BOM Jacob 3

Today’s chapter, Jacob 3, is relatively short, but hardly without interest.

The promise of ultimate victory, vindication, and comfort given in verse 1 to innocent victims of treachery or betrayal is a comforting one, for example. If you’ve ever felt betrayed by someone you had considered a friend, you know how horrible it is.

But I’ll focus on verse 5.

That verse is striking for its flat declarations that at least some of the Nephites actually “hate” the Lamanites — an inappropriate attitude and emotion for anybody claiming to be a disciple — and that the Lamanites are more righteous than the Nephites.  This isn’t the last time that such a thing will be said, nor the last occasion on which it will be appropriate to say it.  The Book of Mormon isn’t the simple black-and-white narrative that its critics (and even some of its believing but careless readers) believe it to be.

Notice, too, that, in verse 5, Jacob very explicitly calls the Lamanites his and his people’s “brethren,” and that, in verse 9, he commands his people to cease their hateful actions and abandon their hateful attitudes toward the Lamanites — actions and attitudes that their own sinfulness renders brazenly hypocritical.  Racial animosity and bigotry are not acceptable for followers of the Gospel.

Finally, verse 5 seems to confirm the inference from chapter 2, mentioned in yesterday’s installment of this rather perfunctory blog commentary, that a specific commandment had been given, relatively recently, directly to Lehi prohibiting polygamy among his descendants (pending possible future instructions to the contrary).