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1 Ne 17:22)
The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17
Questions
Verse 21
- Were Laman and Lemuel so shallow as to think that their pursuit of materialism could provide all of the happiness they wanted and needed in life?
Verse 22
- Nephi’s brothers say that they know that the people of Jerusalem were righteous because they kept the law of Moses. Were they wrong about that, or is their standard of righteousness the problem?
Verse 23
- Nephi responds to their complaints by asking them to remember the Lord’s dealing with Moses and Israel. (Remembrance is a major theme in the Book of Mormon.) How will that remembrance answer their complaints?
Verse 24
- To what extent does Nephi see himself as a Moses for the group he is leading to the promised land?
Verse 25
- Nephi seems to be comparing the exodus of the Lehi party from Jerusalem with the exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt. Does he mean to equate the experience of Lehi's family in Jerusalem with the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt? If so, in what way was Lehi's family in bondage in Jerusalem?
Lexical notes
Verse 22
- Statutes and Judgments. This term appears repeatedly in the Old Testament (see, e.g., Deut 4:1), where it is a translation of two words. Choq is the word translated as "statute." It means an ordinance, limit, boundary enactment, decree, ordinance specific decree law in general enactments, or civil enactments prescribed by God. It is derived from the word chaqaq, which means to carve, cut, or inscribe. Mishpat is the word translated as "judgment." It refers to the act of deciding a legal case, a court, litigation, a judicial decision or right and justice. It is derived from the word shaphat which is a verb meaning to govern or judge. The phrase "statutes and judgments" also appears elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (see, e.g., 2 Ne 1:16).
Exegesis
Verses 22-24
These verses set up the extended discourse by Nephi that follows. In verse 22 Nephi's brothers insist that the people at Jerusalem were "a righteous people" because they "kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his comandments, according to the law of Moses." One way of looking at this confrontation and others between Nephi and his brothers is to see it as a contest between dueling approaches to reading the scriptures. Notice that Laman and Lemuel are not irreligious. They appeal to scripture, but do so in a particular way, adopting a self-consciously legal approach to them. They refer to Moses, but only as a lawgiver and their focus is on "the statutes and judgements" of that law. Nephi responds by also invoking Moses, but in a very different way, namely as a prophet who led his people from bondage to a promised land. Notice that Nephi's reading of the Moses story implicitly places himself and his brothers within the narrative. In doing so, he recapitulates an earlier confrontation over interpretation (see 1 Ne 15:5 ), but this time in a much more elaborate manner.
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