“In the Strength of the Lord”
“The Lost City of Limhi” isn’t a movie about Central American archaeologists, it’s a series of chapters in the Book of Mormon, introducing the story of Zeniff and his people. We’ll discuss what these chapters teach us about several different ancient civilisations, about the Old Testament, and even about Joseph Smith.
I’m Mark Holt, and this is Gospel Talktrine.
Welcome again to Gospel Talktrine. I hope that all of you are faring as well as I am during this time of quarantine. I have a wonderful wife to spend my days with, and I have, as yet, suffered no viral infections. Although I do have very annoying seasonal allergies.
But I wanted to bring up something about that. If this pandemic has affected you in some way, if you have come down with Corona virus, caught that infection, or if you are a health care worked, working on the front lines, and if you would like to have the faith of the listeners of this podcast engaged on your behalf, then send me an email to gt@gospletalktrine.com with your first name and your town, and a little bit about your situation. And I will read those stories in our next episode, and ask those listening to pray for you. And let’s see if we can become a little bit of a community here, and send some love, one to another, and call down the powers of heaven to help each other get through this.
Oh, and incidentally, you can send to that same email address all of your gospel related questions. We’ve got a few questions coming up for the weeks ahead.
So let’s jump right into this week’s lesson. It’s titled “In the Strength of the Lord.” Our chapters are Mosiah 7 through 10. But to give you a little bit of background, we’re going to go back a few chapters to the book of Omni, which is one chapter long. We’re going to learn a little bit about the background of the characters involved, and then we’re going to get right into the substance of our lesson.
First of all, King Mosiah, the son of King Benjamin, is currently ruling over the city of Zarahemla. But as we jump back into the book of Omni, we learn – and a lot of people forget this, many of you will remember it – but there was a Mosiah who was the father of King Benjamin. And he’s often forgotten, because, as we discussed a few weeks ago, the portion of Nephi’s large plates, that presumably would have had a great deal of information about him, have been lost.
So the only mention we have of Mosiah is here in Omni and a little bit in the address of King Benjamin. He says, “My father, Mosiah, taught about the evil spirit.” Right? So Mosiah was a prophet king, and he presumably taught his people to avoid the influence of Satan. One of the things we learn here in the book of Omni, first of all in verse 12, we learn he was “made king over the land of Zarahemla.”
So, we know that Nephi was a Moses-like figure, because he – just like Moses – he bought his people from a land where they had lived in wickedness and oppression, through a very trying wilderness crossing, to a promised land, and created a new civilisation there.
So similar to Moses and Nephi, Mosiah the first brought his people out of the collected Nephite civilisation, and presumably there was some sort of rift or schism among these people. And we can guess that it was of a religious nature. “We no longer want to follow the religion of our fathers, and all of you who do better get out.” We don’t know much about the circumstances under which Mosiah the First and his people left, but we can presume there was some hostility there.
We can also presume there wasn’t a ton of violence, because you just can’t take thousands, what we can presume were thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people out of a city in secret. So we don’t have an account here that they had war as they were leaving. But they did leave in a hurry.
And something else we know is that Mosiah somehow was the person who was able to bring out, he’s the one that kept the brass plates, the Liahona, the other sacred relics, the sword of Laban, that Nephi had always had with him. These were the marks of the birthright. These were a royal heritage you might say. And Mosiah ended up with them.
Now we learn, earlier on in the Book of Mormon, that the kings, the descendants of Nephi that were kings over the people were called 1st Nephi, 2nd Nephi, et cetera. And so, the fact that Mosiah is not called Nephi, and yet he is a king, shows that the main civilisation stayed behind.
So now we already have two ancient people that are mentioned in this story. We have the Nephites who were left behind in the land of Nephi, where incidentally Nephites have now lived continuously now for almost five hundred years. From the time Nephi left the company of his brethren and fled into the wilderness, and created a new city with a temple and everything, the Nephites have lived there continually. This has been their homeland.
And if you want to know these kind of people – and by “these kind” I mean people descended from Old Testament people, Israelites – if you want to know how they regard, the affection that they have for their homeland, what they see as their homeland, all you have to do is think of the phrase “Middle East.” And you will realise that people in that part of the world, they’re attached even to a small, seemingly insignificant plot of ground, and they can never let it go. It’s in their hearts forever. If God has once promised it to them, and given it to them, then they can never leave it behind emotionally.
And that’s what happens in this week’s lesson. Is that, even though Mosiah has found a new place where they can live in peace, there are people who cannot leave their homeland that they loved for so many generations. They cannot leave it behind emotionally. And they have to return and find out what is going on there.
So here in the book of Omni, we have an account of two expeditions that leave Zarahemla to return to the land of Nephi, and once again gain possession over it. The first expedition is led by a very violent and wicked man, and we don’t learn a ton about him here in the book of Omni. Now, if you go to the end of the book of Omni, verses 27 through 30 , there are four verses that talk about this. And that’s it. Until we get to Mosiah chapter 7.
But there are two different accounts of the same two expeditions. The first one leaves into the wilderness; they have a fight amongst themselves! And presumably there is a large number of them, but they come back with only fifty men. They’ve killed each other off, almost completely, and only fifty return to tell the tale.
But somehow – this desire is so strong, to go back to the land of Nephi – that somehow, they’re able to raise support for a second expedition. And they take enough people with them to found a city. Which is a large number of people, if you think about it. It’s got to be at least ten thousand people, maybe more. Maybe several times that. And they go again into the wilderness. They’re led, as we discover in Mosiah chapter 7, they’re led by a man named Zeniff.
Now, on the first expedition out, he had been a spy among the Lamanites, and he had come to love them, to some extent. So their original purpose was to go and just conquer them: they were going to be conquistadors, and take over the land. They were going to, through force of arms, conquer the land of their ancient inheritance, and maybe even by surprise attack. They were going to be the aggressors in a war.
And Zeniff, because of the things he’d seen about the Lamanites, he had some love for them. He wasn’t willing to let that happen. And the leader did want to let that happen, to the point that he was willing to kill Zeniff, in order to continue his war of conquest.
And so there was a division. It seems like pretty close to half of the people thought that they should go and kill the Lamanites, unprovoked. And the other half thought that they shouldn’t.
Now, by “unprovoked,” I mean that there was no immediate provocation, but the culture of ancient near-eastern peoples would be, “Of course we’ve been provoked. We’ve been kicked out of our homeland. This is genocide perpetrated upon us. So any war in retribution is justified.” So some of them thought they should kill the Lamanites, and some of them thought they shouldn’t. They were willing to fight among themselves to the point of bloodshed, in order to advance their respective views.
Eventually Zeniff comes back with a second expedition, and founds the city. And this is all mentioned here at the end of the book of Omni. In fact, it is the final verse of the book of Omni, where Amaleki, the final writer of the small plates of Nephi – the final verse of the small plates of Nephi deals with the fact that he misses his brother who left. “These people have gone, they’ve gone to found a city back in our original homeland, and I don’t know what happened to them, I never saw them again.”
So I don’t know if that’s significant, that it’s the final verse of the small plates of Nephi, or not. But I thought I would bring that up.
I also thought I’d bring up some of the things we learned about Mosiah. We learned he’s a seer. There’s a large stone brought to him. When his people merge with the people of Zarahemla, they bring him a stone. And we don’t know the origin of the stone, whether it was carved by the people of Zarahemla. But the story of the stone deals with the man named Coriantumr, who we later learn is the final survivor of the Jaredites.
Now, right away you can tell, we have four major civilisations that have been mentioned, just in this short passage. We have the Lamanites, we have two groups of Nephites – one group left behind in the land of Nephi, and one group that has been separated from them, the people of Mosiah the First. We have the people of Zarahemla, who they merged with. And then we have the Jaredites. I’m sorry, that’s five major civilisations. So this is a very complicated narrative at this point.
And Mosiah, we learn that he’s a seer, because he can interpret a lost language. The people of Zarahemla are descended, we learn, from the same king that ruled Jerusalem when Lehi and Nephi came out of it. So even though they both left, both of these civilisations left Jerusalem within ten years of each other, almost five hundred years before, they have met up in the same time and place.
At some point along the way – we don’t know exactly where or when – the people of Zarahemla encountered this final survivor of the Jaredites. And either they carved their story of Coriantumr, this survivor, into the stone, or he had already carved it and he gave it to them. In either case, Mosiah is able to interpret it, and we learn a little bit about the Jaredites.
Now, moving forward to Mosiah chapter 7 . So this is now a third expedition returns to the ancient land of Nephi, which is now called the land of Lehi-Nephi, and the city of Lehi-Nephi. Now we can presume – again, this is a lost name, this is the first time we’ve run across this name – we’ve always heard it called the land of Nephi, and now all of a sudden, it’s called the land of Lehi-Nephi. And we can presume in the lost manuscript that that name would have been introduced at some point. Because it’s not Mormon’s way to just give us new names without any sort of explanation. The first time he brings a new name into the story he gives an explanation around it, and then later on just refers to it, briefly. And so probably this name had a great history that is now lost.
So the third expedition is led by one of the people of Zarahemla It’s not led by a Nephite, and this is actually, in my opinion, significant. It’s not led by a Nephite, it’s led by one of these new Zarahemla people who has no connection, incidentally, to the city of Lehi-Nephi. And he probably didn’t have a large number of family members who went to claim this land, because none of his family would have been connected to that land.
So it’s interesting that he would be the leader of this expedition, because he doesn’t have any sort of ancestral connection to the land that they’re going to find out about.
Nevertheless, sixteen of them make their way through the wilderness. They travel forty days. And forty is a number associated quite often in the scriptures with hardship, and with privation. The Israelites were forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus Christ, in a symbol of that wandering, he was forty days in the wilderness being tempted of Satan.
So they spend forty days trying to get there, and they suffer a lot of things. As we learn, they don’t know the way, so they sort of have to blunder their way through the wilderness.
We can kind of tell the distance from that number. Now we can make a few guesses. How long, how far can a person travel in one day? Somewhere between ten and twenty miles, depending on the mountainous nature of the terrain, how much jungle there is, and they’re not going in a straight line, they’re sort of blundering around. So we can guess that the land of Nephi and the city of Zarahemla are probably within two or three hundred miles of each other.
That’s just a rough number. But it lets you know by today’s standards they’re relatively close. By ancient standards, that’s a fair distance. Also worth noting, is that when the Israelites were carried into bondage, it took about forty days to go between Jerusalem and Babylon. And so there was some interchange between the people of Jerusalem and Babylon after the exile. But not much, it was hard to send letters back and forth. They had some correspondence, but not a ton. It wasn’t easy, and a person born in Babylon was not likely to visit Jerusalem.
So they’re separated by enough time and distance that they’re going to be two different civilisations from that point on. And somehow, Ammon and his people find the way there. And then four of them – they leave the rest of them, the other twelve, they leave them outside the city – four of them make their way into the city. Incidentally, one of them is name Amaleki, and it’s spelled exactly the same way as the final author of the book of Omni is spelled. And that leaves me to wonder, maybe this is his grandson. He told his grandson, “Hey look, your great uncle, years ago, went on an expedition, and I never heard of what happened to him again. And you’ve been named after him.” So, I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but it’s kind of interesting that those names would coincide.
So what do they find? They are actually taken prisoner and they’re brought before the king, and the king says, “I was going to kill you, because you came upon me when I was vulnerable. But I’m curious about why you’re here, and I’ve spared your life so you can tell me why you’re here, before you die.”
Once more, we can learn something from this detail. That is, presumably, again, that King Limhi, the current leader of this expatriate society from Zarahemla, he has mistaken Ammon for a Lamanite. Otherwise, he would not be willing to kill him. He is so certain that Ammon is a Lamanite that he is willing to put him to death.
To me, this casts doubt on the idea that there was some sort of very clear racial difference between the Nephites and Lamanites. Because apparently some of them, if not all of them, are totally indistinguishable from each other. So that’s an interesting idea, because it’s not what we’ve been given to believe elsewhere. [ See Mark’s correction in episode 19: Limhi mistakes Ammon for one of the missing priests of Noah that had caused them so much trouble. S03E19 transcript p7]
But Limhi learns that they’ve come from Zarahemla to rescue them, and he immediately let’s Ammon and his brethren know that his people want to escape, and they’re under bondage, they’re being taxed fifty percent of everything that they create, and they’re practically slaves to the Lamanites. So they’ve been slain, and captured, and subjugated.
So this brings up one of the themes of this lesson, which is subjugation and bondage. Now in the Old Testament, this would be similar to the exile of the Israelites. Now the symbolism of exile: if the ancient Israelites being brought into the promised land is a sort of birth, it’s the first manifestation of the covenant of Abraham being fulfilled. So it’s the birth of them as a people, of the Israelites as a people. The people of God have been created.
If that’s the case, then exile is similar to death. And so we’ll come back to this idea of subjugation and exile and birth and creation. And we learn, one of the things we learn, incidentally, is that exile and death are not permanent. In scriptural terms, God has never intended death to be forever. And that’s a really interesting idea.
So in any case, they’re living in this… similar to the Babylonian captivity. Where they are a captive people, and they exist at the pleasure of another people who derive most of their material gain from the captured Israelites, from the captured people of the covenant.
And so Limhi gathers his people and says, “Look everybody, here are some explorers from the land of Zarahemla. We’ve tried to find Zarahemla before. We didn’t know where to go, but now we do. And so I’m going to give you all a speech that will motivate you and inform you as to our reasons for leaving, and our reasons for being in the situation we’re in.”
So the fact that Limhi spends so much time doing this, we can also gather that maybe there was some difference of opinion among the people. “Should we leave, or should we stay here? We spent so much effort to get here.” But the general consensus seems to be “Yes, we’re willing to leave because we are so miserable, and the Lamanites are so awful to us.”
Now, we learn about Limhi that he is quite a scriptorian. I use that word deliberately. The first thing that gives me that impression is that he uses Exodus language. So he calls his people together, and he makes a speech to them, and in verse 19 of Mosiah 7, he calls God “the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,” and he says the “God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” and he describes the Exodus.
So he uses Exodus language, which is very, very common, and has a rich history among the Israelites. The Exodus is used as a way to inspire faith, and has been from the time of the Exodus all the way up until the present.
Nephi also used it quite a bit. You’ll remember that he used that language to inspire his brothers to build a ship. And the point is, God has created this, or has performed this amazing miracle for our people at some point in the past. This miracle was so great that it can be used to inspire faith forever. That’s what the Exodus is.
And he uses similar language to describe the exodus of Nephi out of Jerusalem. So that right there tells me that he believes in the scriptures, much like Nephi did. He makes an effort to apply the scriptures in his own life.
This continues. Now he describes what a terrible situation they find themselves in, regarding the Lamanites, then he also says, “We’ve killed a prophet of the Lord.” He’s referring to Abinadi, who we’ll learn about in a few chapters.
And finally, he starts to quote scripture, and this is an assumption we have to make. It’s very interesting, because in verse 29 , the verse reads like this. Again, this is Limhi talking to his people:
29 For behold, the Lord hath said: [colon ] I will not succor my people in the day of their transgression; but I will hedge up their ways that they prosper not; and their doings shall be as a stumbling block before them. [ Mosiah 7:29 . Emphasis added.]
So, in other words, “If you want God’s help, but you’re working contrary to God’s will, he is instead going to hinder you.” This convention, where it says “the Lod hath said:” and then a colon , this is exactly the convention used in the King James Version of the Bible, when a quotation is implied. So the King James Version doesn’t use quote marks. Those are a more modern innovation in grammar and in punctuation. But that is how the King James Version would have direct quotation.
So we can only presume that Joseph Smith was following the convention of the scriptures he knew best, and is implying here a direct quotation.
Now I did as much research as I could on this, and I can’t find the verse that this is quoting from. And the footnotes do a pretty good job here of giving us some examples of similar verses in the Old Testament, that if Limhi were paraphrasing, those are the verses that he’d be paraphrasing from.
But I don’t get that impression, I get the impression that this is a direct quote. So it’s a scriptural idea that he’s expressing, but he’s quoting a scripture that we don’t have.
So there are three different conclusions that we can come to. One is; he’s not quoting, but he is paraphrasing. Number two; he’s quoting from a scripture that is in the brass plates, but is not in our modern Old Testament. Finally; he’s quoting from a scripture that was in the large plates of Nephi, that Mormon has included, and he doesn’t feel like he has to explain where this quotation is coming from, because he’s already included it in the earlier part of his abridgement. But it’s been lost to us.
So my own idea is that it’s one of the latter two. This is actually a quote and not a paraphrase. Because he does it three times in a row. So verses 29, 30 and 31 , they all seem to be direct quotations from scripture. And none of them have an exact match in our existing Old Testament or Book of Mormon scriptures.
To me, that’s very interesting. And if I were Joseph Smith, and I were making up the Book of Mormon, I would never do this, right? I would actually include a Biblical quotation, one that we had in modern scripture, so that we could show the character of Limhi. I wouldn’t have Limhi pretend to quote a scripture that didn’t really exist.
And so that’s one of the many… there are several – but I’m not going to draw attention to all of them – there are several – even in just today’s lesson – little details that tend to reinforce the idea that this is not a work of fiction. And the reason I bring that up is, the Book of Mormon will never be proven to be an ancient record until the time comes… Let me put it another way: God wants us to choose whether we believe in the Book of Mormon. And if we are willing to believe in it, then we’re willing to pray about it, we’re willing to follow our belief, and eventually that belief becomes testimony. When it’s confirmed and ratified and brought home to our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
But it will never be proven beyond a doubt. There will always be a choice in the question of whether to believe. And because of that, each of us can have a challenge to that belief from time to time. And for me, I find it helpful when I have a challenge to my belief, that something that says, “Gosh, that doesn’t seem to reinforce the idea of the Book of Mormon being true,” then I think, “Look at this mountain of evidence that I have, that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record.”
To me, this is one of those little rocks that make up the mountain of evidence, which is that, if I were composing the Book of Mormon, and my intent was to have it accepted as fact, I would not use scriptures that didn’t exist. I would use Biblical quotations, and then I would draw attention to them. Instead, these are inserted – as are other what you might call proofs or evidences in today’s lesson. They’re inserted and sort of left there, for us to pick up on, and find as hidden clues. And the reason for that is, Joseph Smith had no idea that they were clues. He just knew that he was translating words.
He later on, I imagine, came to have some greater understanding upon their import, but even he probably didn’t understand everything there was to know about how the Book of Mormon pointed to Biblical tradition. And so these are just historical evidences for us to uncover, and for us to find. And this is one of them; that there seem to be references here to what are lost manuscripts or lost scriptures, and that is also a Biblical tradition. We also have examples of that in the existing Old Testament, and in the New. As well as elsewhere in the Book of Mormon.
And so this fits in very well with the scriptural tradition, and if it were being deliberately deployed, it would be a very sophisticated technique, one that would require a lot of revision and planning, which we have no evidence Joseph Smith ever engaged in. In other words, the Book of Mormon is internally consistent beyond any expectation of a book that was written by one person. I just could not believe that it would be this internally consistent.
Another big piece of evidence for me is that nowhere does Joseph Smith, or does the author of the Book of Mormon, draw attention to these things as being evidence. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about one of these pieces of evidence from the next chapter. But they are thrown away, almost. They seem to imply a very strong connection to the Old Testament, as you would expect, and yet, nowhere does anybody say, “Do you see? Do you see what I’ve done here? Look at how powerful an evidence this is.” It’s just inserted in the text, as you would expect from an ancient history. Because, of course they know that they are the cultural descendants of Old Testament civilisation.
So we have verses 29 through 31, we have little paraphrases, but no exact quotes, and we don’t know the scriptures that were the antecedents of these quotations. But in verse 33 , King Limhi says something interesting. He says:
“If ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart”
– now this is a verse that doesn’t appear to be a quotation, and so we can guess that he might be paraphrasing –
“If ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage.”
Now that word turn gives us a key word that we can search on. For me, I feel relatively certain that this is a clear paraphrase of Deuteronomy chapter 30. And this is one of the final promises of Moses to the Israelites. He says to them, “If you’re ever subjugated, and you’ve ever lost a battle and you’ve been made a tributary people, and you’re in slavery and bondage, and you turn to the Lord, and you ask him for help, and if you’ve been scattered, if you’ve been mistreated, if you’ve been exiled, if you turn to the Lord, then he will gather you again, if you’re repentant.”
So I encourage you to read Deuteronomy 30, verses 1 through 10 , and see for yourselves how Mosiah 7 verse 33 is an absolutely expert paraphrase, it’s a very, very skilful adaptation of this passage in Deuteronomy to the situation of the modern Nephites. And it could only be done by someone who is a very gifted scriptural teacher.
So Limhi is not only a scriptorian himself, but he is also a teacher of the scriptures. So this leads me to the conclusion that Limhi, like Mosiah the First, like Benjamin, and like Mosiah the Second, is very familiar with what we’ve called the “paragraph of kings.” Now you remember, we mentioned this last week. The paragraph of kings is this passage in Deuteronomy in chapter 17. In many places in Deuteronomy it describes here is what you – the Israelites as a people – here is what you all have to do.
But the paragraph of Kings says, here is what kings of the Israelites have to do. Very specifically, it’s direction just for the king. And this “paragraph of kings” is spiritual duties and requirements of a monarch, if he wants to have God on his side. And there is a lot of evidence in these two chapters – Mosiah 7 and 8, the two chapters that deal with Limhi – there is a lot of evidence that he has complied with the paragraph of kings.
I want to read you Deuteronomy 17, just the verses that deal with the scriptures. This is Deuteronomy 17:18-19 , and it’s talking about the king of Israel in the future:
18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:
So at least one of the duties of an ancient Israelite king is that he would take the scriptures that were had by the priests, make his own copy, and then read it every day. The rest of his life. As long as he was king, he had to read from the scriptures, from the copy he had made with his own hand, he had to read that copy every day. So he would be very, very knowledgeable in the scriptures.
And Limhi has just shown us a number of instances where he is familiar with, and compliant with, this teaching from the paragraph of kings.
Now in chapter 8, Ammon tells the people of Limhi, he tells them the messages that King Benjamin taught, that we discussed last week. In other words, he describes the new covenant of Jeremiah. And Limhi had heard this previously from Ammon. And I feel certain that Limhi had recognised that what Benjamin had taught was the fulfilment of prophesy, this ancient prophesy of Jeremiah, that one day God would create a new covenant among his people. And it would be a covenant where they would all know the Lord, and they would agree to do his will.
Now, the reason I bring this up is, now every group of Nephites has had this preached to them. As we will learn, in the coming chapters, there is a group of people from this civilisation who have left, they’re in the wilderness right now, we don’t know where they are. But they’ve been taught by Alma, and they’ve been taught a similar message.
Alma has taught them what we today would call the covenant of baptism, but what they would have thought of then as the new covenant of Jeremiah.
So, Alma came up with it independently, Benjamin came up with it independently, and now here are the people of Limhi hearing the same message. So all of the Nephites now, all of those who are willing to believe, have been taught of this new insight. It’s like it could not be repressed. It’s almost like, these different prophets, they all have a similar source for this wisdom that they’re getting from heaven. And I say that as a little bit of joke, because of course they all have the source of God. God is telling them it’s time for all of them to learn about the Lord. So God is helping each of them, in their scattered locations, to receive the same truth.
So after Limhi speaks, and Ammon speaks, and tells them of the teachings of King Benjamin, then everyone goes home. And there is no specific plan made, but the idea there is, they’re all wiling now to leave the land of Nephi, because the Lamanites have made them so miserable.
And now is the time for Ammon to learn what’s been going on. And this is interesting because, Mormon here employs a well-known narrative technique, but one that would have been quite innovative in his time, and that is the flashback, or what’s also called analepsis . The idea that at some point, one of the characters in the story narrates events that have already passed; they’re past. So we’re learning about characters in the past, but now we’re going to the past of the past. It’s very easy for us to get in touch with this flashback because it’s such a common narrative technique in modern storytelling, in modern film and in literature. But back then, in scriptural times, not very common. Very innovative by Mormon.
And again, I bring this up because it complicates the narrative structure. This is a flashback to an event that has already been mentioned, as we saw, in the book of Omni, and so there has to be internal consistency between what’s going on here. And I also bring it up because it’s beautifully done. It’s a wonderful flashback, and the story really wouldn’t have made sense to tell it in any other way.
But that begins in chapter 9; we’re still in chapter 8. One of the things we learn in chapter 8 is that Limhi, in looking for the land of Zarahemla, actually encountered the homeland of the Jaredites. And the explorers that he sent, rather than returning with news of Zarahemla, they returned with news of this dead civilisation. And they returned with records that they can’t read. They also returned with some artifacts. And these artifacts are of a people who are described here as “large.”
So, one of the things we know about the Jaredites from modern revelation is that they were larger in stature, even than modern-day people. And modern-day people are generally agreed by anthropologists, to be larger than historical people. People just, over time, tend to get taller it seems, from the archaeological record. Nevertheless, we have record in the Book of Mormon, and from Joseph Smith, that the Jaredites were even larger than modern people. Which is the opposite of what you would expect.
One of the evidences of this is that the Urim and Thummim that Joseph Smith had, we learn in the Doctrine and Covenants, it comes from the Jaredites. And the indication seems to be, the inference seems to be, and the references to it that we have, that it was too large for Joseph Smith’s face. The Urim and Thummim take the form almost like a pair of spectacles. This is a little bit not part of our lesson, but we do learn about interpreters today, so I wanted to bring it up.
The interpreters were a Urim and Thummim, which in Hebrew means “lights and perfections.” They’re called in the Book of Mormon just “interpreters,” and we know that the brother of Jared created one. It’s a heavenly artifact, that allows a seer, somebody who, like Mosiah the First, is able to interpret an ancient language, or to make things known that otherwise could not have been made known. It’s an artifact, it’s an item from God, that through which a prophet is able to see heavenly truth.
And the evidence seems to be that the spectacles that would fit on a Jaredite head were just slightly too large for comfort on Joseph Smith’s head. Which is presumably one of the reasons why he used a seer stone, later on in his translation of the Book of Mormon, in preference to the Urim and Thummim, because it was easier; he didn’t have to fit these large pair of spectacles onto his face.
So King Limhi now learns what a seer is from Ammon. [ Mosiah 8:13 ] Ammon says, “Yeah, Mosiah the Second, Mosiah the grandson of the Mosiah you knew, he still has these interpreters, and I guarantee you that when we bring these plates back, he’s going to be able to interpret them.” And Limhi is blown away by the idea of a seer. He says “A seer is greater than a prophet.” [ Mosiah 8:15 ] And Ammon says, “Well, seers can make things known, that are about the past, about the present, about the future. But things that would not have been made known by any other way, they do it by the power of God. And a greater power no-one can have.” [Mosiah 8:16-17]
Now Limhi is inspired by this, to make another scriptural type statement. And these are the final words we have from Limhi in today’s lesson, the end of Mosiah 8. He says:
20 O how marvelous are the works of the Lord, and how long doth he suffer with his people; yea, and how blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men; for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them! (emphasis added.)
This is another dead give-away, when he refers to wisdom as a she . I remember having a question about this on my mission, I thought, “That is odd, that he should call wisdom a she .” My Mission President, his full-time job before his mission was as an Institute instructor and administrator. And so he was a scriptorian of the first order. But, his native language was Portuguese. And in Portuguese, there is nothing at all out of the ordinary about calling wisdom a she, because it’s a feminine noun. So I asked him this question, I said “Why does it say she ?” And he was like, “Well, of course it’s a she.” He never thought about it, because he only read the scriptures in Portuguese.
And so for years I wondered about this. I thought, “Why would he say ‘she should rule over them’? We just don’t find that sort of thing anywhere else in the Book of Mormon.” It wasn’t until recently that I understood. In the Bible, wisdom is a she. If you read Proverbs chapter 8…
So, I’m going to back up a little further. When we read John 1, we learn about something called “the Word,” and the Word is an aspect of God that is very common in Jewish thought for centuries. So the Word is this aspect of God that can be understood, perceived by men. “In the beginning was the Word.” And the Word had a part – as John describes it – had a part of creation.
If you go to Proverbs 8, we learn of another aspect of God. This one was also present in creation, and is one of the prized characteristics of God, to the point where it’s been personified. But the gender of this personification, rather than being male, is female. And it’s referred to in the Bible, several times. It is clear that it’s a cultural understanding, that the wisdom of God is a she that watches over men.
So here’s how Limhi understood that. He says, again:
“how blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men; for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them!”
A very, very rational and common thing for an Old Testament scholar to say. And yet, in the Book of Mormon itself, no attention is drawn to this, no explanation is given as to why Limhi would have called the wisdom of God “she”. It’s just this very strange and obscure saying that happens to agree perfectly with the character of Limhi, and it’s exactly how he would have expressed this very same idea.
The final verse in Mosiah 8 reads like this: (He’s still describing his people.)
“they are as a wild flock which fleeth from the shepherd, and scattereth, and are driven, and are devoured by the beasts of the forest.” [ Mosiah 8:21 ]
Now this seems to me, again, like a scriptural reference, so I did a little bit of research. And it turns out, he’s not quoting – as far as I can determine – any particular verse, but he is expressing a common idea from the Old Testament prophets, that the covenant people of God are his flock. They are like sheep.
Now I’m going to bring up a few references. I Kings 22:17 , when the wicked king of Israel, he wants a prophet to tell him, “Yes, you’re going to go up and prevail in battle.” He asks all of his prophets, and they all say yes. And then the prophet of Jehovah says, “Actually, the people of Israel are going to be scattered like sheep with no shepherd.”
And so there’s one instance of a prophet, talking about people after being defeated in battle, they’re going to have no shepherd.
In Psalm 100 , “we are the sheep of God’s pasture.” That is, the people of Israel, the covenant people. He is the shepherd, and we are the sheep. There are a number of Psalms that talk about this.
A very clear parallel is in Jeremiah, again. A prophet that is obviously well known to Limhi, because it was very important to him that Ammon relate Benjamin’s address. And my presumption is that the reason it was so important to him, to have Ammon share what he learned from King Benjamin, was because he recognised in it the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophesy about a new covenant. But that’s just my presumption.
However, there is a clear parallel between Jeremiah 50:17 , and here in Mosiah, the final verse of chapter 8.
“they are as a wild flock which fleeth from the shepherd, and scattereth, and are driven, and are devoured by the beasts of the forest.”
I’m now going to paraphrase for you from Jeremiah 50:
Israel is scattered and devoured by beasts, which are the foreign powers, the Assyrians and the Babylonians, but it is followed by a promise of restoration.
And so it’s interesting, because they’ve been scattered and devoured, which means they’ve been killed. You don’t have your flock killed by beasts, and then get your flock back. Either they’ve been killed, or they’re alive. But in Jeremiah 50 they’ve be scattered by beasts, they’ve been eaten by lions, and then God will restore them to their lands.
Now we don’t learn this for a while, but King Limhi is actually quoting a prophet that we haven’t heard about yet, and that is the prophet Abinadi. So in Mosiah 17, we’re going to learn Abinadi prophesies: “This people will be like a wild flock that is scattered and eaten by beasts.”
So, this is an interesting pronouncement by Abinadi, because it contains within it a curse, followed by the promise of a blessing. The curse is obvious, that they’re going to be scattered. So, the scattering of a flock is symbolic, again, of exile and death. And that is the worst thing that can happen to Israel.
So the metaphor of Israel as a people, their history, is a metaphor for each of our lives. This is fairly obvious from the scriptures, that we’re to liken ourselves to the history of Israel. And so when they are brought into the promised land, when they are brought through the Red Sea, this is a baptism. When they are brought into the promised land, this is a covenant. When they are faithful to Jehovah, this is a marriage. When they are exiled, this is a death. When they are gathered again, this is a resurrection.
So these are the events in the history of Israel that correspond to the events in our – in all of our – eternal progression. And here he is making reference to the resurrection. He’s saying, Abinadi is saying, that the people will be scattered like a flock, but the fact that he said the way that he said it, it was probably a reference to Jeremiah.
And in Jeremiah, the promise is, even though they’ re scattered, they will be gathered again.
Finally, this is possibly a reference to Isaiah 53. Now remember the scriptures for the people of the New testament were the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, the most commonly cited scripture as evidence of Jesus Christ’s atonement is Isaiah 53. It was their scriptures pointing to the mission and life and ultimate fate of Jesus Christ. And as we’ll find out in the weeks to come, Abinadi taught – in profound and prophetic detail – about every aspect of Isaiah 53 .
And in the chapter, we read “All we like sheep have gone astray,” yet there will come a shepherd who will heal us and gather us, and through his stripes we are made whole. We are brought back again into the fold of God. [ Isaiah 53:5-6 ]
And though, even though the promise is left unspoken by Abinadi, the fact that he calls them scattered sheep, if we know the scriptures then we know the promise: the scattered sheep will again be restored.
And so here is Limhi, speaking about his people. This is at once a manifestation of his scriptural knowledge; number two, it is a curse and a rebuke; but finally, it’s the promise of a blessing.
So it’s a prayer for deliverance, it’s an expression of the hope on the part of Limhi, that now the time has finally come for his people to stop being scattered and driven, and devoured by beasts, and be gathered again by the shepherd of the sheep.
Ok, that brings us to the flashback, which is the record of Zeniff. And Zeniff tells the story of how he really wanted to return to the land of Nephi. Again, because they feel this almost compulsory draw towards their ancestral homeland. And he tells the story of the first expedition, where they fight, and all of this agrees with the very cursory account in Omni. But it gives us more details.
So they go into the wilderness, and it turns out that Zeniff is the one around whom all of these events are revolving. He is the one who first expressed a reluctance to be the aggressor against the Lamanites. And their king being a bloodthirsty man, he ordered that Zeniff would be put to death. And there were people who were willing to fight to the death to protect Zeniff. And there were people who were willing to fight to the death to kill him.
And so then, naturally, because both groups were willing to fight to the death, they killed each other. And only fifty survived, as we learned in Omni, and this heart-breaking statement by Zeniff says: “We killed each other and then they were all dead, and we had to return home and relate that story to their wives and children.” And so they had this terrible reckoning, where they had to go back to Zarahemla, and say “We all killed each other.” [ Mosiah 9:2 ]
Somehow – again, this is just an indication of their feverish desire to possess this land – somehow, he raises enough support for a second expedition. And thousands of people had to be part of it, because they went in such numbers that they could form their own city, their own civilisation that would be cut-off from Zarahemla. They weren’t dependant on trade and supplies.
Interesting thing is, that on the second expedition, Zeniff goes in with just a few people to the king of the land. We don’t know if he is one of the former Nephites who stayed behind when Mosiah the First left, or whether he was one of the Lamanites who came in afterward, but his name is King Laman, and Zeniff says, “Hey, by the way, would you mind if we had this city, and you guys left?” And Laman says, “Yeah, sure. We’ll leave.”
This to me is the most interesting part of the entire story. There has got to be here so much more that we do not have any indication of, we do not know what’s going on. Because you would expect, the answer would be “No. And get out of our land.” But instead, what Zeniff says is, “This is part of his cunning. He wanted to bring us under his control.”
But if that’s the case – I can’t quite see that. Because, if that’s the case, he was in it for the really long con, as they call it. The Lamanites leave immediately the city, so that the Nephites can move in. But then, they don’t come back for twelve years. So it’s Zeniff’s idea that this was all the cunning of King Laman, that he would leave, and they would put the Nephites under subjection.
But it takes so long for them to come back that I can’t think that that was his motivation. I kind of think that what happened is, the ancestral homeland was more important to this group of Nephites, than it was to the group of Nephites who remained behind, that eventually became Lamanites.
So then, a large number of them had probably just left. And so they were probably not very many people in the city of Nephi, and when Zeniff shows up with a host, and says, “Can we have the land?” King Laman thought, if I don’t get out of here, I’m dead. That’s kind of my assumption about what’s going on. And so he agrees to leave. But he’s angry about it. So he stays brooding in the wilderness until he thinks he can muster enough strength to come and kill the Nephites. And so they do.
Now this is where we get the title of the lesson, because when the Nephites defend themselves, twelve years later, and then again twenty-two years after that, they do it “in the strength of the Lord.” [ Mosiah 10:10 ]
Now what does “the strength of the Lord” mean? It’s interesting, because when we read that, we just think, “Oh, they probably prayed before they went into battle.” But I took a minute and thought about, what are the differences between the Nephites and the Lamanites in this battle? And, what are the differences about their reasons for fighting?
And so here are the differences that I identified. First of all, the Nephites weren’t the aggressors in the battle. And in addition to that, they have the wealth and prosperity that makes them the target. So you’ll notice it’s not the Nephites who want what the Lamanites have, it’s the Lamanites who want what the Nephites have. Because the Nephites have been working hard. And they’ve had God on their side to help them to prosper and create something worth conquering.
The Nephites are employing vigilance to protect themselves. They have guards, and they have constant watch. They also have been creating weapons and stockpiles of supplies. They have a clear defence plan, so when the Lamanites attack, King Zeniff, he puts the women and children, he hides them in the wilderness. And then he arranges the men according to their age and their suitability for battle.
And because of this, on both occasions, the Nephites enjoy a completely outsized ratio of casualties to the Lamanites; more than ten to one, they kill the Lamanites, to the number of their own dead. There is over three thousand dead Lamanites to less than three hundred dead Nephites. Now that is just an amazing, amazing ratio.
It’s not just – now I don’t say that this had no effect – it’s not just because the Nephites were willing to pray before they went to battle. When they go up in the strength of the Lord, it includes all of these things. It includes the fact that they weren’t the aggressors, they didn’t have the desire of conquest and wealth, and bloodthirst, in order to motivate them to fight. It was because they wanted to defend their own rights.
And they were the ones who had been working hard and had created something of value. And they were willing to protect it by vigilance, and by stockpiles and by planning.
So this is the strength of the Lord – in my opinion – just as much as having faith and praying and allowing the power of God to overcome their fear of battle. And then strengthening them, and probably giving them physical strength through the battle. Now that was doubtless a part of their victory.
But just as doubtless was the fact that they had all these other things going for them. It’s kind of like the oil of the ten virgins, right? These are things that are stored up over a long period of time, drop by drop, and they can’t be shared with the Lamanites, because the Lamanites aren’t willing to make the same choices as the Nephites. If they were, there would be no reason to fight.
So what do we learn about the beliefs of the Lamanites? They believe, as is related in Mosiah 10, the Lamanites, their only clear belief is that their fore-fathers were wronged, repeatedly, by Nephi. So they were the victims of being kicked out of Jerusalem. They were the victims as they travelled towards the land of Bountiful. They were the victims as Nephi was constructing the ship, and again they were the victims on the water, and they were the victims of his theft when they arrived in the New World and Nephi ran off with the plates.
So this shows us the harm of an evil tradition. But it also shows us the nature of an evil tradition. So the evil tradition of the Lamanites is that they had been acted upon, in a predatory way. Laman and Lemuel: “Poor me, poor me, I’m Laman and Lemuel, and my little brother Nephi keeps mistreating me.”
And they take this grievance, this ancient grievance, and they make it permanent by teaching it to their children.
So, let’s examine the nature of the grievance, alright? So Nephi and his brothers, they actually – as we discussed at the time – they could not have been forced by Nephi to leave Jerusalem. They left willingly. Nephi did not hold them at the point of the sword and make them leave. They were willing to leave. They were just willing to complain about it the whole time. They weren’t willing to come up with a plan where they were going to go and do their own thing. They followed their father, they followed their little brother, when their little brother had a good idea. When their little brother was out there killing food, they were willing to eat it.
Now, there was some element of compulsion when they built the ship, because Nephi did shock them, and they had an indication the power of God was prodding them along. But other than that, they arrive in the New World, and Laman and Lemuel are going to kill Nephi because, they say, “He has usurped the leadership over us.” But all they had to do was not listen, and they could have had their own leadership.
So it’s so interesting because, Nephi left – and this was the ultimate cause of their grievance – was that he stole the governance of the people. But the only governance that Nephi stole was the governance of people who chose to follow him, into the wilderness.
What Nephi was not willing to do was to sit around, and let his brothers kill him.
So the fact that he left, they were so angry, but they were going to kill him. And basically, this mindset, it reduces down to the idea that: “I’m angry because you wouldn’t let me kill you.” You can see how much sense this made, right? It makes absolutely no sense. There’s no reason for anger here. Of course, somebody else isn’t going to let you kill them.
And nevertheless, this idea still has its manifestations today. And it’s not necessarily murder, that makes people angry, but basically, you’ll find this in political philosophies across the political spectrum. “I’m angry because you wouldn’t let me take your rights away.”
And that is Satan’s philosophy in a nutshell. “I’m angry with God, because he wouldn’t let me take away the rights of his children. So you can see how Laman and Lemuel got their philosophy directly from Satan, and how they passed it along to their children.
You can also see, if you’re looking for it now, you can see it manifesting itself all over the world, in today’s political philosophies. People are still willing to follow this crazy idea that one person has the absolute right to take away the rights of another person away, just because they want to. “You wouldn’t let me take your rights away. That makes me angry.” Whenever you see that, you can understand that it is Satan’s philosophy at play.
In 2 Nephi 2, that great chapter where Lehi is explaining the law of opposition, and the fall of Adam and Eve, a couple of times he says very clearly, in verse 16 and in verse 26 , he says, “It was given unto man, not to be acted upon, but to act for himself.”
And so it’s obvious that the power of God, and the plan of God, is for us to choose for ourselves, and to assist in the creation of our own lives, in the course of our lives, the way we once assisted in the creation of the world. So God has made us to be creators. And therefore, he has given unto us – unlike any of his other creations – he has given unto us to direct the course of our own existence.
And that is one of the rights we have that no-one else can take away. It doesn’t matter whether they’re angry or not – as is the case with Satan, for example – their anger is irrelevant to the fact that we are still creators. And we have the power to create our own lives, and act for ourselves.
And this is the lesson that Zeniff makes by giving us the philosophy of the Lamanites. That basically they are in bondage of their own. So even though the Nephites are in bondage to the Lamanites, the Lamanites are the ones in bondage to this philosophy. That they are not empowered to act for themselves. So even though the Nephites are physically captive, spiritually they have the strength of the Lord, because they believe that they are creators. And they’re the ones wo can act, rather than be acted upon.
So understand there is a powerful message here about bondage, which is that bondage exists in our own mind, more than it does – and we’re going to learn even more about this in the weeks to come – but bondage exists in our own mind, even more than it exists outside of us.
A helpful reminder during the time of quarantine and pandemic, that when we do battle in the strength of the Lord, we follow the example of Limhi. Limhi was willing to read the scriptures, and believe the promises that had been made so many times, that even though his people were a wild flock that had been scattered and driven and devoured by wild beasts, that in that very curse was held the promise of a future restoration, when God would gather his people, restore them, and give them a final resurrection.
So once again, underneath what appears on the surface to be a simple story of some expeditions into the wilderness, we find profound spiritual lessons, a complex narrative involving several ancient civilisations, firmly grounded in the fertile soil of the Old Testament. We would expect no less from the inspired record of the Book of Mormon. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.