THE YEAR OF THE JUBILEE
“The Hebrew word yobhel means the horn of a ram. Now, such a horn can be made into a trumpet, and thus the word yobhel came to be used as a synonym of trumpet. According to Leviticus a loud trumpet should proclaim liberty throughout the country on the 10th day of the 7th month (the Day of Atonement), after the lapse of 7 sabbaths of years = 49 years. In this manner, every 50th year was to be announced as a jubilee year. All real property should automatically revert to its original owner, and those who, compelled by poverty, had sold themselves as slaves to their brothers, should regain their liberty.
In addition to this, the Jubilee Year was to be observed after the manner of the sabbatic year, i.e. there should be neither sowing nor reaping nor pruning of vines, and everybody was expected to live on what the fields and the vineyards produced "of themselves," and no attempt should be made at storing up the products of the land.”
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/jubilee-year/
WHY WAS ALMA’S WISH SINFUL?
“In order to officiate effectively as the High Priest, Alma would have needed to guard himself against any sins, including secret sins. Thoughts, wishes, and desires are potent. The culminating prohibition in the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not covet.” The circumstances here, being around the beginning of a jubilee year, only added to the seriousness of anything that even approached coveting or any other transgression.
Especially the High Priest needed to be completely pure and free from sin in order to officiate in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, the beginning of each Jubilee, on the tenth day of the seventh month. Finding himself discontented with the things which the Lord had allotted him would have stricken Alma to the heart. He would have recognized this as a serious sin, more so than readers today might otherwise have thought.”
KORIHOR
“The text gives no indication whatever of his ethnic or tribal origin, his city or land of residence, or his religious or political affiliations. All these omissions cannot be accidental. Indeed, the text wants readers to see Korihor as an isolated individual defying the foundation of collective responsibility that undergirded the concepts of justice, ethics, prosperity, and well-being in Nephite and Israelite societies. In the Book of Mormon array of typologies, Korihor represents the radical individual thinker, detached from community and unconcerned about the consequences of his ideas, who is bound and determined above all to speak his mind. Speech was his stock-in-trade.”
The Trial of Korihor, John Welch, https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/node/322
DECEIVE ME NOT
“The adversary does not easily abandon his destructive motives to deceive and demean us.
May we withstand and see through the lies and influences of the one who seeks to destroy our souls and steal from us our present joy and future joy.”
Gary E Stevenson, General Conference, October 2019
ALMA’S PRAYER
“Alma and his companions were in a desperate situation: they needed to restore cohesion to the Nephite polity through gospel conversion, or risk war. Under these circumstances, his repetition of the Lord’s name ten times likely reflects his urgency to bring down the power of God upon him and his companions. For ancient Israelites, the number ten symbolized perfection or completion. By calling on the Lord’s name ten times, Alma called upon His perfect power to aid them in their mission.
Alma’s prayer also sought to calm and comfort his fellow missionaries at that desperate time. ‘O Lord, wilt thou comfort my soul, and … also my fellow laborers who are with me … yea, even all these wilt thou comfort, O Lord. Yea, wilt thou comfort their souls in Christ.’ By invoking the name of the Lord ten times, Alma probably hoped to remind them of the Day of Atonement, and the recently passed jubilee year and the associated joy and peace that followed.
On the Day of Atonement, Alma and his companions, along with the rest of the Nephites, would have renewed covenants and remembered the Atonement of Christ. Not only would this calmingly reassure them of God’s promises, it would make them eager to bring those same blessings and covenants to the Zoramites. With everyone being one with God, all can then be united or reunited, with each other. Most importantly, the atoning reconciliation with God would remind all of them that the souls of the Zoramites were precious to God, and thus should be equally precious to them.”
“In addition to his ten supplications to Jehovah with the words O Lord, Alma also speaks the words O God four times in this prayer, but in those four cases he is either speaking about or quoting from the apostate prayers of the Zoramites, and in such a context he would not want to mention the holy name of the true God whom he served and called upon. Hence, Alma shifts his terminology to reflect this shift in meaning.”
John W. Welch, “Counting to Ten,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12, no. 2 (2003): 42–57, 113–114.
