Mosiah 18:21-25

From Feast upon the Word (http://feastupontheword.org). Copyright, Feast upon the Word.

Questions

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Verse 21

How does Alma's injunction against "contention" contrast with the continual rounds of contention described in the Record of Zeniff?
What does it mean to "look forward with one eye?
What does it mean for hearts to be "knit together in unity"? Is there a difference between being knit and being sealed? Does this involve a priesthood ordinance of some type, or is it merely a representation of people bonding to each other?

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Verse 22

How do the people become the "children of God"? Aren't we already the children of a Heavenly Father? How is this different and what is the distinction?

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Verse 23

Why is sabbath day observance specifically mentioned here, rather than other commandments?
According to Alma, giving thanks to God every day is a commandment. Was this a specific commandment just for his people, or is this a commandment that is in effect for our day as well?

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Verse 24

How does this verse serve as a precedent for modern LDS practice of a lay priesthood?
What does it mean to "labor with [our] own hands"?

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Lexical notes

Click the edit link above and to the right to add lexical notes

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Exegesis

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Verse 21

After instructions concerning teaching and preaching are laid down, Alma commands the priests further (and it is clear that the priests specifically are the ones receiving this command and all those following up through verse 26: in verse 27, Alma will turn specifically to the members of the church to begin to offer them commandments) to avoid contention among themselves. That this commandment is given specifically to the priesthood is an interesting detail, and it deserves some attention.

At first, it would appear as if this commandment against contention is redundant (the covenants the people have made quite explicitly would seem to have covered this question--see verses 8-9), but that it is directed toward the priests seems to cancel the redundancy. Rather, it is a specific clarification for those ordained to preach and teach, for the priesthood. In other words, even as the people have covenanted to uphold one another and to suffer each other, there will remain among the priests a tendency to contend. This commandment, then, seems to be issued as a corrective to the tendency toward competition among the ordained priests. Having separate stewardships (each is set over a separate group of fifty people, a group assigned, apparently, by Alma), the priests do not seem overly likely to find themselves in contention, but then it is perhaps precisely because they have separate stewardships that Alma is concerned that contention might arise. As soon as the people are split up into several groups, there is a tendency towards schism, and each priest, having a sort of autonomy with his fifty, might all too easily make them his.

What Alma wants to have happen is quite clear: rather than contention, he would have them unified (one eye, one faith, one baptism). The way this is phrased is interesting: they are to "look forward with one eye." It may be that Alma phrases the question of unity in this way so as to emphasize that the priests should not be looking at each other, but forward. The words install a very real sense of progress, and the "having" that opens the following phrase then seems to lay the groundwork for that sense of promise: "having one faith and one baptism." The single and shared faith and baptism are together apparently the foundation for the progressive looking forward: faith and baptism together point these priests forward to something yet to come (most likely the "kingdom of God"). With another "having," Alma doubles the foundation that opens the possibility of a forward orientation: "having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another." Of interest here is a sort of redirection of the priests: whereas they were pointed forward before, now they are pointed "one towards another." But this redirection is not really a redirection: their eyes are to remain looking forward, while their hearts are turned to each other. The priests are to be bound to each other precisely in their progressive vision.

The two phrases beginning with "having" come together in an interesting manner. Both are pairs (on the one hand "faith" and "baptism," and on the other hand "unity" and "love"), and they are clearly parallel, in fact, might well be read as an inverted parallelism: faith is paired with love, while baptism and unity are paired between them. That faith is tied to love is suggestive, since "look forward with one eye" can only suggest hope. Baptism and unity are clearly tied in the covenant laid out earlier in the chapter. In short, the unity performed in the covenant of their baptism lays out for these priests an intertwining of faith, hope, and love that is to define their whole being in this work. That intertwining is of some interest, perhaps most because it seems to be a different model than is offered elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. Here, faith and love are the groundwork that open the possibility of hope (hope for the "kingdom of God"), they combine necessarily to open the possibility of hope. If faith is their trust in God and love is their union to each other, then hope becomes the possibility of uniting in one their relations to God and their relations to each other (hence, the "kingdom of God," a people gathered together, yet under the perfect rule of God). This curious reading of faith, hope, and love seems to be unique to this passage. As the next verse will show, it had, for this people, an incredible effect.

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Verse 22

The first half of this verse reads as a sort of conclusion to all of what has gone before, and the second half confirms that conclusive spirit. But the second half deserves some close attention, bringing into this question the phrase "the children of God." There is, throughout scripture, a most important connection between sonship and the kingdom. Ostensibly, the idea seems usually to be that the son of God is the one who will inherit the throne, the kingdom. To become the "children of God" seems to mean that one enters into the reality of the kingdom. That one must become a child of God, however, is curious in another way: some rite of adoption seems to be implied. It may be that the ritual of Ex 21:1-7 is implied, or there may be some other ritual at work, but it should not be missed that there is some form of official adoption at work in this verse. In keeping the several commandments Alma offers the priests, they become--together--the "children of God," and this seems then to open onto the possibility of the commandments that follow. In other words, though this verse seems to have a conclusive spirit, in the end, it is not so: there is a sort of conclusion here, but it is a conclusion that opens the possibilties of the further commandments issued next. Alma seems to have offered some commandments that brought them to this point of adoption, and then he seems to have given them further commandments, due to the road that still might be taken ahead (still looking forward). At any rate, the adoption of this verse apparently must be taken into consideration before the further commandments in the next verses.

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Verse 23

Beyond adoption, then, Alma issues some further commandments. The first pertains quite explicitly to the ritual side of this church. Whereas the task of preaching and teaching was explicitly non-ritual (as far as one can read into the text, at least), the commandment to observe the sabbath day--and especially to "keep it holy"--is undeniably a question of ritual. With the observance and maintenance of the sabbath, these priests have entered the realm of sacred time (and the gathering place of verse 25 will suggest sacred space as well), which inevitably summons the themes of ritual, of the temple. It is not clear, it must be noted, that there is anything quite like a temple yet (there is reason to believe that any construction of a temple would be mentioned), but there is quite clearly a cultus developing among these several churches.

The phrasing of this commandment is interesting further, because it sets the sabbath in the context of daily ritual: "every day they should give thanks to the Lord their God." There is here quite clearly a sanctification of the whole of time, though there is a specific setting apart of the sabbath. That these priests--and with them, one can only assume, the people--are living in sacred time, a sacred time punctuated by even more sacred time, is suggestive of a promised land (something more profound and more explicit than the passing reference in verse 25, mentioned above). There may be some evidence that this is at work in the song of praise to the place of Mormon offered later in this chapter (verse 30). Such a pattern follows quite closely, incidentally, the early history of the Restored Church: at first the several offices are restored, but without quorum organization or a saturating ritual complex; but by the Missouri period, the nature of the sabbath (and the accompanying sanctification of all time) is taught and enjoined upon the saints, precisely as they settle into the promised land in Jackson County. The formation in verse 25 of what seem to be a quorum of these priests is also rather interesting. (It might be noted then that there is reason to understand this chapter to be quite important for the pattern of the latter-day Restoration.) At any rate, the point is quite clear: there is, following the rites of adoption in verse 22, a sort of reification of the priesthood, a hypostasis, as it were, of their work, as they enter into ritual space and time and the kingdom of God begins to be established in their midst (hope being fulfilled?).

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Verse 24

Interjected between the sanctification of time in verse 23 and the sanctification of space in verse 25 is this peculiar command: "that the priests whom [Alma] had ordained should labor with their own hands for their support." That it comes between these two works of sanctification is doubly suggestive: it is suggestive on the one hand because it seems to suggest that one should read this command as a question of sanctification as well; and it is suggestive on the other hand because it suggests that there is some change in the structure of the priesthood's means of living even as there is a movement towards the ritualization of the church. In other words, there is in this verse at least the hint that before the adoption rites of verse 22, the priests were living off of the labor of the people, like itinerant preachers. The change is significant (it again follows the pattern of the Restoration), as it seems (as mentioned) to be connected with the development of the cultus that sanctifies everything in the world of the church. That this commandment is central, in fact, the center of a rather simple chiasm, is quite suggestive: there is a hint that this commandment is the most important one, the one that changes everything. In other words, this verse seems to be the most important shift after the rites of adoption: that the priests now begin to labor for their own support seems to suggest that a very real community is formed, and that the people are at this very moment beginning to live the law of consecration. The theme is doubled in verse 26, and it is confirmed powerfully in verses 27-28: the law of consecration grounds the sanctification (ultimately the consecration) of time and space. All of this, it must be noticed, rides on the back of the adoption marked in verse 22.

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Verse 25

It is necessary, after all of the above, to look quite carefully at the sanctification of space that seems to be implied in this verse, but there is a great deal more at work here as well. For example, there seems to be a separation of sorts between "the sabbath day" of verse 23 and the "one day in every week that was set apart" of this verse. In other words, the "regular" (regular as in every week, though the phrase seems to suggest something not exactly strictly scheduled) meetings for teaching and worship seem not to have necessarily been scheduled specifically on the Sabbath: worship might have been a non-Sabbath activity for these people. Rather, the Sabbath may have been something more fundamental than a day simply sanctified by the act of worship (a theme that might best be explored elsewhere in scripture). This disconnection of sorts between verses 23 and 25 highlights a number of other curiosities in the present verse: the gathering is a gathering of priests (albeit "to teach the people), and the implication of the following phrase, "and to worship the Lord their God," is that the priests were gathering to worship, and not necessarily the people. This focus on the priests culminates in the final clause of the verse: the priests were, "as often as it was in their power, to assemble themselves together." This inordinate focus on the priests as the very center of worship is of some interest, and it deserves some sustained attention, especially because it seems also to have something to do with the sanctification of space implied in the "regular" gatherings.

This verse could be read in a rather democratic way—that is, it could be that the priests comprise most of the people and so separating out the other, non-priests in the congregation would be less necessary than if the priests were only a small percentage of the congregation. Also, it may be that the themselves in the first part of the verse is referring to the priests but in the second part of the verse themselves refers to the priests and the other congregation members (future priests and priestesses?). On this reading the reconciliatoin of God to priests and priests to other church members furthers the unity theme of surrounding verses (v. 21 in particular). In verse 23 the focus seems to be on individual church members sanctifying the Sabbath in relation with God (a private type of worship), whereas here the public community aspect of worship seems the focus. Whether or not these activities take place on the same day, the parallel seems unmistakeable: individual worship of God is not sufficient, community worship must accompany it. This follows the pattern in many other scriptures where individual conversion is followed immediately by a concern for the conversion of friends and family (e.g. Enos 1, Lehi's dream in 1 Ne 8, and Isa 6)—indeed, this pattern parallels the order of the great two commandments as spoken by Christ in Matt 22:34-40.

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Mosiah 18:21-25

From Feast upon the Word (http://feastupontheword.org). Copyright, Feast upon the Word.

Contents

Questions

Verse 21

Verse 22

Verse 23

Verse 24

Lexical notes

Exegesis

Verse 21

Verse 22

Verse 23

Verse 24

Verse 25

Related links

Verse 21

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