BOM Jacob 2

Jacob 2 is a remarkable document, and it’s our reading for today.

This isn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last, that my strict rule of being concise and of focusing on one or two or three items, but no more, will cause me regret.  But, realistically, I know that I simply don’t have the time to give any chapter the time and attention that it deserves.

So, for now, I’ll write about just two passages in Jacob 2, painfully aware that much more needs to be said about them and that many other passages within the chapter deserve attention.

The chapter deals with two basic themes, condemning first greedy materialism and then unchastity and infidelity.  But the condemnations are nuanced, not black and white.

1.

Perhaps the crucial passage on wealth is that found in verses 18-19:

But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.  And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

In other words, the Book of Mormon and the Lord aren’t hostile to riches. They’re concerned about the uses to which riches are put.  Greedy materialism is wrong.  Wealth itself is morally neutral.

2.

But, of course, the most famous/notorious/controversial passage in the chapter is, without question, verse 30.  The Lord has, by this point in the chapter, condemned polygamy among the Nephites.  Some think that this means that the Book of Mormon as a whole condemns polygamy, absolutely — and, therefore, that the modern Church was in error when, after the Book of Mormon was published, it began to teach the principle of plural marriage.  But verse 30 seems to me clearly to contradict that idea:

For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.

In other words, says the Lord, monogamy is the rule, the default setting, unless I command my people otherwise.

Whatever your opinion of plural marriage, or of Mormonism, or of Joseph Smith, that’s vital to understand.  Moreover, verse 34 seems to suggest that the commandment of one wife for one husband was specifically given to Lehi, whether or not it was the norm among Jews of the period more generally.