I’m adding a new element to each post. At the beginning of each chapter review I’m going to add a 140 character summary of the chapter. I’ll go back and add summaries for 1 Nephi 1–3. Feel free to add your own ‘tweetable’ chapter summaries in the comments. (I’m also adding a 2 or 3 word chapter title).
1 Nephi 4 tweet: N struggles, cuts off Lb’s head. N pretends 2B Lb & gets plates from Z. L,L&S are scared of N (dressed as Lb). So is Z. Oaths by and 4 all.
On with the chapter review and this is one we should take pretty seriously. The bare bones of the story are that in this chapter, a man who would be a disciple kills an incapacitated man in cold blood. That should cause us to pause. Perhaps due to familiarity, perhaps because we take Nephi’s account at face value, whatever the reason, I think we tend to pass over the slaying of Laban a bit too easily. In the same way as the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah should, Nephi slaying Laban should shock us.
Elder Holland has said this of Nephi killing Laban:
…why didn’t Nephi just leave this story out of the book altogether? Why didn’t he say something like, “And after much effort and anguish of spirit, I did obtain the plates of Laban and did depart into the wilderness unto the tent of my father?”… But there it is, squarely in the beginning of the book–page 8–where even the most casual reader will see it and must deal with it. It is not intended that either Nephi or we be spared the struggle of this account.
“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded” (1 Nephi 3:7). I confess that I wince a little when I hear that promise quoted so casually among us. Jesus knew what that kind of commitment would entail, and so now does Nephi. And so will a host of others before it is over. That vow took Christ to the cross on Calvary, and it remains at the heart of every Christian covenant. “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded.” Well, we shall see.1
Before we get to that, a few other things to think about from this chapter:
v2: In recounting the story of Moses bringing the children of Israel through the Red Sea, I’m reminded of D&C 8:3:
Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground.
In another great talk worth revisiting, Elder Holland wonders why the Lord would use the example of Moses bringing the children of Israel through the Red Sea as the example of the spirit of revelation.2 Do you think this (i.e. the spirit of revelation) plays a role in Nephi’s use of the story?
v4: Concerning the walls of Jerusalem mentioned in this verse, Elder Maxwell said this:
This obscure young man apparently paused while translating and dictating to Emma—probably from the fourth chapter of 1 Nephi [1 Ne. 4]—concerning the “wall of Jerusalem”—and said, in effect, “Emma, I didn’t know there was a wall around Jerusalem.”3
v10: Is it significant that Nephi says the Spirit constrained him rather than commanded him? Nephi typically talks about keeping the commandments of the Lord. Is there a difference between being commanded and being constrained?
To the killing of Laban itself; as mentioned in an earlier post, I think it’s important to remember that Nephi is recounting events that happened 30 years previously. Why would Nephi even tell this story? Why would he tell it in the way that he does? In part, he seems to structure the story in a way that alludes to David’s slaying of Goliath. Consider the parallels in the following scriptures:4
1 Samuel 17:4–7, 11 and 1 Nephi 3:31
1 Samuel 17:32 and 1 Nephi 4:1
1 Samuel 17:34–37 and 1 Nephi 4:2–3
1 Samuel 17:45–46 and 1 Nephi 4:6, 10–12, 17
1 Samuel 17:51 and 1 Nephi 4:9, 18
1 Samuel 17:54 and 1 Nephi 4:19
Why would Nephi want to tell the story in this way? In particular, why would he want to draw a parallel between himself and David?
Steve Olsen reads Nephi slaying Laban in an interestingly symbolic way:
A connotation of remember in the Book of Mormon is revealed by defining its opposite, which is not “forget” but “dis-member.” From this perspective, when a covenant with God is broken, the rebellious are cut off or cast out from God’s presence or from the covenant community (e.g., Genesis 17:14; Leviticus 18:29; Isaiah 53:8). In this sense, they are then “dis-membered,” or not “re-membered.” That is, they are not eliminated from one’s temporal consciousness but are separated from the covenant and its constituted community that had defined their eternal identity and place in the kingdom of God. From this perspective, for the ancient peoples of God, the sign of a covenant—such as circumcising the foreskin (Genesis 17:10; 34:15), sacrificing an animal (Moses 5:5–7; Abraham 2:7–8), or rending a garment, as in Moroni’s title of liberty (Alma 46:12–21)—often involved cutting, severing, or cleaving, indicative of the consequence of breaking or “dis-membering” the covenant.
Thus God’s directing Nephi to slay a Jewish religious leader by cutting off his head with his own sword symbolically indicates that Jehovah severed his covenant with the people of Israel at Jerusalem because of their wickedness. Lehi and his family were now to be the rightful heirs of the promised blessings of the covenant. From this perspective, Nephi’s preservation of Laban’s sword as one of the Nephites’ sacred artifacts and its later use as a model for Nephite armaments are seen more fundamentally as symbols of the covenant with God that defines and distinguishes their chosen identity and guides their lives in search of the covenantal promises of salvation.5
Are there other symbolic ways we might read this story?
What do you think Laman, Lemuel and Sam will have thought when Nephi told them how he obtained the plates? What will have changed for them?
Finally, whenever I read this story I am always challenged to think about how to discern between revelation and my own desires or rationalisations. How have you learned to recognise the promptings of the Spirit?
Next week’s reading: 1 Nephi 5
- https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_will-father/
- https://www.lds.org/ensign/2000/03/cast-not-away-therefore-your-confidence?lang=eng
- https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1983/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng
- http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/18/1/S00004-5074648ca9094McGuire.pdf
- http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1464&index=13
The Small Plates of Manchester 
January 24, 2016 at 7:28 pm
Jamie…. great post with some thought provoking questions.
Do you have any parallels or symbolism in deception (craftiness) that followed as Nephi then put on a dead mans clothes and pretended to be that man in order to obtain the dead man’s property? It seems a thin line between guile and deception or lies.
I don’t ask this to be argumentative. I just feel that only a few of the challenges this chapter presents have been covered. Would love your thoughts on the rest of what was done to accomplish them.
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January 24, 2016 at 8:34 pm
Good questions – I don’t take them to be argumentative at all. The challenge of the blog is that I don’t want posts to end up too long and put readers off. But we can get into the details in the comments. The slaying of Laban and the subsequent deception of Zoram are some of the most challenging stories to deal with in the BOM. I don’t have time now but I’ll come back to you on your questions.
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January 25, 2016 at 3:38 pm
Curious, so here are a few more thoughts that I have about Nephi/Laban that I didn’t want to take up too much space with in the post, but I’m happy to expand upon in the comments.
I think there are perhaps three possible explanations for the slaying of Laban with different sets of implications depending on which explanation is right.
1. Nephi was commanded by God to kill Laban
This is obviously the traditional view but even with this view there is a lot more to think about than perhaps we usually do. Nephi presents himself as a very black and white character and very sure of every choice that he makes. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking he must have questioned himself many times during the intervening years as to whether God really did command him to kill Laban, especially as he wasn’t commanded by an angel but rather by the unseen Spirit, i.e. he didn’t have his physical senses to corroborate the command. To kill somebody at such a young age must have had a massively profound effect on him and forever changed the way he was perceived by the rest of the family (and Ishmael’s family). Did such violent beginnings contribute to the culture of war that defines Nephite-Lamanite relationships? I think in likening the event to David killing Goliath, Nephi may have been trying to assure himself that it truly was God’s will. Sometimes we ask ourselves, could God not have provided another way? Surely He could have. But I can think of a few reasons He might have commanded Nephi to kill Laban. Off the top of my head, perhaps Laban was a truly vile man who was guilty of crimes deserving of death, e.g. Laman and Lemuel may have suggested Laban was himself guilty of slaying many men (see 1 Ne 3:31). If Laban was deserving of capital punishment, perhaps this allowed God to test how obedient Nephi really would be and also challenge the reader to ask themselves the same, as per Elder Holland’s quote in the post above. Perhaps God was emphasising for the modern reader the value of the Book of Mormon:
“By the end of Chapter One, we know that the book we are holding in our hands is the descendant of a book that was so important that a blameless man was willing to kill for it, to kidnap for it, and to betray the core elements of his being for it. Readers in 1830, who had just paid the equivalent of $50.00 to buy the book from travelling preachers, found out in the first chapter that it was worth far more than they had paid. They understood the importance of a written record to the survival of a civilization. And they knew that they were in possession of a book worth killing for.”
http://bycommonconsent.com/2016/01/07/a-book-to-kill-for-bom2016/#more-64212
2. Nephi was not commanded by God to kill Laban
A non-traditional view that comes with a different set of implications. Perhaps in favour of this position is that if we take the text at face value, Nephi draws Laban’s sword before he is constrained by the Spirit to kill him (see v.9-10). Why would he do that? If God did not actually command Nephi to kill Laban, what do we learn? That even after killing a man, Nephi was still capable of receiving great revelations and of writing scripture. Does that teach us we should be less concerned about the personal conduct of prophets (especially those who lived in times and cultures very different than ours *cough* Joseph Smith, Brigham Young) than we should about what they reveal and teach? Why was Nephi so convinced it was God’s will and what are the implications for receiving revelation in our own lives?
3. It wasn’t about the result, it was about the process
I read the following in a post about the command Abraham received to sacrifice Isaac that I think might apply quite well to the Nephi/Laban situation:
“I’ve sort of come to the tentative conclusion that the “test” was not to see *what* Abraham would do, but rather to see *how* he would do it. In my very fallible opinion, if Abraham had just said “sure, where’s the knife?” without giving it a further thought he would have failed the test just as much as if he had just said “no, I’m not doing that” without giving it a further thought. In a certain sense, it was a loaded test; no matter what he did, he would have been doing something wrong (disobeying God, or murdering). It wasn’t a choice of whether to obey or not obey, it was (like Eden) a choice of which commandment to obey and which to disobey. So I don’t think the test was about the result, but rather about the process. Either he had to decide that murder isn’t evil if God commands it, or he had to decide that disobedience isn’t evil if God commands something evil.
“It’s like in law school where you can get the wrong answer, but still pass the test, because you engage in the right kind of reasoning. The way I read it, Abraham may have gotten the wrong answer, and maybe that’s why the angel had to step in and correct him, but even though he got the wrong answer, he passed the test, because he poured his soul into figuring it out and did the best that he could do.
“I think that’s why Paul says not that Abraham’s choice was righteous, but that it was “counted unto him for righteousness.” And I half suspect that if Abraham, after a sincere struggle, had decided that disobedience was the lesser evil, that would also have been “counted unto him for righteousness.” Abraham passed the test not because he chose obedience, but because he struggled with the commandment, and he even though he knew that no matter what decision he made would result in a broken commandment, he trusted that God would repair the brokenness.”
So where do I land? It’s a wrestle, especially given modern sensibilities, but I lean towards option 1 with a bit of 3 thrown in. But I think ultimately that it’s more important to engage seriously with the text than it is to know categorically which option is right.
I haven’t really engaged with your question about the deception and possible kidnapping of Zoram because the slaying of Laban in my mind is the bigger question. I’ll think about it some more but would be interested in your thoughts.
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February 18, 2016 at 2:14 pm
Cheers Jamie. Really appreciate the effort you put into this.
I think part of the reason I find stuff like this hard, is that I grew up thinking things were so black and white (red and white actually). The usual… thinking Church leaders are infallible, the Church is perfect blah blah blah. And I struggle now that I realise that is not the case. This is a case in point…. we could put the Greeks to shame with the amount of discussion and theorising we could do around this.
I think part of me just wishes things were simply black (red) or white… especially in a busy world like today where it’s hard to find time to contemplate things like this. But may be that’s the point.
Anyway…. for now…. I think you’ve given me my license to eat drink and be merry… and still find favour with God 😛
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January 30, 2016 at 11:43 pm
All excellent thoughts and ideas as always.
I want to focus on your last question about personal revelation. That was in the forefront of my mind too – in Joshua’s study of his Book of Mormon Reader we had reached this event and also I had posted a couple of days previously on my own blog about receiving personal revelation and how we can tell if it is revelation or our own thoughts: https://matthewsroberts.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/recognising-personal-revelation/?preview=true
Interestingly, I mention how if the prompting leads us to act against a commandment of the Lord then we can be sure it is not of God – so what makes this experience of Nephi different?
I’m sure there is an answer – maybe you have some thoughts – maybe it is linked to the covenant symbolism mentioned in the quote you shared in your post?
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