Category: Scriptures

1 Nephi 2:15-17 

15 And my father dwelt in a tent.{1}
16 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father; wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers.
17 And I spake unto Sam, making known unto him the things which the Lord had manifested unto me by his Holy Spirit. And it came to pass that he believed in my words.

One of the wonderful things about the scriptures is that they speak in many voices—and it is the reader, not the author, who chooses the voice. When one asks what a scripture means, there are two possible answers: the first is that it means what the Spirit teaches one that it means so that it may be most applicable to one’s life just then. Because that is true, the meaning we perceive may not only be different from person-to-person but it may have a different application as we mature or as our needs change. The second is that the passage means precisely what the author intended it to mean. These verses are an interesting example of that.

Nephi tells us: “I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father.” As a boy I was taught that the “visit” was symbolic—that, in fact, there was no actual visit at all but that he had been filled with the Holy Ghost, and thus his heart had been softened that he could believe. I was also taught that if I would pray to be able to believe, the Holy Ghost would visit me in the same way. That was a good explanation, and an encouragement for a boy who wanted to be taught to believe.

I no longer believe that was what Nephi intended us to learn from his statement. He says, “he did visit me,” I believe that is a simple, concise, and accurate description of what happened.
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FOOTNOTE

{1} See1 Nephi 2:4-6, Lehi’s Tent as a Tabernacle.

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1 Nephi 2:11-13 

11 Now this he spake because of the stiffneckedness of Laman and Lemuel; for behold they did murmur in many things against their father, because he was a visionary man, and had led them out of the land of Jerusalem, to leave the land of their inheritance, and their gold, and their silver, and their precious things, to perish in the wilderness. And this they said he had done because of the foolish imaginations of his heart.
12 And thus Laman and Lemuel, being the eldest, did murmur against their father. And they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them.
13 Neither did they believe that Jerusalem, that great city, could be destroyed according to the words of the prophets. And they were like unto the Jews who were at Jerusalem, who sought to take away the life of my father.

If we follow the same chronology as used above (see comments on 1 Nephi 1:4), then Laman was about seven years old{1} when King Josiah was killed in battle with the Egyptians. Josiah’s son Jehoahaz ruled for three months until Pharaoh Necho replaced him and made Jehoiakim king of Judah. For the Jews, having a foreigner decide who would be king of Judah would have been a traumatic experience, and even Laman and his younger brother Lemuel would have been aware of the tension it caused. Jehoiakim ruled until Laman and Lemuel were in their late and middle teens. Then Nebuchadnezzar’s army marched into Jerusalem, took King Jehoiakim, Ezekiel, Daniel (who was probably about Nephi’s age), and many others captive to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar placed Zedekiah on the throne, so Judah had another king who was ruling under the authority of a foreign country. Both Laman and Lemuel had lived their teenage years under the tensions of those international intrigues. Jeremiah, Lehi’s friend, had supported an alliance with Babylon. It is reasonable to assume Lehi did also. However, the two boys had grown up under Egyptian influence, and probably saw Nebuchadnezzar as an alien invader. If that is correct, the boys had a different political philosophy from their father.

Their religion was probably different also. The official Israelite/Jewish religion had changed during the years of Josiah, and had changed again after his death. Lehi was a prophet whose priesthood and religious training had roots back at least as far as the construction of Solomon’s Temple. It is apparent that his teenage sons had rebelled against this old religion and supported the new less observant form. It may have been their enthusiasm for those changes that would later cause them to insist that the Jews were a “righteous” people. “Righteous,” if translated from zedek, did not mean “good” or “worthy,” but rather “correct.” That is, the boys were asserting that the Jews were performing the ordinances of the Law of Moses in the right way, using the right words, in the right place, dressed the right way, and with the right authority. If so, then they were not arguing for the goodness of the people but rather that the correctness in the performances made up for anything lacked in the character of the rulers.

There was another complication. Laman was the oldest son. Under Jewish law, he would inherit his father’s family status as well as a double portion of his father’s wealth. Nephi’s comment that his father “left his house, and the land of his inheritance” (1 Nephi 2:4), suggests that Lehi may have had a house in Jerusalem as well as a country estate. If that is so, Laman, who was just coming of age, saw that their leaving Judah would cost him a lot of wealth, power, and prestige. In his short lifetime he had seen Jerusalem overcome by two foreign powers (once by Egypt and once by Babylon), but neither had done substantial harm to the city itself. There seemed to be no reason to believe the city would be more vulnerable in the future. Only a testimony like Nephi’s could outweigh such rationale. It is almost understandable, then, that Lehi’s oldest sons did everything in their power to resist going, and that they resented their younger brother’s interference.

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FOOTNOTE

{1} For a discussion of the ages of Lehi’s children, see “1 Nephi 1:4 — LeGrand Baker — reign of Zedekiah.”

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1 Nephi 2:7 

7. And it came to pass that he built an altar of stones, and made an offering unto the Lord, and gave thanks unto the Lord our God.

The altar would have been from stones conveniently lying about, probably smooth stones from a stream bed. The Lord had instructed Moses that the altar he built was to be made of stones that had not been cut or shaped by man (Exodus 20:24-26).

There was a difference between an offering that is a sacrifice and a burnt offering. Under the law of Moses a burnt offering was something that was entirely lost to its owner – something that was given up and completely consumed by fire. Each morning and evening, at the Temple, an animal was slaughtered, skinned, cleaned, and quartered. The parts were heavily salted,{1} then placed on the fire atop the great altar in the Temple precinct. There, the entire animal was burned. Also, on special occasions, the Israelites offered burnt offerings to the Lord, when the entire animal was burned up by the fire (cf. Leviticus 1:3-9).

Sacrifices were not at all like that. In the scriptures, to sacrifice does not mean to lose something or to give it up. The word sacrifice comes from the same root as sacred, sacral, and sacrament. It means to set something apart and to make it sacred—to move it from the realm of the profane to that of the holy. Sacrifice itself comes from the Latin sacrificere, “to make sacred.” A thing that is sacrificed is sanctified. In 3 Nephi when the Savior spoke out of the darkness, he instructed the Nephites that they were no longer to make blood offerings or sacrifices but rather that their sacrifice should be a broken heart and contrite spirit. What that meant was that they were to sanctify their hearts and their spirits so that they would become holy and without blemish.

In our time, we are required to make only two sacrifices: The one that is the same for each of us is tithing. Unlike a fast offerings—which is somewhat like a burnt offering, that is, something that we give away—tithing is, in the most classical sense, a true sacrificial offering. We do not give it up. Rather, we set it aside, sanctify it, make it holy, dedicate it to be used for sacred purposes. Thus tithing is the only universal, tangible sacrifice we are all required to make.

The other sacrifice that is required of each of us is not a thing, but our whole selves—not to give up our lives but to sanctify our lives—to make sacred all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do. If we understand what that means, then that sacrifice is as individualistic as our callings and circumstances are different. However, in the end it is the same for each of us: To sanctify ourselves with a broken heart and contrite spirit in order that we may come to where the Savior is.

The psalms teach that. So Lehi and his family understood it. Nevertheless, they were also under the Law of Moses, so it was appropriate that when they crossed the river (analogous to the children of Israel’s crossing Jordan) they built an altar and sacrificed to the Lord. We are not told the exact nature of their sacrifice, but it may have had one or a combination of meanings. It may have been an expression of thanks, of re-commitment, or of rejoicing, but it was probably all three.

The sacrifice Lehi probably made was a peace offering Leviticus 7:11-16). Under the Law of Moses, such sacrifices were to be performed in the following manner: The animal was killed and cleaned, then only a portion of its blood and fat were sprinkled upon the fire, but the entire animal was not burned. Rather, the Law required that the sacrificial animal must be entirely eaten that same day, or the next. When made for thanksgiving, the persons also brought to the table bread and wine. This is what some scholars call the sacred temple feast. It was an ordinance celebrating the unity of God and his children, and would have been the most appropriate sacrifice for Lehi and his family at that time.{2}

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FOOTNOTES

{1} See Baker, “What does it mean to be the ‘salt of the earth’?” Ensign, April 1999, 53-54.

{2} See: Leviticus 7:11-16, 19:5-10, 22:29-30; Deuteronomy 27:4-7; 2 Chronicles 29:27-32; and Jeremiah 17:24-27.

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1 Nephi 2:4-7 
4. And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness. …
6. And it came to pass that when he had traveled three days in the wilderness, he pitched his tent in a valley by the side of a river of water.
7. And it came to pass that he built an altar of stones, and made an offering unto the Lord, and gave thanks unto the Lord our.

Even though Nephi tells us in the beginning of his story that his father’s family took more than one tent with them on their journey (v.4), Nephi never mentions his own tent—but throughout his account of their travels in the wilderness, Nephi makes frequent reference to his father’s tent. Many of those references imply that the tent had significance beyond being simply a portable house. It is not a coincidence that Nephi first mentions his father’s tent in conjunction with their building a sacrificial altar.{1}

Lehi’s vision of the tree of life was pivotal to Nephi’s own story and became a cornerstone of all of the rest of the Book of Mormon’s testimony of the Savior. Nephi tells about that vision in some detail, then makes a point of associating the vision with the importance of his father’s tent, writing:

1 And all these things did my father see, and hear, and speak, as he dwelt in a tent, in the valley of Lemuel, and also a great many more things, which cannot be written upon these plates (1 Nephi 9:1).

The phrase these things is often code and is a major key in understanding the prophets of the Book of Mormon. Almost every time it is used it is a veiled reference to the sacred things of the Israelite or Nephite temple services, or else to a vision that explains them. In this verse these things refers to Lehi’s vision of the tree of live. Then Nephi tells us of his father’s prophecies, and again reminds us:

16 And all these things, of which I have spoken, were done as my father dwelt in a tent, in the valley of Lemuel (1 Nephi 10:16).

In light of those frequent and important references to their activities in and around Lehi’s tent, it is appropriate to ask, “How much did they know about temple worship?” Or, perhaps a better question is, “How much do we know about what they knew?” The answer to that question is found as part of the Lord’s instructions to the Prophet Joseph about the purposes of the Nauvoo Temple.

33. For verily I say unto you, that after you have had sufficient time to build a house to me, wherein the ordinance of baptizing for the dead belongeth, and for which the same was instituted from before the foundation of the world, your baptisms for your dead cannot be acceptable unto me;
34. For therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory.
35. And after this time, your baptisms for the dead, by those who are scattered abroad, are not acceptable unto me, saith the Lord.
36. For it is ordained that in Zion, and in her stakes, and in Jerusalem, those places which I have appointed for refuge, shall be the places for your baptisms for your dead.
37. And again, verily I say unto you, how shall your washings be acceptable unto me, except ye perform them in a house which you have built to my name?
38. For, for this cause I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise [Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem] that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was.
39. Therefore, verily I say unto you, that your anointings, and your washings, and your baptisms for the dead, and your solemn assemblies, and your memorials for your sacrifices by the sons of Levi, and for your oracles in your most holy places wherein you receive conversations, and your statutes and judgments, for the beginning of the revelations and foundation of Zion, and for the glory, honor, and endowment of all her municipals, are ordained by the ordinance of my holy house, which my people are always commanded to build unto my holy name.
40. And verily I say unto you, let this house be built unto my name, that I may reveal mine ordinances therein unto my people (D&C 124:33-40).

When one considers that before Lehi left, King Josiah had substantially changed the Feast of Tabernacles temple drama, that the Temple had been taken over by apostate sun worshipers (Ezekiel 8:16-17),{2} | and that soon after the Temple itself was about to be destroyed by the Babylonians, it is justifiable to assert that one of the major reasons Lehi and his family left Jerusalem was to preserve for themselves and their posterity the rites, ceremonies, and covenants of the Israelite temple service. That being so, the question, “How much did Lehi and Nephi know about their temple?” can be answered with a single phrase: all that was necessary!

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FOOTNOTES

{1} Other examples are 1 Nephi 2:15-16, 2:22, 3:1-6, 4:38, 5:7, 9, 7:5, 21-22, and 15:1.

{2} For a discussion of the Jewish apostates use of the Temple in Jerusalem see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, First edition, p. 45-74; Second edition, p. 47-65.

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1 Nephi 1:18-20
18 Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard.
19 And it came to pass that the Jews did mock him because of the things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their wickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the world.
20 And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also sought his life, that they might take it away. But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.

Perhaps less than most of us, a prophet is unable to disguise the innate power of his own being. Prophets glow. One cannot always see the glow, but one who is aware can feel it. When someone encounters a prophet and recognizes the power that is simply a part of his person, that person is compelled to respond. The response may be love. In that case, the person will acknowledge the prophet’s divine call and follow his lead. Otherwise, the response would be hatred or fear—fear that the prophet can look into one’s soul and see the darkness that is there. In that case, if the person refuses to acknowledge the prophet’s divine call, he will seek to demonstrate that the prophet is a charlatan. To do that, he will seek to show that he has more power than the prophet has. The way he will try to do that may be to smear the prophet’s good name, to physically harm him, or even to kill him. Examples are found throughout scriptural history, from Abel who was killed by his brother Cain, to Isaiah, Abinadi, and the Savior, to the prophet Joseph.

Lehi and his friend Jeremiah were no exceptions to this rule. The easiest way for their enemies to prove that they were false prophets was to prove that they did not have the power to preserve their own lives: so they sought to kill them.

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1 Nephi 1:11
11 And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read.

There was an ordinance performed at the Council in Heaven and reaffirmed during a prophet’s sode experience whereby the servants of God were given the authority to speak the words of God. That ordinance is described in several different ways by several different prophets.

John the Beloved writes that he was given a little book to eat (Revelation 10:1, 9). That book becomes the key to our understanding the meaning of the book that Lehi was given to read.

In Section 77 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Prophet Joseph answers a series of questions to explain the meanings of some of the symbolism in the book of Revelation. One of those questions is:

Q. What are we to understand by the little book which was eaten by John, as mentioned in the 10th chapter of Revelation?
A. We are to understand that it was a mission, and an ordinance, for him to gather the tribes of Israel; behold, this is Elias, who, as it is written, must come and restore all things (D&C 77:14).

Here the book is described as both an ordinance and the mission. The ordinance was John’s receiving and eating the book, and his mission was the words that were written in the book. This key about the meaning of that passage in the book of Revelation becomes a key to our understanding similar accounts of such ordinances and missions as they were described by other prophets.

Like John the Beloved, Ezekiel was given a book to eat:

And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; And he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll [scroll], and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll (Ezekiel 2:9-3:2).

Jeremiah described the ordinance differently, but it carried the same responsibility:

Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth” (Jeremiah 1:9).

Isaiah described the ordinance as cleansing his mouth and purging his sins. Then the Lord gave him instructions about his mission on earth.

6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me (Isaiah 6:6-8).

In two of the four accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, he says that he was told that his sins were forgiven before he received instructions about what he should do.{1}

Psalm 45 was acted on the stage near the beginning of the ancient Israelite temple rites and depicted the foreordination of the king. In the psalm, prior to God’s giving the words of the blessing, the narrator says to the king, “grace is poured into thy lips.” It is important to note that during the temple rites of Solomon’s Temple the audience did not just sit and watch the drama being performed but they actively participated. When the king received the ordinance and blessing, symbolically the men in the congregation, representing the members of the Council in Heaven, received the same ordinance and blessing.{2}

These accounts make it apparent that members of the Council in Heaven were given an empowering ordinance and explicit assignments that included instructions about what they were to teach the people when in mortality. When the prophet returns to the Council in his sode experience, he receives a renewal or a reaffirmation of that ordinance and those instructions.

Given both the variations and the similarities in the accounts by other prophets, one can easily recognize Lehi’s receiving and reading the book as a similar ordinance and a mission. Part of the mission was that he must warn the Jews of their impending doom. The other part is not revealed to us—except that we are told about his reaction to it—and judging from his words, we may infer that it included the promise that he would come to America, where his descendants would become a mighty people, and that they would be visited by the Savior. Nephi records, “for his soul did rejoice, and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him” (1 Nephi 1:15).
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FOOTNOTES

{1} The four accounts are quoted in my book, Joseph and Moroni, pages 5-8. The text of the book is available in the “published books” section of this website.
{2} Psalm 45 is discussed in Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord: First edition pages 255-304; Second edition pages 191-217.

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1 Nephi 1:8
8. And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.

To people in our modern culture it seems strange that Nephi would report that his father only “thought he saw God sitting upon his throne.” When we use that phrase, it means that we were not sure what we saw. However, Nephi came from a different culture, one that reflected the Greek influence that was being felt all through the Mediterranean world. The Greeks had established city-states along the southern coast of Italy and the island of Sicily. Archaeologists also find evidence of Greek influence on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near Palestine.

In the ancient world, most apparently in Greece, the highest human activity was to think. Our own western culture is based largely upon that same belief. The deists of George Washington’s time picked up on that and asserted that the surest evidence that there is a God is that man can think and feel emotion. The deists’ reasoning went this way: Man exists; therefore, we must have been created. If we were created, then there must have been a creator. If man can think and feel emotions, then his creator must have been able to think and feel even better than his creation. If that creator could think and feel as well as create, then he must be God. If those things are true, then it follows that God’s most important desire is to bring about good for the people he has created. That was their rationale for believing God had helped them in the American Revolution and had been instrumental in creating the Constitution.

The ancient Israelites believed that same sort of thing. To the ancients, the seat of both human thought and emotion was the heart. So they understood that the place where one thinks and the place where one feels emotion was the same. For example, in the Psalms, one can not “ascend to the hill of the Lord” or “stand in his holy place” unless he has “clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalm 24).

In that ancient world, to think was the most significant of all human activities. In Nephi’s culture, to think was the supreme act of the human “heart.” The past tense of “to think” is “thought.” Thus, Nephi’s use of the word “thought” is simply the past tense of “to think.” That is the way he explains his father’s reaction to his vision. Nephi was not expressing his father’s uncertainty about what he saw, but he was saying—in the strongest language he could use—that Lehi not only saw God but that he understood what he saw.

There is another example of a similar vision’s being introduced the same way. Enoch begins the Book of Enoch by saying,

Enoch a righteous man, whose eyes were opened by God, saw the vision of the Holy One in the heavens, that the angels showed me, and from them I heard everything, and from them I understood as I saw.{1}

So when Nephi says his father “thought” he saw God, he asserts that he not only saw with his eyes, but he also understood with his heart and mind. That is a far stronger testimony than his only saying that Lehi “saw” God.
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FOOTNOTE

{1} Enoch 1:1, R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford, 1964, 1:188.

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1 Nephi 1:7-11
7 And it came to pass that he returned to his own house at Jerusalem; and he cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen.
8 And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.
9 And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.
10 And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.
11 And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read.

With those words ,Nephi firmly established that his father was a true prophet, and he did so with a legalistic precision that the Jews and Christians would have recognized as legitimate even as late as New Testament times. The Bible clearly establishes the criterion for a true prophet, and Nephi emphatically states that he and his father met that standard.

The definition of that standard is expressed in Amos’s testimony: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). The key word there is secret. It is translated from the Hebrew sode, which means the decisions of a divine council.{1}

Many Old Testament scholars agree that the council Amos referred to was the Council in Heaven, and that in similar contexts throughout the Old Testament, sode refers to the decisions made by that premortal Council of the gods. The most detailed study of the meaning of sode in the Old Testament and of its equivalent, mysterion in the New Testament (translated “mystery”), is by Raymond Brown. He writes:

We may begin with the Hebrew word “sod”. … the word has a wide semantic area: confidential talk, a circle of people in council, secrets….When we approach the early biblical uses of “sod” with the idea of “council” or “assembly” in mind, we find that this meaning particularly fits the passages dealing with the heavenly “sod” in biblical references to the heavenly council of God and his angels….Amos (3:7) announces almost as a proverb that God will surely not do anything until he has revealed his ‘sod’ to his servants the prophets.{2}

What Amos says is that the Lord will not do anything until after the prophet has returned, in vision, to the premortal Council in Heaven. During that vision, he will be shown the deliberations of the Council and the covenants and assignments he made and accepted in conjunction with those decisions—as they related to that prophet’s time and place on the earth. In other words, a true prophet is one who does and says on earth what he covenanted he would do and say while he was at the Council.

The Savior called attention to this principle in the Beatitudes when he said, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” He was quoting Psalm 37 and paraphrasing Psalm 25. Both psalms define the meek as those who keep their eternal covenants. Psalm 37 is not so explicit, but it equates “ those who wait on the Lord” with those who are “meek,” promising that they “shall inherit the earth”(Psalm 37:8-11).

However, Psalm 25 is very explicit. It defines the meek as those whom God will “teach his way,” who “keep his covenant,” whom God will “teach in the way that he [God] shall choose,” because “the secret [sode] of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.” The psalm reminds the meek that the Lord will bless them according to the covenants he made with them at the Council and that those blessings will reach into the eternities: “His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth.”{3}

Joseph Smith gave us a key to understanding the importance of a sode experience,{4} and of the Council in Heaven when he wrote that the Council took place in Kolob. In February 1843, at the request of W.W. Phelps, the Prophet re-wrote the vision in poetic form. It was published in the Times and Seasons, February 1, 1843, and republished in the Millennial Star the following August. In the poem, Joseph equates the Doctrine and Covenants phrase “of old” with the time and place of the Council “in Kolob.” In the preceding quote, Nephi seems to be using that phrase the same way. The poem reads:

For thus saith the Lord, in the spirit of truth,
I am merciful, gracious, and good unto those
That fear me, and live for the life that’s to come:
My delight is to honour the Saints with repose,

That serve me in righteousness true to the end;
Eternal’s their glory and great their reward.
I’ll surely reveal all my myst’ries to them —
The great hidden myst’ries in my kingdom stor’d;

From the council in Kolob, to time on the earth,
And for ages to come unto them I will show
My pleasure and will, what the kingdom will do
Eternity’s wonders they truly shall know.{5}

Notwithstanding the initial importance of the activities of the Council in Kolob, throughout the Bible and the Book of Mormon the most significant role of the members of the Council was not so much what they did in their premortal lives but what they did on the earth after they returned to the Council and re-affirmed their covenants regarding the responsibilities they had on this earth. The scriptures teach us that the significance of the premortal covenants each of us made before we came to this earth is as relevant to our present earthly responsibilities—and to our ultimate salvation—as the covenants God made with the prophets at the Council are relevant to their earthly responsibilities and ultimate salvation.

Paul carefully explains that in his letter to the Ephesians. He uses most of chapter one to discuss the covenants made at the Council. Then, in the rest of the letter, he teaches what one must do to fulfil those covenants. Implicit in that and in other scriptures is the principle that the covenants we make in this world are reaffirmations of the covenants we made before we came here. In short, the experience we have in remaking those covenants and ordinances is a kind of this-world representation of a sode experience, and carries with it much of the same responsibility.

Jeremiah established the standard in the Old Testament for knowing the difference between a true prophet and a false one (Jeremiah 23:18-22).{6} There, the Lord condemns false prophets for presuming to speak for God without authority from him. A true prophet is one is one who has the authority to speak on behalf of God.

Nephi was very aware of that standard; therefore, he clearly identified both his own and his father’s prophetic authority in those terms.

In his discussion of the meaning of the Hebrew word sode and the Greek word mysterion in the Old and New Testaments,{7} Brown shows that both words have essentially the same meaning. That is, they both refer to the decisions made at the Heavenly Council.

The Book of Mormon uses biblical words the same way the Bible does. So when Nephi writes in the very first verse that he has “a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God,” he is declaring that he has had a sode experience (which he will later describe to us in much detail) and that therefore he has met the qualifications of being a true prophet.

Almost immediately after that, Nephi identifies his father as being a true prophet by showing that Lehi was transported to heaven where he heard the angels singing (members of the Council), he saw God sitting upon his throne, and he received his assignment by reading it in the heavenly book that was given him by Jehovah.

In terms of the ancient Israelite religion, if the Book of Mormon is to be understood as scripture that was written by true prophets of God, then it must begin at the Council in Heaven with a sode experience—which is precisely what it does.

The ancient Israelite temple drama was a generic enactment of the sode, because in it each person in the audience remade the covenants they had once made at the Council. But even though it was generic, it was very personal. It was about each person’s relationship with God. Even though the room might have been full of people, the Spirit taught each one individually about its personal meaning to that person.

When the Spirit teaches us about who we are or about what we should be doing just then, he is opening a window for us. So, even though few of us actually see the vision, we are each taught as much about the sode as we need to know to enable us to keep our covenants, without imposing so much upon us that it impedes our agency.

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FOOTNOTES

{1} Sode is pronounced with a long “O” as in “over.” Some scholars spell it in all caps: SOD. Other scholars spell it differently. It is spelled “sode” in the dictionary at the back of James Strong, ed., The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, #5475.

{2} Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1968), 2-6.

{3} That last phrase is one of many places in the scriptures that quietly teach the doctrines of eternal marriage and eternal increase. The Savior called attention to those doctrines at least twice in the Beatitudes: First, where he paraphrases Isaiah 61 (“Blessed are they that mourn from they shall be comforted” in which the new name and the final two verses contain those same eternal promises. Then again when the Savior called attention to the promises in Psalms 25 and 37 (“Blessed are the meek”).
The meaning of “inherit the earth” is clarified in D&C 88:17-20:

17 And the redemption of the soul is through him that quickeneth all things, in whose bosom it is decreed that the poor and the meek of the earth shall inherit it.
18 Therefore, it must needs be sanctified from all unrighteousness, that it may be prepared for the celestial glory;
19 For after it hath filled the measure of its creation, it shall be crowned with glory, even with the presence of God the Father;
20 That bodies who are of the celestial kingdom may possess it forever and ever; for, for this intent was it made and created, and for this intent are they sanctified.

{4} For a discussion of sode see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, First edition, p. 195-208; Second edition, p. 139-148.

{5} “A Vision,” by the Prophet Joseph Smith. In February 1843, at the request of W.W. Phelps, the Prophet rewrote the vision, which is now the 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, in poetry form. It was published in the Times and Seasons, February 1, 1843, and republished in the Millennial Star, August, 1843.

{6} In these verses the word sode is translated as “counsel” rather than as “council” or “secret.”

{7} Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1968).

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1 Nephi 1:4

… and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.

We know so little about the Israelite religion before the Babylonian captivity. Actually, the Book of Mormon is a much better source of pre-exilic Israelite theology than anything we find in the Bible. The reason is that all the history books in Old Testament were written or edited after the destruction of Jerusalem and end of the Melchizedek Priesthood rites of Solomon’s Temple. After the Babylonian captivity, the five books of Moses were so severely edited that most scholars believe that they were actually written as late as the fourth century B.C.{1}

The Jewish apostasy began before the Babylonian captivity and was the reason Lehi and the other prophets were persecuted. Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord has a chapter called “Evidences of Ancient Jewish Apostasy.” It helps explain why the prophets in Lehi’s time were in such trouble.{2} By then, there were two competing “priesthood groups.” The prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, and Lehi had the Melchizedek Priesthood. However, for the most part they were disdained by the authors of the Old Testament who told stories about bears eating children and that sort of thing. The competing group was the priests who had control of the Temple and the temple treasury. From the time of King Josiah the priests either dominated, or at least were in cahoots with the apostate kings. After the Babylonian captivity the priests were in almost complete control. One of the authors of Chronicles gives us a hint of the conflict between the priests and the prophets, but there are no real details:

14 Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
15 And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
16 But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy (2 Chronicles 36:14-16).

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FOOTNOTES

{1} Their editorial policy was apparently to remove evidences of such ideas as the Atonement, priesthood, and temple rites from the text. For an example see the contrast between the accounts of Noah and the ark as recorded in Genesis and in the Book of Moses in Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord: 2009 edition pages 64-67; 2010 edition pages 59-61.

{2} Two works that discuss the pre-exilic Jewish apostasy are: Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest, The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London and New York, T&T Clark, 2003); and G. W. Ahlstrom, Joel and the Temple Cult of Jerusalem, (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1971).

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Sometimes the best way to understand what is going on in the Book of Mormon is to relate it to the history, religion, or culture of the Old Testament. That is certainly true of the beginning of First Nephi. What follows is a brief attempt to provide an historical context for Nephi’s story. It seems appropriate to begin about 130 years earlier, in 728 B.C., with the reign of Hezekiah and conclude in 587 when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians.

I am using as sources for the dates the chronology in the LDS Bible Dictionary and various articles from the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, 5 vols. (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1991

Briefly, the chronology of that period is this:

740 — Isaiah chapter 6 begins in the year that King Uzziah died
728 – 697 — Hezekiah, king of Judah
721 or 722 — End of the northern kingdom of Israel; Assyrians deported the Ten Tribes to northern Mesopotamia.
697 – 642 — Manasseh, king of Judah
642 – 640 — Amon, king of Judah
640 – 609 — Josiah, king of Judah.
628 — Jeremiah began to prophesy during the time of Josiah
609 — Jehoahaz, king of Judah, removed by Necho king of Egypt
609 – 598 — Jehoiakim made king of Judah by Necho
598 – 597 — Jehoiachin, king of Judah
597 — Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem; Jehoiachin taken as a captive to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar; Daniel and Ezekiel also taken to Babylon
597 — Zedekiah made king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar
597 — Nephi begins his narrative in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah. Soon after that, Lehi and his family leave Jerusalem
587 – Babylonians capture Jerusalem a second time, They destroy the city and the Temple; They deport all but the poorest Jews; Zedekiah taken as a captive to Babylon

There are two reasons to begin with the reign of Hezekiah. First, it was during his time that the Ten Tribes became “lost.” Second, Isaiah’s writings play a major role in the Book of Mormon. Hezekiah and Isaiah were contemporaries and good friends. Together they played a pivotal role in the history of Judah. Knowing Isaiah’s place in history helps us understand the Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon.

In the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah, the Assyrian empire was the most aggressively expansive that the ancient Near Eastern world had ever known.

The meaning of empire had been redefined in 745 when Tiglath-pileser III (called Pul in the Bible) seized the Assyrian throne. Before his time, wars usually had been fought to obtain slaves, plunder, tribute, and commercial advantage; but now, Tiglath-pileser began aggressive wars with the intent of expanding his administrative territory. From Nineveh, his capital (located on the east side of the Tigris river, about halfway between the river’s headwaters to the north and the city of Babylon to the south), his empire reached to the south beyond Babylon and on to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; eventually, it stretched southwest to include the lands of Syria, Israel, and Egypt. To guarantee the success of their empire, the Assyrians developed a policy of deporting conquered people to distant territories and then repopulating the vacated land with conquered people imported from other lands. It was assumed that people who were separated from their homes, their traditions, and their local gods, would not have the patriotic cohesion to start a rebellion in their strange new surroundings.

By 734 the Assyrian empire had covered much of the northern and eastern part of the fertile crescent and was beginning to threaten the western side along the Mediterranean and toward Egypt. In response, Israel and Syria formed a defensive coalition against Assyria, and tried to force Ahaz, king of Judah, to join them. They threatened to invade Judah and replace the king if he did not meet their demands. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-pileser for help. He responded with vigor, and, in 732, conquered Syria, deported much of its population, and made it part of his empire.

Nine years later, in 721, the Assyrians conquered Israel and deported most of its inhabitants to northern Mesopotamia and Media. The northern kingdom of Israel, the “Ten Tribes,” had lasted about two centuries after they separated from Judah following Solomon’s death. The Assyrians left only the poorest people in the land, and then brought in other peoples whom they had conquered. In time, these foreigners merged with the remaining Israelites to become the Samaritans whom we know from the New Testament.

A few years before the defeat of the ten northern tribes of Israel, Hezekiah became king at Jerusalem.

As the Assyrians became more aggressive, it became apparent that they would try to extend their empire along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and to Egypt. As that time approached, Hezekiah made preparations for war. He made other preparations also. The people of Israel, the ten tribes, were mostly apostate, but some still worshiped Jehovah. Hezekiah provided an excuse for those faithful to flee from the impending Assyrian invasion by sending messangers through Israel to invite them to come to Jerusalem for Passover (2 Chronicles 30:1-11). The Bible says many responded and came.

Against the advice of Isaiah, Hezekiah allied himself with Egypt in defense against further Assyrian encroachments, then he prepared for war. His engineers cut a tunnel 1,750 feet long through the solid rock under Jerusalem from the Gihon spring in the Kidron valley to bring water into the city. It would also deprive an invading army of water during a siege. Even though Isaiah opposed the alliance with Egypt, he prophesied that Jerusalem would be saved from the Assyrian invaders (2 Kings 19:1-34).

As expected, Sennacherib, the new king of Assyria, brought an army south along the Mediterranean coast. They soundly defeated an Egyptian force, then turned on Jerusalem. A large contingent of the Assyrian army surrounded the city and prepared for a long siege. An account of what happened next was found by archaeologists excavating in Nineveh. Sennacherib had boasted that he had shut up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage,” but that was his face-saving version of the story.

The prophet had promised, “Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.” The Assyrians had mockingly quoted that prophecy (2 Kings 19:10), but later the Bible description of what happened to the besieging Assyrian army tells how the promise was fulfilled.

35 And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.
37 And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead (2 Kings 19:35-37).

The sudden deaths in that part of the Assyrian army spared Jerusalem and prevented its people from being scattered, but did not keep Judah out of the grip of the Assyrian empire.

Hezekiah is reported to have been the best of all the kings of Judea. He and Isaiah successfully reformed the religious practices of the Jews and brought them back into conformity with the laws of Jehovah. But Manasseh, his son and successor, turned away from Jehovah and made Baal worship the state religion. Manasseh seized Isaiah, then offered to spare him if he would worship Baal. When Isaiah refused, the king had him stretched out and “sawed him asunder with a wood-saw.”{1}

Manasseh ruled for 45 years, the longest reign in Judah’s history (687-42). After that, the Jews never fully recovered from the apostasy he had begun. When he died (only about 50 years before Lehi left Jerusalem), he was succeeded by his son who was soon assassinated. His grandson Josiah was proclaimed king when he was only eight years old. During his minority, the regents and real rulers of Judah were the temple priests.

Because the Assyrian empire had begun to crumble from internal weakness, by 628 when Josiah was 20 years old, his kingdom had become politically and financially independent. There were small temples scattered throughout Judea. Menahem Haran explains:

In addition to the twelve or thirteen temples listed so far, ancient Israel may have known some other temples which have left no trace whatsoever in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, it is a reasonable assumption that any addition to this list (which would have to be based on new, extra-biblical evidence) would be insignificant, and that the total number of Israelite temples can not have been much greater than that which emerges from the biblical records.{2}

Josiah and his priests closed the local small temples{3} and sanctuaries that were dedicated to Jehovah, and centralized the collecting of tithes and offerings under the control of the priestly bureaucracy at the Jerusalem Temple.{4}

Beginning with the reign of Josiah and the priests, the most important religious practices of the worship of Jehovah were also changed. One of the strongest evidences of that change is that Josiah ordered that the Ark should no more be carried outside the Temple. The record simply says:

3 And said unto the Levites that taught all Israel, which were holy unto the Lord, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the Lord your God, and his people Israel (2 Chronicles 35:3)

If the Ark could no longer be taken from the Temple, then those ceremonies conducted annually outside the Temple—probably including most or all of the Feast of Tabemacles temple drama{5} —were abandoned.{6} Josiah replaced the temple drama with a prolonged Feast of the Passover and seems to have sought to validate the change in the minds of the people by providing great amounts of food for everybody for seven days (2 Chronicles 35:3-19).

Josiah ruled for 31 years, until 609 B.C.— Ezekiel and Jeremiah lived most of their early adult lives during the reign of Josiah. Their attitude toward the decreasing righteousness of the Jewish people is a very good gauge by which to judge the changes that were being made in Josiah’s new state religion and carried out by his successors. The near-culmination of this apostasy in Judah was described by Nephi: “and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed” (1 Nephi 1:4).

Lehi may have been several years younger than Josiah. It is rather easy to calculate Lehi’s approximate age at the time he left Jerusalem. In Jewish tradition, the ages when boys did important things was pretty well established by custom. At age 8 days a boy was circumcised. Age 13 was his bar mitzvah. At age 18 to 20 years he married. At age 31 he became a “young man” and could sit in the ruling councils of the synagogue or the Sanhedrin. So the “rich young man” who went away in sorrow when Jesus told him to sell everything was about Jesus’ own age.)

Laman, Lehi’s oldest son, was not yet married, so Laman was not older than 20.
If there had been about 2 years between the births of the sons, Lemuel would not have been older than about 18,
Sam would have been about16.
Nephi would have been about 14. (He describes himself as being “exceedingly young” in 1 Nephi 2:16.)
Lehi and Sariah also had at least one daughter, but we do not have any evidence about when she might have been born.
Lehi was married by about age 20, so if Laman had been the oldest child, that would make Lehi about 40 when he left Jerusalem. (It is possible, however, that Sariah was Lehi’s second marriage.)

If those calculations are correct, then all of Lehi’s four oldest sons had been born during Josiah’s reign. Lehi was a wealthy man whose children would have associated with the aristocracy. That is, if Lehi lived in, or frequented, Jerusalem, his older sons would have known and probably associated with the young men who followed Josiah to the throne.

As the Assyrians had grown weaker, Babylon had grown stronger. Nineveh fell to the Babylonians in 612, but the Assyrian army was not completely destroyed until three years after that.

In 609, as the Medes and Babylonians gathered for the kill, the Egyptians, who feared a strong Babylon, rushed to assist the Assyrians. Josiah tried to intercede and was mortally wounded during the battle in which the Egyptians routed his army. He died a short time later in Jerusalem.

After Josiah’s death, the Jewish monarchy slowly melted into chaos. Pharaoh Necho was defeated by the Babylonians but his ambition for empire was not diminished. On his way back to Egypt, he stopped at Jerusalem and deposed Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, who had been on the throne only three months. In his place, Necho installed Jehoiakim, another of Josiah’s sons, as king of Judah.

Now that the Assyrians were no longer in the game, the struggle for supremacy was between Babylon and Egypt. Their armies met at Carchemish in 605. There Nebuchadnezzar{7} soundly defeated the Egyptians, but the next day he learned that his father had died, so rather than pursue the Egyptians, Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon to secure his place on the throne.

Diplomatically, Jehoiakim was forced to try to keep his balance between these two strong enemies. Geographically, Judah was on the road that the armies of both would have to travel in order to challenge the other. Egypt was the closest, and therefore had been the first to claim dominion over its Jewish neighbor.

When Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho, Jehoikim tried to avoid trouble by pledging his support to Babylon, but then switched back to Egypt again in 601 when Necho and Nebuchadnezzar fought to a draw. Because of his vacillations, Jehoikim was distrusted by both of his more powerful neighbors, and he was left without a firm ally.

By this time, the prophet Jeremiah was deeply involved in Jewish politics and urged his king to return to the Babylonian fold and stay there, saying that Egypt was too weak to be counted on. Since Lehi was apparently a friend and associate of Jeremiah, one can assume that he and the other prophets Nephi mentions were also taking the same political side. Nephi described the events of only a year later when he reported, “and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.” The connotations of that warning seem to be as much about national politics and international relations as they are about religious righteousness. Jeremiah’s history certainly suggests that was so. The prophets were arguing that bad political decisions had been based on bad moral choices. Given the climate of the times, it is not unlikely that Lehi’s political stance as well as his cry for repentance had alienated the people who conspired to take his life.

Late in 598 Jehoiakim died, and his 18-year-old son Jehoiachin came to the throne. Even then, Nebuchadnezzar had already begun his march toward Jerusalem. After he had been king for only three months and 10 days, in the spring of 597, Jehoiachin surrendered Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar. The Jewish king and most of the aristocracy were then transported to Babylon, apparently more as hostages than as slaves, for archaeologists have found records that show that Jehoiachin was well treated while he was there. Other members of the landed and merchant classes were left behind. We know of two specific examples: Lehi, whose estates were not plundered by the Babylonian armies (the boys were able to go back and gather up a good deal of treasure to take to Laban); neither was Laban’s home in Jerusalem. His royal and sacred regalia (including clothing and the sword), and also the brass plates that contained his genealogies and were the official evidence of his aristocratic birth, all remained undisturbed.

Nebuchadnezzar installed Jehoiachin’s 21-year-old uncle Mattaniah on the Jewish throne. He gave the young king the new covenant name of Zedekiah{8} (2 Kings 24:17-19), so that name, Zedekiah, represented the covenant relationship between Mattaniah and Nebuchadnezzar. If Zedekiah were to break the treaty his kingship would be forfeited. He did break the treaty and reigned only eleven years, 597-587. He was destined to be Judah’s last king.

Nephi began his father’s history “in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah.” If the above chronology is correct, that would have been in 597 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and installed Zedekiah as king.

During that year that Lehi received a commission from the Lord to warn the people of Jerusalem of their impending doom. That is especially interesting in view of the fact that Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion had already passed, and he had made an alliance with Jerusalem’s new king, so Judah’s situation appeared to be stable. In fact, it would prove to be on the edge of disaster. Lehi and his family left sometime after that, but not so late that they did not have time to return twice before Nebuchadnezzar’s final and fatal attack.

The closing act in the complex drama of Judah’s last hundred years was a kind of replay of the previous calamities. Caught in the tensions between Babylon and Egypt, the weak king repeatedly sought Jeremiah’s advice, but then always rejected it. Zedekiah vacillated between keeping his covenants with Nebuchadnezzar and allying himself with Necho, until 589. Then, hanging his hopes on Egyptian promises, Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had toyed with the Jewish kings too long, and this time when he came to Jerusalem with an army to remove Zedekiah from his throne, he would leave the city broken and uninhabitable.

With siege works, Nebuchadnezzar sealed Jerusalem off from the rest of Judah. Then, while the people in the city starved, the Babylonian army systematically decimated the rest of the country (see 2 Kings 25:1-21; Jeremiah 37:21, 39:1-10, 52:1-30; Lamentations 2, 4). The siege of Jerusalem began in 589 B.C., in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign. The city’s walls were breached in July, 587. That would account for why Lehi’s party did not know about the fall of Jerusalem. It took them eight years to get to Bountiful, so they would have been in the new world before Jerusalem was destroyed.

After his first successful invasion, Nebuchadnezzar had taken golden vessels and other treasures from the temple, but otherwise had not damaged the building. After his second invasion, however, his attitude completely changed. The city and the temple were plundered, then the temple was burned along with most of the rest of the city.

Zedekiah and his family tried to escape but were captured and taken before the king of Babylon. There Zedekiah’s sons were killed before his eyes, after which he was blinded so their deaths would be the last thing he ever saw. “Zedekiah” had ceased to exist when he broke his covenant with Nebuchadnezzar.{9} Now Mattaniah, the one-time king, was only a blind slave. He was bound in chains and forced to walk across the desert to Babylon. There he spent the rest of his life climbing the endless stairs of a treadmill—lifting water from a canal into an irrigation ditch. The prophecies of Lehi, Ezekiel (12:13), and Jeremiah (34:2-5) had all been fulfilled.
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FOOTNOTES

{1} The Martyrdom of Isaiah, in R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913),155-62.

{2} Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978; reprinted with corrections: Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1985), 39.

{3} For further information on additional Israelite temples, see “Temples,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 4 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962),4:560- 68; Beth Alpert Nakhai, “What’s a Bamah? How Sacred Space Functioned in Ancient Israel,” Biblical Archaeology Review 20, 3 (May/June, 1994): 18-29, 77- 78. On page 26 there are two photographs of the remains of a small Israelite temple that was probably destroyed as part of Josiah’s crusade against the small temples.

{4} W. Eugene Clabum, “The Fiscal Basis of Josiah’s Reforms,” Journal of Biblical Literature 92, 1 (March 1973): 11-22. For a discussion of other Israelite temples, see Haran, Temples and Temple-service, especially chapter 2, “The Israelite Temples,” and chapter 7, “The Centralizations of the Cult”; Zeev Herzog, “Israelite Sanctuaries at Arad and Beer-Sheba,” Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, 120-22.

{5} See Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord? the chapter titled “Evidences of Ancient Jewish Apostasy,” first edition, 57-74; 2011(paperback) edition, 55-65. For further discussion, see Albertson, “Reflections on the Emergence of a Standard Text”; G. W. Ahlstrom, Joel and the Temple Cult of Jerusalem (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 77 -78, fn. 3; Klaus Baltzer, “Considerations Regarding the Office and Calling of the Prophet,” Harvard Theological Review 61, 4 (1968): 567-82; George A. Barton, The Religion of Ancient Israel (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1961),158-64.

{6} See Margaret Barker, Great High Priest, The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 149.

{7} His name was officially Nebuchadrezzar and is spelled that way in Jeremiah. However, his name Nebuchadnezzar was used in certain accounts and is usually spelled that way in our Bible.

{8} It is almost universally accepted that this is the Zedekiah Nephi mentions. However there is apparently another possibility. Jeremiah 27:1-4 speaks of Jehoiakim as “Zedekiah.”

{9} For a discussion of the significance of new names see Bruce H. Porter and Stephen D. Ricks, “Names in Antiquity: Old, New, and Hidden,” in John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990).

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