26 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did consecrate
Jacob and Joseph, that they should be priests and teachers over the land of my
people.
27 And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of
happiness.
28 And thirty years had passed away from the time we left
Jerusalem.
29 And I, Nephi, had kept the records upon my plates,
which I had made, of my people thus far.
30 And it came to pass that the Lord God said unto me:
Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good
in my sight, for the profit of thy people.
31 Wherefore, I, Nephi, to be obedient to the
commandments of the Lord, went and made these plates upon which I have engraven
these things.
32 And I engraved that which is pleasing unto God. And if
my people are pleased with the things of God they will be pleased with mine
engravings which are upon these plates.
33 And if my people desire to know the more particular
part of the history of my people they must search mine other plates.
34 And it sufficeth me to say that forty years had passed
away, and we had already had wars and contentions with our brethren.
Life in the land of Nephi is becoming normal. One of the first things Nephi did was consecrates his brothers Jacob and Joseph to be priests over the land.
Consecration of priests is an essential part of the
gospel. Jacob would later tell us that
he and Joseph “did magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility,
answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we did not teach them
the word of God with all diligence; wherefore, by laboring with our might their
blood might not come upon our garments; otherwise their blood would come upon
our garments, and we would not be found spotless at the last day” (Jacob
1:19).
We see from Jacob’s words, they took their responsibility
and trust seriously.
When Alma1 established the church in Zarahemla,
he consecrated priests. Mormon tells us
that “none received authority to preach or to teach except it were by him from
God. Therefore he consecrated all their
priests and all their teachers; and none were consecrated except they were just
men” (Mosiah 23:17).
We see that the promises made to Jacob by Lehi came to pass.
“Lehi further promised that Jacob's days ‘shall be spent in
the service of thy God’ (2 Nephi 2:3). Indeed, he and Joseph had been
consecrated as priests and teachers by Nephi (2 Nephi 5:26). In both of his
discourses, Jacob spoke of his ordination by Nephi (2 Nephi 6:2; Jacob 1:18)
and of his role as a teacher (2 Nephi 9:44, 48; Jacob 1:17—19; 2:2—3; 4:1).
Jacob was particularly qualified to serve in this capacity because, as Lehi
noted, he had seen the glory of the Redeemer and knew of his ministry in the
flesh and of the salvation he would bring (2 Nephi 2:3—4; cf. 11:3; Jacob
2:11).”[1]
Things were going well and they were a happy society.
Alan Goff explains how the separation of the family led to
this level of happiness.
“After breaking with his brothers, Nephi organizes his
people and achieves a level of righteousness they were not able to attain
before there were Lamanites and Nephites. He states that ‘it came to pass that
we lived after the manner of happiness’ (2 Nephi 5:27). This passage is alluded
to at least three times. A later prophet named Nephi engages in nostalgia for
that earlier time: ‘Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my
father first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him
in the promised land; then were his people easy to be entreated, firm to keep
the commandments of God, and slow to be led to iniquity’ (Helaman 7:7).”[2]
Hugh Nibley goes into detail explaining what Nephi meant.
“We are told in 2 Nephi 5:27 that the people ‘lived after
the manner of happiness.’ Does that mean in a world without change? Times and
seasons, conveniences and techniques inevitably change, but there is something
that does not need to change, and that is that state of mind we call happiness.
Nephi's people made adjustments and did not depend on the adamantly immovable
euphoria of such jubilant spirits as Pippi and Pollyanna; those moppets had a
point—the irrepressible sprites made their own happiness. This point was not
lost among the well-to-do who advised the unemployed and the hungry to rejoice
in their adventurous situation and examples of life on the brink.”[3]
Nephi tells us he is writing this part of the record thirty
years after they departed from Jerusalem (or twenty-two years after they
arrived in the Promised Land). We don’t
exactly when the family separated, but it was very early on.
In 1 Nephi, Nephi tells us “I, Nephi, do not give the genealogy of my fathers in this part of my
record; neither at any time shall I give it after upon these plates which I am
writing; for it is given in the record which has been kept by my father;
wherefore, I do not write it in this work” (1 Nephi 6:1).
He expounds on that comment later.
“And now, as I have
spoken concerning these plates, behold they are not the plates upon which I
make a full account of the history of my people; for the plates upon which I
make a full account of my people I have given the name of Nephi; wherefore,
they are called the plates of Nephi, after mine own name; and these plates also
are called the plates of Nephi.
“Nevertheless, I
have received a commandment of the Lord that I should make these plates, for
the special purpose that there should be an account engraven of the ministry of
my people.
“Upon the other
plates should be engraven an account of the reign of the kings, and the wars
and contentions of my people; wherefore these plates are for the more part of
the ministry; and the other plates are for the more part of the reign of the
kings and the wars and contentions of my people.
“Wherefore, the
Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which
purpose I know not” (1 Nephi 9:2-5).
It is at this time that Nephi is commanded to make this
second set of plates. “[I]t came to pass that the Lord God said
unto me: Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which
are good in my sight, for the profit of thy people” (2 Nephi 5:30).
Nephi describes that he had made a record of the things that
had occurring during their journey in the wilderness, prophesies, and other
sacred things. This record was kept
before they arrived in the Promised Land.
This record is as much a historical account as it is a religious
record. (These plates would later become
known as the large plates of Nephi.)
After he received the commandment from the Lord, he began to
make his second set of plates. (These
plates would alter become known as the small plates of Nephi.) This is the sacred record of the Nephites,
with little history.[4] The large plates contain genealogies as well
as accounts of war and destruction.
When the plates were passed on after his death, Nephi
instructed Jacob to continue with the large plates as a history and the small
plates be “the more sacred things that
may be kept for the knowledge of my people” (see 1 Nephi 19:1-6 for
Nephi’s full explanation).
At the beginning of Jacob’s record, he tells reiterates the
commandment Nephi gave him “that I should write upon these plates a few
of the things which I considered to be most precious; that I should not touch,
save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people which are called
the people of Nephi” (for the
full account, see Jacob 1:1-4).
Melvin Thorne and John Welch write:
“Nephi made the small plates even later, after he had left
the land of first inheritance and moved to the land of Nephi. The Lord
instructed Nephi to make these plates so he could ‘engraven many things . . .
which are good in my sight, for the profit of thy people’ (2 Nephi 5:30). Thus
the small plates should be understood as having been written after the death of
Lehi, after the separation of Nephi from his brothers Laman and Lemuel, after
the small Nephite party knew of the life-threatening animosity of the Lamanites
against them, after Nephi knew that he would eventually accept the role of
king, and after the temple of Nephi had been constructed.”[5]
In verse 28, Nephi tells us thirty years have passed since
they left Jerusalem. Six verses later,
he tells us forty years have passed. Noel
Reynolds writes:
“It took Nephi ten years to write the first twenty-seven
chapters (1 Nephi, plus the first five chapters of 2 Nephi). In 2 Nephi 5:34,
he says, ‘Forty years had passed away’ So Nephi gives us a time period in which
this was written. He is looking backward. Nephi is already aware of the big
contention that has developed between the Nephites and the Lamanites, and this
is what he is dealing with in his record. This is not his journal being written
by the campfire at the side of the trail as his family went through the Arabian
Peninsula. This is something he is writing very carefully, very deliberately,
thirty years later, looking back. He is using his first record as a resource
and writing with very clear, mature, reflective purposes.”[6]
Nephi makes one last historical observation in verse
34. Over the ten years Nephi was making
the small plates, “we had already had
wars and contentions with our brethren.” With this comment, Nephi
ends historical observations. The
remainder on 2 Nephi is devoted to sacred things as well as things that we “good
in [Nephi’s] sight, for the profit of [his] people.”
[1] The Influence of Lehi's Admonitions on the
Teachings of His Son Jacob, John A. Tvedtnes, Provo, Utah:
Maxwell Institute.
[2] Positivism and the Priority of Ideology in
Mosiah-First Theories of Book of Mormon Production, Alan Goff, Provo,
Utah: Maxwell Institute.
[4]
The verses in 1 and 2 Nephi are around 15% historical in nature and 85% religious
in nature.
[5] When Did Nephi Write the Small Plates? Pressing
Forward with the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates of the 1990s , Melvin J. Thorne, and John W. Welch,
Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute.
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