2 Nephi 9:46-54

Jacob calls on the people to prepare for that “that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous” (2 Nephi 9:46).  What about the wicked?  The wicked will “remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgments, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey to his awful misery” (2 Nephi 9:46). 

King Benjamin might well be referring to Jacob’s words when he told the people if the works are evil, “evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from whence they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation to their own souls” (Mosiah 3:25).  If their minds were pure, Jacob would not be troubling their souls with his plain words.

Jacob speaks to them as their teacher.  He had been set apart as a priest and teacher by his brother Nephi (see 2 Nephi 5:26).  “[I]t must needs be expedient that I teach you the consequences of sin” (2 Nephi 9:48).  Jacob abhors sin and delights in righteousness (see also Isaiah 55:1-2). 

Jacob uses the metaphor of thirst and hunger when calling the people to repent and come to the Lord.  The truth will satisfy their hunger and thirst.  The Savior would tell the Nephites, “[B]lessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 12:6).

Alma₂ would tell Corianton that “whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto him according to his deeds” (Alma 42:27).

Daniel Belnap writes, “But the invitation in 2 Nephi 9:50–51 is the victory feast for the righteous. The invitation to the feast repeats the exhortation to ‘come’, thereby relating this invitation and feast to the invitation in verse 41, to "come unto Christ.”[1]

The concept of a feast appears a number of times in the Book of Mormon.

The image of feasting upon the word of God appears six times in scripture, all in the Book of Mormon.¹⁰ In the excerpt from Jacob's speech cited above, the image of feasting on the word is visually developed. The word of God is eternal; thus it is like food that cannot spoil. It is also abundant and pleasing, so Jacob states, "Let your soul delight in fatness." Nephi employs this metaphor of feasting in the closing chapters of 2 Nephi: "Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end…”[2]

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[1] "I Will Contend with Them That Contendeth with Thee": The Divine Warrior in Jacob's Speech of 2 Nephi 6-10, Daniel Belnap, Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, accessed September 19, 2013.

[2] The Word of God, Leslie A. Taylor, Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, accessed September 19, 2013.