Mosiah 12:17-30 — LeGrand Baker — ‘How beautiful upon the mountains’

Mosiah 12:17-30 — LeGrand Baker — ‘How beautiful upon the mountains’

Mosiah 12:20-21
20     And it came to pass that one of them said unto him: What meaneth the words which are written, and which have been taught by our fathers, saying:
21     How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth;

I recall once when I was much younger, I read this – all caught up in the drama of the story – and thought “Wow, they really asked Abinadi a hard one, I could not have answered that.”

What I have since learned is that they were not asking him a hard question at all. What they were doing is entrapping him so they could accuse him of treason.

To illustrate that, lets quickly review the concluding scenes of the Feast of Tabernacles in the ancient Israelite New Year festival. In the drama, after Jehovah has rescued the king from the world of the dead, the king, the Ark of the Covenant, and the people marched in a grand procession around the city, defining it once again as sacred space, and symbolically rebuilding the city and its temple to a renewed glory. During the procession they stopped at a pool where the king was ceremonially washed.  After going all around the city, they walked through its gates and into the temple precinct. When there, the doors of the temple were opened, the veil in front of the Holy of Holies was also opened, and symbolical, the Holy of Holies was extended to include everyone in the congregation. This did not violate the sanctity of the temple because all the people had been cleansed on the Day of Atonement in preparation for this great event. The description of the king’s anointing is not given in the Bible, but some scholars believe that it was the same as is described for the anointing of the High Priest. The king’s anointing was apparently a dual ceremony. It was an adoption ordinance, so now the king became a son of God (he had to be a son, or he would have been a usurper when he sat upon the throne). And it was also the final act of coronation ordinances. So after his anointing, the king was both “son” and king. After his anointing, some scholars believe, the king sat on the throne in the back of the Holy of Holies and delivered a lecture (probably from Deuteronomy) about the law and the covenant. The final ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles were a general feast which took place after the king’s speech, and the next day — the conclusion of both the Feast of Tabernacles and of the New Year’s festival — there was a great feast.

In Moses’ Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant had been the portable throne of God, but when Solomon’s temple was constructed, there was a great throne built at the back wall of the Holy of Holies. On either side of the throne were two cherubim, whose wings stretched over the throne. The Ark of the Covenant represented the presence of God, and after the procession, when it was brought back into the temple, it was sat in front of the Throne. Some scholars believe that after the king was anointed and sat upon the throne as the legitimate son of God, that the Ark was his footstool. The Ark contained a jar of manna, the bread of life representing the fruit of the tree of life; Aaron’s rod, which represented the power of the priesthood; and the tablets on which the Lord had written the Ten Commandments, which was the Law. So the contents of the Ark represented all the powers of sacral kingship. To have one’s feet “established” probably referred to that symbolic part of the coronation ceremony.