood like Isaac. But mixing divinely-mandated killing with premeditated murder to get gain appears to be comparing apples and oranges.
Good answer to a difficult question.