Character of the Jewish Elders in Jerusalem in Nephi’s day

There’s an interesting series of observations we can make about the Jewish elders in Jerusalem from the details Nephi provides in his interactions with Laban and Zoram.

First, when Nephi finds Laban drunk, we get this:

7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.

8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban. (1 Nephi 4:7-8)

Laban is in a drunken stupor. Fact.

Then when Nephi is dressed as Laban, we get this detail:

And he spake unto me concerning the elders of the Jews, he knowing that his master, Laban, had been out by night among them. (1 Nephi 4:22)

So Laban has been out by night among the elders of the Jews, and he got falling-down drunk. Is it logical to think that Laban was the only one of the gathering who got drunk? Probably not. That means it was a party of drunk people. And these are the elders of the Jews. They are supposed to be the righteous ones, the decision-makers, the wise ones, the ruling body.  But they are getting together to party and get drunk.  That is definitely the wrong kind of elders’ quorum party right there.

Then we get some other interesting info in some other verses:

24 And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls….

26 And he, supposing that I spake of the brethren of the church, and that I was truly that Laban whom I had slain, wherefore he did follow me.

27 And he spake unto me many times concerning the elders of the Jews, as I went forth unto my brethren, who were without the walls. (1 Nephi 4:24, 26-27)

If Zoram had known about the drunken character of the elders’ parties, he would have found this Laban’s sudden interest in retrieving the plates and taking them to “brethren outside the walls” odd, unusual, and suspiciously out-of-character.  Drunken loutish bully has suddenly turned pious and wants to give/show archived scriptures to someone outside the city?  Hmmm…

But Zoram doesn’t seem to have any idea that this is out of character, which means it may be possible that Laban had concealed what was happening with the elders.

What does this add up to? Hypocrisy among the elders.  Meeting to party and drink themselves into a stupor while everyone else thought they were taking care of important business and making momentous, important decisions. They were taking the status of their position and using it to cloak their self-indulgence and decadence.  It seems that part of their wickedness was the fact that they were hiding it and not repenting of it. (This could also explain why Laman and Lemuel later argued against Nephi that the Jews at Jerusalem were righteous and Lehi had judged them unfairly.)

Would these elders be able to handle a real crisis when it comes up? Probably not. They were destroying their character instead of building it up.

I think the lesson for us today is to avoid hypocrisy. If we say we’re busy because we’re engaged in something important, we’d better be doing important stuff and not mucking about wasting time. We'd better be repenting and not hiding our sins.

Nephi Finds Laban: An Underappreciated Miracle

On Nephi’s last attempt to get the brass plates from Laban, we read that he was led by the Spirit without knowing what he was going to do. The next verse jumped out at me recently for some reason.

7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.
8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban.
(1 Nephi 4:7-8)

This is a miracle that gets totally overlooked. It is a miracle that makes it possible for Nephi to get the brass plates at all. It is such a simple thing, and yet it is extraordinary. Laban, considered a “mighty man” who can “command fifty”, is found in a vulnerable position. He is:

• Near his house (which makes it possible for Nephi to find him)
• Alone and unprotected (which means none of his army of fifty are any help)
• Drunk and inert (which means he is unable to protect himself)

How he arrives in this vulnerable position is interesting too. Nephi records this bit of information many years after the fact: “And he [Zoram] spake unto me [Nephi] concerning the elders of the Jews, he knowing that his master, Laban, had been out by night among them.” (1 Nephi 4:22) This makes it even more amazing that Nephi finds Laban where he is. Evidently Laban spent a portion of the night drinking and carousing with the ‘venerable’ elders of Jerusalem—a fine illustration of the depth of debauchery the city had sunk to—and in his inebriated state he is just barely able to totter and weave his way home before collapsing. Except that he doesn’t make it close enough to get in the door, or even within earshot of his fabulous army of fifty. But he’s close enough that Nephi finds him on the way.

But why would Laban be out with the city elders at night? This implies the worst sort of chicanery afoot. It could be a secret kangaroo trial of the type that condemned Jesus. It could be a plot against one of those pesky prophets preaching death and destruction against Jerusalem, and Laban was there to learn what part he was to play. That might explain why he was bereft of an armed escort. No sense in anyone else knowing the plan and spreading it around. After all, one of them might have let slip a warning.

So when the angel told Nephi and his brothers that the Lord would deliver Laban into their hands, he was telling no more or less than the truth.

Motivation to keep sacred records: external versus internal

In 1 Nephi 5 when Lehi examines the brass plates, he finds all kinds of good stuff on them. Something that I noticed with more attention recently was that they also had “many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” (v 13). I found this interesting because Jeremiah was a contemporary of Lehi and had been put in prison, according to Nephi. What is more odd is that “Laban also was a descendant of Joseph, wherefore he and his fathers had kept the records” (v16). “Kept the records” could mean keeping them secure, or it could also mean adding to them. But Laban does not seem like the type who would be carefully recording Jeremiah’s prophecies, full as they are of imminent destruction. Can we imagine this murderous man studiously laboring, stylus in hand, to engrave the words of Jeremiah?

This puzzled me for a while until I looked at the chronology of the kings as in the Bible Dictionary. I found that Jeremiah began his ministry during Josiah’s reign. It is likely that part of Josiah’s reforms were mandates that prophecies be recorded, and Laban and his fathers were responsible to see that royal command was carried out, so they wrote down many prophecies of the prophets, including Jeremiah’s. But it seems as soon as Josiah died, all motivation for record-keeping ended and the brass plates went neglected in the treasury. The motivation was only external and hadn’t been internalized.

This has some application in my own life. This semester I have taken a seminary preservice institute class and one of the assignments was to write down insights received during daily scripture study. The class ended this week. I could stop writing my insights down every day if I wanted to. But if I stopped, I realize I would be no better than Laban and his family. So I think I must keep on.

I have a better reason for continuing, however. It has been very helpful to me to write the things I have learned without worrying about evaluating them on whether to post them on my blog or not. It has reminded me that I really do learn so much from the scriptures through the Spirit, even if it is little tidbits at a time. It has also reminded me that sometimes when we record what we have learned, in the very act of writing, the Lord gives us even greater insight.