{"id":34027,"date":"2015-10-06T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34027"},"modified":"2015-09-29T04:27:04","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T09:27:04","slug":"reading-nephi-118-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/10\/reading-nephi-118-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 1:18-20"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>Two contrasts strike me in verse 18: a contrast between the way that Nephi uses the word \u2018marvelous\u2019 and a contrast between the visions and prophesying he attributes to Lehi here, and what we just got in verse 14. To begin with a word on the latter, I\u2019m heartened that Lehi\u2019s prophesying included beautiful, affirming, psalms; I trust his public messages did too, even if Nephi didn\u2019t note this fact.<\/p>\n

I never hear the word \u2018marvelous\u2019 used to neutrally reference a marvel. It\u2019s always used as a synonym to \u2018wonderful.\u2019 Marvels and wonders only receive a positive valence today; but Nephi\u2019s clearly not using it that way. Which hints at something else buried here that is easy for us to miss today: it was indeed a marvel, something that defied common reason and common sense of the day, that Jerusalem, the holy city, the Lord\u2019s city, the house of the artifacts of Moses and Aaron and the seat of God\u2019s presence on earth, would be destroyed and God\u2019s people carried off. It wasn\u2019t given to Lehi as an incredible possibility; it was given as fact (or at least given as a strong \u201clikely\u201d from an ultimate authority). This indeed must\u2019ve been something to marvel at.<\/p>\n

This contrast between Lehi\u2019s \u201cmarvelous\u201d visions and how they would\u2019ve sounded to a public that didn\u2019t acknowledge their divine source helps to make sense of the public reaction. Noting that there was not then a distinction between the theological and the political, we can nevertheless see important political and theological differences between Lehi\u2019s Messiah and whatever messianism might\u2019ve existed at the time. Jerusalem isn\u2019t ignorant of the threat they face. They\u2019ve watched everyone else around them be crushed\u2014including other villages around Jerusalem. A Messiah is a Son of David, a king, someone to shore up Israel\u2019s failing political fortunes, a figure to unite and rally the people, a figure to establish Israel as a flourishing nation. But Lehi\u2019s narrative of a Messiah is that of a figure to come after destruction. And here we begin to see anachronism creep in\u2014or at least, I can\u2019t see how to get out of my New Testament corrupted head and figure out how else it might\u2019ve seemed to them. This strikes me as post-Babylonian exile Messianism, a deutoro-Isaiah message about God\u2019s being faithful even after he\u2019s obviously been unfaithful (on account of our own wickedness). The anachronism makes sense, however, since Lehi was having to wrestle\u2014I\u2019m assuming over the course of years\u2014with a pre-knowledge of what the Jewish exiles would later wrestle with after the fact: Jerusalem\u2019s destruction. Here then, is a scenario that makes sense of Lehi\u2019s following the same pattern of thought as the later prophets and religious thinkers.<\/p>\n

Finally, I see in verse twenty not just Elder Bednar\u2019s now famous exhortation to remember the tender mercies of the Lord, but an exhortation to remember to whom and how those tender mercies are extended. I too can\u2019t help but interpret a key hymn that speaks to my soul at a poignant moment as grace, as a tender mercy, and I cherish our contemporary, Bednarian interpretation of the phrase. But here it\u2019s something different. Tender mercies are for the meritocratically chosen (on account of faith). Or perhaps we could read it not meritocratically but matter-of-factly: those who have faith live such that they experience tender mercies. But just what are these mercies? Power. That which makes us mighty even unto deliverance. It is God\u2019s infusing Moses with the power to part the Red Sea or Nephi with the power to slay Laban and get the plates. Grace is (as Elder Bednar elsewhere notes) an empowering. God seeks not just our salvation but our exaltation, God seeks to place us in contexts as Abraham and Joseph Smith declare, where our intelligence might increase. This isn\u2019t the Protestant notion of empowerment\u2014that while we remain weak, we nonetheless are connected to a divine power source. Rather, our own personal power is itself increased through God\u2019s tender mercies, so that we can ourselves work for deliverance. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two contrasts strike me in verse 18: a contrast between the way that Nephi uses the word \u2018marvelous\u2019 and a contrast between the visions and prophesying he attributes to Lehi here, and what we just got in verse 14. To begin with a word on the latter, I\u2019m heartened that Lehi\u2019s prophesying included beautiful, affirming, psalms; I trust his public messages did too, even if Nephi didn\u2019t note this fact. I never hear the word \u2018marvelous\u2019 used to neutrally reference a marvel. It\u2019s always used as a synonym to \u2018wonderful.\u2019 Marvels and wonders only receive a positive valence today; but Nephi\u2019s clearly not using it that way. Which hints at something else buried here that is easy for us to miss today: it was indeed a marvel, something that defied common reason and common sense of the day, that Jerusalem, the holy city, the Lord\u2019s city, the house of the artifacts of Moses and Aaron and the seat of God\u2019s presence on earth, would be destroyed and God\u2019s people carried off. It wasn\u2019t given to Lehi as an incredible possibility; it was given as fact (or at least given as a strong \u201clikely\u201d from an ultimate authority). This indeed must\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34028,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34027\/revisions\/34028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}