Of course again this is a place we don’t have sufficient information. So we’re just speculating on various ways to read the text.

Regarding the bigger picture about ethics it’s an interesting question. I’m not sure how far down you want to go on that tangent. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the comments others have made that Laban is a bad guy and deserves to be removed. Even had Nephi not done the job in just a few years the Babylonians would have. Laban had been pretty emphatically warned by the prophets. We know that soon (if it hasn’t already happened – the dates are a bit ambiguous) Jeremiah is arrested and nearly killed.

This is why Robert’s raising the whole dirty hands issue seems genius to me. Even if we address the ethics questions I think we at minimum have to remember that this is not a case of the ethics of regular life. This is much more akin to the ethics people in war zones have to deal with. If we apply the reasoning of the ethics of regular life, I fear we go astray. Now I recognize that for many there is no divide between the ethics in regular mundane life and extraordinary circumstances. I tend to think there is although I recognize things get murky quickly.

Even going the other (in my opinion backwards or at least less valuable) direction, however, we have to admit that what we have here is only the defense’s (we might say “perpetrator’s”) version of the story. Which Nephi’s own account manifests it as controversial in his day. Which is certainly not enough to exonerate Nephi. It’s like condemning the Sanhedrin based solely on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (incidentally, something else we’re usually quite—illegitimately—comfortable doing).

To say it’s not a “self defense” situation is quite the understatement. I certainly hope that “many” today would shrink from the task! That is, I certainly hope that Clark’s wrong—even in the clarification that pulls apart thinking it just from being willing. These conversations get a bit surreal sometimes.

While the legal questions are interesting, I believe the problem of pre-exilic understanding and post-exilic understanding is big and relatively unaddressed in that. Admittedly Exodus 21 appears pre-exilic yet we don’t know what form it was in prior to the exile but after Josiah. (I don’t know the arguments on source criticism there – but then I admit I tend to get much more skeptical of source criticism when we move from the big picture to smaller areas)

As you note even ignoring those issues Laban still seems pretty ambiguous. Of course the Old Testament (pre-Davidic Kingdon) seems much less interested in these questions – especially in Genesis. Even if the legal tradition probably develops by considering these narratives.

Getting back to the ethics, I think the question James is really asking is what we’d do in similar circumstances. Like almost everyone just feeling a prompting or even an “inner voice” would probably be insufficient for me personally to think I’m sure God is directing things. If God is directing things then the debate is over from my view. Yet the tricky part is being sure you’re getting a revelation and then interpreting it correctly. Interesting to the narrative those sorts of questions aren’t addressed. We don’t know whether Nephi is hearing a voice, if there’s an angel, or what’s going on. Yet to our modern mind those questions seem key to understanding the situation.

That said, I also think that even for most modern Americans with our rule of law and liberal democracy the actions of Laban were such we’d probably kill Laban independent of God commanding it. The interesting thing is that Nephi doesn’t want to do it. God has to command him to do it. Culturally that just seems quite interesting to me. I know culturally today the concern for many is Nephi deciding to do it. Yet I think the much bigger question isn’t why Nephi would do it but why he wouldn’t do it. Something that’s not been really addressed well yet.

You see, I dont think Nephi needs to justify his killing and thus the reason he adds it in the story. I think Nephi includes it in the story to show how the spirit works with our faith. Above all though, we must revere Nephi as an obedient, brave, and special servant of the Lord. It is just one of the many telling events that unfolds that places Nephi at the helm of their survival and miracles.

While exploring the biblical law of excusable
(unintentional) homicide with English barrister and Jewish law scholar Bernard
S. Jackson, who has lectured at BYU’s law school on two occasions, we turned
attention to the Book of Mormon account of Nephi’s slaying of Laban.27 Professor Jackson had made the point that the biblical concept of premeditation
was different from the Anglo-American definition, which has come to require
much less than the deliberate preplanning and lying in wait for one’s victim
mentioned in Exodus 21:13–14. In American law, the requirement of
premeditation is satisfied as long as the killer is conscious of what he is
willfully doing merely the instant before the deed is accomplished. Jackson
felt that he could prove his interpretation of the biblical concept of
premeditation in Exodus 21:13–14 from a linguistic analysis of its Hebrew
text, but he regretted the lack of an actual instance from antiquity confirming
his interpretation. What he needed was an account in which a person had not
been lying in wait and whose victim was delivered by God into his hands, and in
which the slayer, when the killing occurred, was fully aware of what was
happening and yet the deed was viewed as falling between a homicide that was
committed with malice aforethought and a death that was purely accidental.
Jackson found it very interesting that the slaying of Laban might provide
something like the kind of case he was looking for, but he figured it would be
difficult to find a way in which he might use it.28

Text of the footnote 28: For his latest thinking on the law
of homicide in Exodus 21:12–14 and the legal question presented if a “killing
is neither premeditated, nor accidental,” see Jackson, Wisdom-Laws,
124–30, quotation on p.124.

That said, I do think there’s an important question to raise about how we judge among competing readings and where the burden of proof is. I think for instance that readings that go against the more straightforward reading do require justification.

Here’s a thought I have on justifying the death of Laban. Nephi knows what happens to murderers. He even knows what happens to men of war, who kill because God commands them to. If you shed man’s blood your blood must be shed by man. Maybe the one who it is better to perish is Nephi himself. I’m not saying Nephi was guilty, and in fact he is referred to as a temple builder later on. I’m saying Nephi was willing to give himself up, make himself into a murderer or even just a man of bloody hands, so that his people would not dwindle in unbelief.

A sign of the wickedness of rising generations is that they “became for themselves,” or became unwilling to sacrifice themselves, body or soul, for the continuation of their people. Mormon’s soldiers were fighting because they wanted to win, then fighting because there was nowhere to run. And so they dwindled and perished. There’s more to the collective righteousness of the Nephites than just the heroes.