Talk:D&C 132:51-57

What was Emma not required to do (v. 51)?

I found this quote from Wikipedia (but it was undocumented...):

The Expositor was published by William Law and six associates. Law had been a former member of the Mormon First Presidency, and a close associate to Smith. During the course of his association with Smith, Law came to believe that Smith had made several proposals to Law's wife Jane, under the premise that Jane Law would enter a polygamous marriage with Smith. Law claimed that when he confronted his wife, she told him that Smith had "asked her to give him half her love; she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband." Some historians have also concluded that Smith had also planned to ask Smith's own wife, Emma, to enter a similar polygamous relationship with William Law, but was directed by revelation not to follow through. (See LDS D&C 132:51.) As a result of what William Law came to believe about Joseph Smith, Law became disaffected with Smith, and left the church. The Expositor was planned as an exposé of the church's practices which Law opposed.

I'd love to see some sources on this. Here's what the CES manual says (basically that we don't know and that it's useless to speculate):

D&C 132:51–56. What Was Emma Commanded Not to Partake of?

No indication is given here or elsewhere of what the Lord had commanded the Prophet Joseph to offer to his wife, but the context seems to suggest that it was a special test of faith similar to the test of Abraham’s faith when the Lord commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. Beyond that, it is useless to speculate. However, Emma was given additional counsel from the Lord, including commandments to “receive all those that have been given to her husband” (D&C 132:52) to obey the voice of the Lord (see v. 53), to “abide and cleave unto” the Prophet (v. 54), and to forgive him of his trespasses (see v. 56). The Lord also gave her warnings against rejecting these commandments and promises for keeping them.

President Wilford Woodruff, who was closely associated with the Prophet Joseph Smith, said: “Emma Smith, the widow of the Prophet, is said to have maintained to her dying moments that her husband had nothing to do with the patriarchal order of marriage, but that it was Brigham Young that got that up. I bear record before God, angels and men that Joseph Smith received that revelation, and I bear record that Emma Smith gave her husband in marriage to several women while he was living, some of whom are to-day living in this city, and some may be present in this congregation, and who, if called upon, would confirm my words. But lo and behold, we hear of publication after publication now-a-days, declaring that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with these things. Joseph Smith himself organized every endowment in our Church and revealed the same to the Church, and he lived to receive every key of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods from the hands of the men who held them while in the flesh, and who hold them in eternity.” (In Journal of Discourses, 23:131.)

--RobertC 17:54, 21 March 2007 (CET)

This is probably the source behind the wikipedia entry:

Smith told Clayton [p.58] that Emma was "disposed to be revenged on him for some things[;] she thought that if he would indulge himself she would too." Evidently sometime prior to this date Smith had offered his wife a surrogate husband to compensate for his plural wives but later had second thoughts. Perhaps Smith thought Emma had her eye on William Clayton. On 29 May Clayton wrote in his diary that Smith asked him "if I had used any familiarity with E[mma]. I told him by no means & explained to his satisfaction."

Considerable light on this obscure situation is shed by the 12 July revelation. Verse 51 contains a commandment "unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself, and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her; for I did it, saith the Lord, to prove you all, as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice." Verse 54 directs Emma to "abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph and to none else." Though Smith may have been suspicious of Clayton, his deeper concern appears to have been directed toward his counselor William Law. Joseph H. Jackson, a non-Mormon opportunist who gained the confidence of Smith in Nauvoo, recorded in an 1844 expose of Mormonism: "Emma wanted Law for a spiritual husband" because Joseph "had so many spiritual wives, she thought it but fair that she would at least have one man spiritually sealed up to her and that she wanted Law, because he was such a 'sweet little man.'"

This is page 58 of Richard S. VanWagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989).

I've never looked any further into this, so I haven't an opinion on the matter, though I must say that the conclusions made here seem to make a few curious leaps logically. --Joe Spencer 20:05, 21 March 2007 (CET)

Interesting to gaze on William Law's photo and try to picture him as a "sweet little man."--Rob Fergus 15:58, 22 March 2007 (CET)