Helaman 13-16 Quotes and Notes

3 Prophetic Themes Mormon is fleshing out with Samuel’s prophecies

1. The Nephite destruction in 400 years (One Baktun – Helaman 13)₁
2. Yahweh/Messiah’s coming to the Nephites (Helaman 14)
3. The Lamanite’s future (Helaman 15)

Irritation Precedes Instruction

Elder Neal A. Maxwell shared how great lessons often come after difficulties: “Nephi’s broken bow doubtless brought to him some irritation, but not immobilizing bitterness. After all, he was just trying to feed the extended family, so why should he have to contend as well with a broken bow? Yet out of that episode came a great teaching moment. Irritation often precedes instruction” (If Thou Endure It Well [1996], 128).

Helaman 13

Leitworts in Helaman 13: slippery, curse, treasure, riches, repent

1. 86^th year, Nephites =wicked, Lamanites=righteous (1)
2. Samuel comes to the Nephites, and is cast out (2)
3. Lord says, “go back.” And he does (3)
4. He gets on the wall because the Nephites won’t let him in (4)
5. In 400 years the sword of justice is coming (5)
6. Samuel learned this from an angel (7)
7. Prophesy of the 400 year destruction (9), fourth generation L will see it (10)
8. Repent and turn – essentially the same word שׁוּב (shüv, 11)
9. Righteous N in Zarahemla have saved it (12), fire out of heaven would’ve destroyed it (13)
10. Cast out the righteous = you are RIPE (14)
11. WO! Gideon (15), and cities round about (16)
12. Curse on the ground (18), hide up your treasures = the wicked will lose their treasure (19)
13. Tons of repetition of the word RICHES & TREASURES (19-23)
14. If we lived in the days of old… how do I know if I would’ve been valiant? How am I now? (25-26)
15. Who they give money to… “walk after the pride of your eyes & hearts”… they give him $$ (27)
16. N definition of wealth (again) = substance, gold costly apparel (28)
17. The curse = “slippery riches” (31) 4.   Slippery Treasures – Helaman 13.30-31 Instructions of Amenemope
18. “Our treasures have slipped away from us, because of the curse” (35)
19. We are surrounded by demons (37)
20. You have sought happiness in doing iniquity (38)
21. Repent and be saved (39)

C.S. Lewis on the thrill of being in love:

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there.

Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy. (C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Pages 110-111. Lewis wrote this in his chaper, “Christian Marriage.’)

Helaman 14

1. Mormon, “I cannot tell you guys everything Samuel said!” (1)
2. Here’s your sign (2), in 5 years the Son of God cometh
3. Great lights in heaven, no darkness (3), the night shall not be dark (4)
4. New star (5), believe on the Son of God = everlasting life (8) – cross ref. w/John 3.36, 6.40, 6.47 [common theme in John’s gospel]
5. The angel told me this, but the main message is “repent!” (9)
6. This is why I’m on the wall & you’re mad (10-11)
7. Jesus Christ = Father of heaven & earth, Creator… might believe on his name (12)- cross w/John (5/6 NT references are in John… see John 1.7, 9.36, 14.29, 19.35, 20.31 – subjunctive clauses  ἵνα πιστεύσητε)
8. You may have remission of sins “through his merits” (13) – cross w/2 Nephi 2.3 “Jacob, you’re redeemed because of Jesus’ righteousness”
9. 14.12 is anachronistic… “Jesus Christ” as a name and a title is anachronistic in this context, which is a result of translation. The Savior’s identity certainly appeared on the plate text, but not in those literal words… The Nephites would have recognized the name “Jesus” or “Yeshua” but the title “Christ” is a Greek title = Cristos, the anointed One… It probably would have been Yeshua Mashiach… Jesus the Messiah… using a 2 part name “Jesus Christ” as if it were a first and last name would not have been part of this ancient text.
10. Sign of his death (14), he must die (15), men brought back into presence of Lord.
11. All mankind redeemed from spiritual death (16)… “considered as dead,” men brought back (17)
12. Repentance is the key to unlocking everything (18-19)
13. The sun shall be darkened & refuse to give “his” light = 3 days (20)
14. All kinds of storms & physical damage (21-24), graves opened (25)
15. Many shall see greater signs than these… that there’ll be no cause for unbelief (28)
16. You are free, and you do this to yourself (30), choose life or death (31) [Karma scripture]

Helaman 15

1. Repent or your houses will be desolate (1)
2. Wo unto those giving suck (2), God chastens who he loves (3)
3. The Lamanites hath he hated (4)
4. The Lamanites are doing better spiritually (5-6)
5. The prophecy of Lamanite redemption (7-13), even Zenos prophesied of this (11)
6. They shall return (16), meaning the Lamanites.
7. I will utterly destroy the Nephites (17) if they don’t repent

Helaman 16

1. Many Nephites believe (1), Many Nephites do not believe (2), they shot arrows at Samuel (2)
2. Many more believe due to missed arrows! (3)
3. Interestingly, the jaguar, a sacred being with supernatural powers in Mesoamerican religion, was also (in folklore) invulnerable to death by arrow:

The jaguar, a sacred being with supernatural powers in Mesoamerican religion, was traditionally invulnerable to death by arrows:

When it sees one, when it meets, when it comes upon a huntsman, a hunter, it does not run, it does not flee. It just settles down to face him. It places itself well; it hides itself not at all, this [jaguar]. Then it begins to hiss, so that by its breath it may make faint, may terrify the hunter. And when the hunter begins to shoot arrows at it. The first reed, the arrow, which he shoots, the [jaguar] just catches with its paws; it shatters it with its teeth. It seats itself upon it growling, snarling, rumbling in its throat. When [the hunter] shoots more, it is just the same; howsoever many he shoots at it, to all [the jaguar]does the same. ₂

4. Nephi teaches & baptizes (4)
5. Lots of baptizing (5)
6. The more part of N do not believe (6), Samuel escapes (7), and is never heard of again (8)
7. People more hardened (12), angels appear to men (14), people depend on their own wisdom (15)
8. They guessed right! (16), Christ is not reasonable (18), they keep us in ignorance! (20)
9. They want us to be their servants (21), that we may “yield unto them” (21)
10. Satan spread “rumors” and “contentions” in the land (22)
11. Christ’s birth is now only 2 years away. As the book of Helaman ends, Mormon has painted the picture of a deeply divided society, characterized by conflict among its many factions. These people are on the brink of total collapse as an organization, something we shall see in 3 Nephi 1-7.

Love and Hate in Helaman 15

In Helaman 15.1-4 we read that, “the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also he hath chastened them… but my brethren, the Lamanites hath he hated because their deeds have been evil continually…”

Many struggle with this idea, that God would hate a specific group of people. Oftentimes modern readers of the scriptures, which are ancient texts, struggle understanding the meaning because we read something ancient through our modern 21st century eyes, assuming things that are not so.

Brigham Young commented on this when he exhorted the Saints: “Do you read the Scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them? If you do not feel thus, it is your privilege to do so, that you may be as familiar with the spirit and meaning of the written word of God as you are with your daily walk and conversation, or as you are with your workmen or with your households” ₃

The following by will help readers understand Helaman 15.1-4 in its ancient context:

Few literary genres from the ancient world stand out so prominently as the Near Eastern vassal treaty. Scholars have shown that these political contracts formed between vassal kings and suzerain provided the conceptual background for the book of Deuteronomy.₄ “The assumption is that Israel conceived of its relation to Yahweh as that of subject peoples to a world king and that they expressed this relationship in the concepts and formulas of the suzerainty treaty.”₅ In the Near Eastern treaty, vassals were required to love their superiors: “If you do not love the crown prince designate Ashurbanipal,” warns the Assyrian treaty of Esarhaddon, “[then] may Ashur, king of the gods, who determines the fates, decree for you an evil, unpropitious fate.”₆ In this ancient context, “loving the king with one’s entire heart signified the severance of all contact with other political powers.”₇ Hence, Israel’s command to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” presented in the book of Deuteronomy, seems to refer to a political commitment rather than an emotional attachment (Deuteronomy 6:5).₈

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 signified the status of an individual outside of this affiliation.₉ 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.₁₀

“All their [the Ephraimites’] wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house” (Hosea 9:15). As demonstrated in this biblical passage, the Ephraimites’ wickedness resulted in their loss of the blessing associated with having the God of Israel serve as their sovereign. The Lord hated the Ephraimites “for the wickedness of their doings” because in the context of ancient Near Eastern treaties these acts were tantamount to a political insurrection. As a result, the Ephraimites were removed from God’s covenantal house or family. “I will love them no more,” declared the Lord: “all their princes are revolters” (Hosea 9:15). Thus, the words love and hate in the biblical world often carried a deliberate connotation of political alliance (or lack thereof).

With this observation in mind, the problematic passage in Helaman 15 where Samuel the Lamanite describes God’s love and hatred seems to convey a specific nuance derived from the world of antiquity. When Samuel presents his inspired message to the people of Nephi, he declares, “They [the Nephites] have been a chosen people of the Lord; yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved” (v. 3). With these words, Samuel attempts to remind the Nephites that they have traditionally served as God’s covenant people. In this relationship, the Lord has acted as the Nephite suzerain from whom the people of Nephi have received reciprocal “love.” In contrast, Samuel presents his own people, the Lamanites, as those whom God “hath hated because their deeds have been evil continually” (v. 4). Significantly, Samuel uses the verb hate in the same context in which it appears in the book of Hosea. God hated the Lamanites in a parallel manner to the way he hated the Ephraimites: their evil acts had placed them outside the boundary of his covenantal relationship.

While some modern readers have expressed concern regarding this apparently harsh statement preserved in the Book of Mormon, Samuel’s message relates perfectly to the context of “love” and “hate” in the ancient sense of alliance.

Slippery Riches and the Instructions of Amenemope

The Instructions of Amenemope – for more on this topic, see: The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources

In very general terms, Jewish cultural and religious adaptation of Egyptian materials may be illustrated by the parallels between the Instructions of Amenemope and portions of the book of Proverbs. The Instructions of Amenemope is a collection of wise sayings written in Egypt during the New Kingdom (1550—1069 B.C.) and first published by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1923. The papyrus was found inside a statue of Osiris from a tomb in Thebes. Another fragmentary copy was discovered and published in the 1960s, and additional copies are known from writing boards in the Turin Museum, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and the Louvre.

Budge mentioned a couple of parallels between Amenemope and Proverbs, but it was a later article published by Adolf Erman in 1924 that really drew the attention of scholars to such parallels. A tremendous amount of scholarly ink has been spilled since that time attempting to articulate the relationship between the two texts. Most scholars see Proverbs as dependent on either Amenemope or a common source; a small minority argues that the dependence goes the other way; and some scholars argue that there is no connection and that the similarities are to be explained by polygenesis.₁₁ 

Samuel issued here what biblical scholars have called a complex “prophetic lawsuit.”₁₂ Samuel’s judgment oracle interweaves God, humans, the Devil, demons, destroying angels, land, riches or treasures, true and false prophets, military enemies, natural causes, and spiritual consequences. As a part of this picture, items become “slippery” due to God cursing the land, the earth then obeying God, and the people disobediently hiding their treasures instead of hiding them up unto God.

The Instructions of Amenemope may also have influenced Samuel’s words to the Nephite people in Zarahemla. If this is true, the Book of Mormon gives modern readers more information to how prophets repackaged older stories and materials into their worldview and oracles to their hearers. This would be a second witness to the prophetic nature not just of the Book of Proverbs, but also the Book of Mormon, since Joseph Smith would have had no access to this text as it was undiscovered when he was alive.

The Instruction of Amenemope, which also pre-dates Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem by many centuries, warns:

Do not set your heart upon seeking riches,
For there is no one who can ignore Destiny and Fortune; . . .
If riches come to you by thievery
They will not spend the night with you;
As soon as day breaks they will not be in your household;
Although their places can be seen, they are not there.
When the earth opens up its mouth, it levels him and swallows him up,
They will plunge in the deep;
They will make for themselves a great hole which suits them.
And they will sink themselves in the underworld;
Or they will make themselves wings like geese,
And fly up to the sky.₁₃     

It has been widely recognized that the Instruction of Amenemope parallels some of the concepts and language found in the biblical book of Proverbs, and indeed may have been the source or inspiration for some of its self evident truths. Discussing Proverbs 22.22-23.11, Robert Alter has summarized:

The first of these sub-units, as most scholars for nearly a century have agreed, is an adaptation of an Egyptian Wisdom text, the Instruction of Amenemope, and thus bears witness to the international circulation of Wisdom literature. Fifteen of its twenty-four verses have notable parallels in Amenemope, and some of the sequencing of the proverbs is the same. In all likelihood, the Egyptian text was first translated into Aramaic, perhaps in the seventh century BCE, by which time Aramaic had become a diplomatic lingua franca in the Near East. Elite circles in Israel at this point certainly knew Aramaic, and so an adaptation from the Aramaic to Hebrew would have been perfectly likely. It is notable that the Hebrew of this section incorporates a number of Aramaic usages.₁₄

As Nili Shupak has stated:

The supposition of direct contact between Amenemope—composed during the eleventh–tenth centuries BCE and based on a preceding Egyptian wisdom tradition going back almost a millennium—suggests that wisdom literature may well have flourished within Israel as early as the first millennium BCE. In light of this fact and the evidence provided by 1 Kings 1–9 regarding the close contacts between Israel and Egypt during Solomon’s reign, it is reasonable to conjecture that the ancient stratum of Proverbs—whether originally oral or written—developed within King Solomon’s court (970–930 BCE)…

Comparative research also helps to explain the Sitz im Leben of the biblical wisdom tradition. Most of the Egyptian wisdom works—including Amenemope—served as study material in scribal school and other educational frameworks. One may assume, even if there is no direct evidence, that during the First Temple period such institutions dedicated to educating high-ranking officials existed in the royal court [of Judah]. These simultaneously served as the basis for the development of biblical wisdom literature and the assimilation of Egyptian and other foreign cultural elements. At least part of the biblical wisdom books and selections from famous Egyptian wisdom works—in the original or translation—were likely to have been studied herein. In this context, the fact that Proverbs evinces literal parallels to Amenemope as well as concepts, motifs, and expressions known from other Egyptian works composed centuries earlier should come as little surprise.₁₅

Notes

1. Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Volume 5: Helaman through 3 Nephi, Greg Kofford Books, 2011, p. 176.
2. Gardner, Second Witness, volume 5, p. 212. See : Bernadino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain: Florentine Codex, translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 12 vols (Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1975) 11:2.)
3. Discourses of Brigham Young, 128.
4. This article comes from John A. Tvedtnes, Testaments: Links Between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible, p. 193-195. See: 1. See A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy: New Century Bible Commentary (Eerdmans, 1979), 33; and Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Eisenbrauns, 1992), 60-61.
5. Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction (Fortress Press, 1985), 205.
6. As cited in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton University Press, 1969), 537, 538.
7. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, 81.
8. William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 77-87.
9. N. Lohfink, “Hate and Love in Osee 9, 15,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 417.
10. This would explain why the Lord says that he loves Jacob (Israel) but hates his brother Esau (Malachi 1:2-3; Romans 9:13).
11. See Kevin Barney’s article here. See also the survey of Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, 207-216.
12. See Kirsten Nielsen, Yahweh as Prosecutor and Judge (Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1978).
13. William Kelly Simpson, trans., “The Instruction of Amenemope,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt, ed. William Kelly Simpson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 230 (emphasis added).
14. Robert Alter, The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary, W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
15. Shupak, in Was there a Wisdom Tradition? edited by Mark R. Sneed, Society of Biblical Literature, No. 23, SBL Press, 2015. See part 3: Ancient Near Eastern Comparison: “The Contribution of Egyptian Wisdom to the Study of Biblical Wisdom Literature,” 296–297.