3 Nephi 1-7
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“Scholars in recent decades have shown that in the biblical world the word love often represented a covenantal devotion to one’s superior, while its opposite, namely hate, at times signifies the status of an individual outside of this affiliation.While the connotation of these words for Westerners usually signifies an intense emotional charge, in the ancient Near East, love and hate often carried the aforementioned unique covenantal connotation.Thus, the words love and hate in the biblical world often carried a deliberate connotation of political alliance (or lack thereof).”
David E. Bokovoy, “Love vs. Hate: An Analysis of Helaman 15:1–4,” Insights: A Window on the Ancient World 22, no. 2 (2002): 2
THE PRESENT NOW
“The only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You're only here now; you're only alive in this moment.”
Jon Kabbit-Zinn
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“In a well-known passage in the Book of Mormon, the visiting Christ reprimands his New World disciples for having omitted an important detail from their historical record: the fulfillment of a prophecy uttered by Samuel the Lamanite (see 3 Nephi 23:7–13). It might be worth asking exactly why the Nephite record-keepers were less than fully diligent on this score, less than fully attentive to Samuel’s prophetic pronouncements.Whatever their (unjustified) reasons—and one suspects, frankly, that it unfortunately had something to do simply with the fact that he was a Lamanite— there is a sense in which we, today’s readers of the Book of Mormon, replicate the ancient Nephites’ relative lack of interest in Samuel’s prophecies. Of the many sermons in the Book of Mormon, Samuel’s is perhaps still the least studied.This may be because Samuel has relatively little to say in a direct fashion about “doctrine,” and it is generally doctrine that draws Latter-day Saints to the Book of Mormon’s major sermons. Or it may be because Samuel’s sermon is at the end of a somewhat undeveloped and remarkably depressing book made up mostly of rough sketches of war, apostasy, and wickedness.Whatever our (unjustified) reasons, we would do well to rectify this situation, revising our own accounts, written and unwritten, of what the Book of Mormon teaches by ensuring that Samuel has a place in them.”
“My reading is guided at every moment by what seems to me to be Samuel’s interest in time.This interest is in evidence throughout the sermon (as well, in interesting ways, as in the chapter that precedes the sermon), but the focus on time is most intense—and most instructive—in Helaman 13, where Samuel’s theme is repentance. My own focus here, consequently, is limited to what Samuel has to say in that chapter.What I mean to develop from Samuel’s discussion is a basic theological exposition of what might be called the time of sin.What that means will have to become clearer as my reading progresses.What follows comes in four parts: (1) an analysis of Samuel’s opening words concerning the disastrous future and how it follows from the sinful present (see Helaman 13:5–23); (2) a study of Samuel’s subsequent brief analysis of how the sinful present misremembers the past (see Helaman 13:24–28); (3) a look at how Samuel then returns to focus on the disastrous future, richly complicating his original account (see Helaman 13:29–37); and (4) a few concluding words concerning Samuel’s final call to repentance (see Helaman 13:37– 39).”
Joseph M. Spencer, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-time-of-sin/
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
Read Helaman 13: 5-16
Think about:
What does Samuel mean to convey by using the word “awaiteth” •in vs. 6?
What does he say was his original message, but they would not •receive him?
Why would Samuel focus here on the destruction that would come much later and without an obvious connection to the sinfulness of his actual listeners?
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“The predicted disaster is actually postponed, Samuel explains, and it is apparently “because of those who are righteous” who remain in Zarahemla (13:12).Thus “it is for the righteous’ sake that [the city] is spared” (13:14), despite the fact that “there are many, yea, even the more part of this great city, that will harden their hearts” (13:12). Most startlingly put:“if it were not for the righteous who are in this great city, behold, [the Lord] would cause that fire should come down out of heaven and destroy
it” (13:13).All these statements concern the present and serve to explain why the present does not entail a disaster in the immediate future. But Samuel goes on to say something about why that disastrous future would eventually come:“the time cometh, saith the Lord, that when ye shall cast out the righteous from among you, then shall ye be ripe for destruction” (13:14). Here the unfortunate future, postponed but inevitable, will come precisely when the righteous are ejected from among the people.”
“This theme—that of destruction being postponed because of the presence (or, sometimes, the prayers) of the righteous—deserves reflection, even if it is relatively familiar. Samuel has already made clear that the future of disaster replaces the future of promise for the Nephites because they give the present to rejecting God’s messengers rather than to trusting in the coming glory. But the realization of the future of disaster, it now becomes clear, depends on more than just the Nephites’ lack of trust in the promise. If the future to which their faithless present leads is to come about, they must reject not only the message concerning Christ but also every person who would receive that message happily.The sinfulness of the present lies in unbelief, but the disaster of the future lies in anti-belief.The road that leads from the sinful present to the disastrous future is the road along which develops a real suspicion concerning believers, the road of growing intolerance for those who profess to open themselves to a future of promise.The future of the faithless is an always-more-intense distrust of those who hope—a distrust that leads them to seal their own disavowed fate.The fixed fate of the faithless—if they do not repent—is deeply opposed to the open possibilities that lie in the messianic future of the faithful.”
Joseph M. Spencer, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-time-of-sin/
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
Read Helaman 13: 17-23
Think about:
What is the curse that Samuel predicts?
Why would the Nephites hide their treasures?
What have the Nephites done to bring this curse upon themselves?
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“Samuel introduces the next part of the chapter, in which the focus turns emphatically from the way the present entails the future to the way the present is constituted by a problematic relationship to the past. Here already, in addition to making clear that the love of wealth is what lies behind the Nephites’ rejection of the messianic message, Samuel points to that problematic relationship to the past by distinguishing between remembering the Lord in all blessings and remembering one’s
riches, pure and simple. If the sinful present is what organizes the disastrous future, it is helpful to determine what exactly the sinful present consists of —and Samuel finally begins to clarify that point by explaining that the sinful present is first and foremost a wrong relationship to the past.”
“Samuel portrays the present as bearing a certain relationship to the past. But what is surprising is the way that relationship works. One might expect that, just as the sinful present leads to a disastrous future, the problematic past led to the sinful present. In other words, one might expect Samuel to continue emphasizing the way that choices at one time determine what happens thereafter.This, however, is not what Samuel does. His focus in verses 24–28 is not on how the past led to or determined the present; rather his focus is on how the present retroactively shapes or organizes the past.”
Joseph M. Spencer, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-time-of-sin/
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
Read Helaman 13: 24-28
Think about:
What is the problem with the past?
Why does Samuel say,“ye are worse than they?” What is wrong with “mere talk?”
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“Strikingly, Samuel seems to indicate that the only real difference between the Nephites and their predecessors, when it comes to killing the prophets, is precisely this business of ideological “talk.” If, in other words, there is a difference between Samuel’s hearers and those in the past they constantly condemn, it is just that those in the past went about their abominable murders more authentically! This seems to be the meaning of Samuel’s next statement, anyway: “Behold ye are worse than they” (13:26).The sinful relationship to the past that constitutes the Nephites’ present (the denial or disavowal of the real identity or repetition that links present with past) makes the present actually worse than the past. Ironically then, the failure to recognize that the present is identical with the past makes the present in an important respect non-identical with the past—different just in that the present turns out to be worse than the past.The Nephite present repeats the past except that it fails to recognize that it repeats the past.Apparently in this way the Nephites of Samuel’s day trumped their predecessors in wickedness.”
“Sin inhabits—perhaps better: occupies—the present by organizing both an imaginary future and an imaginary past. Setting up borders so as to sustain the fantasy of a prolonged enjoyment of wealth, sin closes its eyes to the devastating consequences of its self-imposed blindness. Ironically, precisely to the extent that sin refuses to regard the past it repeats and insists that its future remains indeterminate, it traps itself within a fully deterministic history, positioning itself on a timeline that leads from sin to bondage to utter destruction.The fantasy of consequenceless freedom is precisely what compromises the freedom that should characterize the present, what compromises the freedom the present would support were sin to be rejected through repentance.”
Joseph M. Spencer, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-time-of-sin/
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
Read Helaman 13: 30-39
Think about:
What does Samuel hope to achieve by showing the Nephites how the present will look from the perspective of the future?
SAMUEL’S SPEECH
“In this last part of the chapter. he speaks of how the present will look retrospectively from the perspective of the future. It is not difficult to see why Samuel makes this move. In light of verse 30’s “already,” it is plain that the sinful present is on the verge of giving way to the kind of disastrous future Samuel has already predicted. Understanding how the present will soon be remembered might help those trapped in that present to escape it before it is too late.There is, moreover, an apparent rhetorical purpose in Samuel’s shift in perspective as well. Samuel’s Nephite audience is skeptical that what they are doing in the present will lead directly to disaster, but by addressing how the present will look from the perspective of the future, Samuel rhetorically eliminates the openness of the future.The future of disaster is the only future the Nephites have at this point, and it is a future in which they will realize how their present actions led inexorably to destruction. Samuel is effectively saying that in the future they will recognize the truth of his present message.”
Joseph M. Spencer, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-time-of-sin/
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