And with righteousness shall the
Lord God judge the poor,
and reprove with equity for the
meek of the earth.
And he shall smite the earth with
the rod of his mouth;
and with the breath of his lips
shall he slay the wicked.
(2 Nephi 30:9)
Here Nephi quotes Isaiah 11:4.
When I read this recently it occurred to me to notice the
verbs used – judge, reprove, smite, slay.
Also, look at the order of the verbs. Do you see there is a
progression in severity there? It
starts with simply judging, then reproving, then smiting, then slaying. It gives us the sense that the Lord uses gentle means first,
but if people ignore Him, He will use more extreme measures to try to get their
attention.
Another thing I notice is that He does this all with His words. Even the smiting and slaying is done with His words. That’s
pretty powerful.
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