LeGrand L. Baker

1 Nephi 3:16 

16 Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And all this he hath done because of the commandments of the Lord.

Faithful is used here with precision. Even though faith (pistis) has lost its covenant connotation and has come to mean belief without evidence, faithful has kept its original meaning. To be faithful (pistos) is to do what we say we will do—that is, to keep our part of the covenant. The word Nephi uses here is “commandments” rather than covenants, but it was a covenant, nonetheless. God had given the instruction and Nephi understood that with that instruction had come a promise of assistance. The brothers had promised to obey. Therefore, to be faithful, they must do as they had promised.

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1 Nephi 4:19 

19 And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins.

After describing the sword, Nephi tells us that he removed all of Laban’s clothing and put them on himself. Nephi makes it very clear that he did not simply take Laban’s outer garments and put them over his own in order to disguise himself. Rather, what he writes is that “I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins.” The implication is that Nephi removed his own clothes and replaced them with everything Laban had been wearing—even every whit. Given the nature of the sword of Laban, it is reasonable to suppose that his clothing had the same ceremonial and symbolic significance as the sword. If that were so, that would certainly account for why Nephi was concerned that he let us know that he put on all of Laban’s clothing. His phrase, “upon mine own body,” implies that included Laban’s undergarments.{1} If that is so, then when Nephi had finished dressing himself he was wearing the royal and priesthood birthright apparel of the prince of the family of Manasseh, of Joseph, and of Abraham. At that point Nephi was dressed in accordance with the Lord’s promise that he should be made a king and a priest

After that, Nephi writes, “I did gird on his armor about my loins.” Later he writes that the “sword,” as well as the “armor,” was “girded about my loins” (1 Nephi 4:21).

That is one of the hundreds of incidental statements in the Book of Mormon that demonstrate that its author had a first-hand knowledge of what he was talking about—the kind of knowledge that Joseph Smith, with his back-country New England education, could never have guessed correctly.

The word translated as “armor” in the Old Testament “properly means ‘girdle belt,’ an important part of a soldier’s defensive armor.”{2} The full battle dress of an ancient Israelite soldier consisted of a “girdle belt” that protected his loins and held the sheath of his sword, a helmet, a shield, and perhaps also a breast covering of mail.{3} That description would fit perfectly with Nephi’s account. The belt would be necessary to carry the sword’s sheath, and would account for Nephi’s later words, “the sword girded about my loins.” So Nephi’s description of what he did with the armor—that is he fastened it around his loins—is correct.

If Laban had been dressed in his full military uniform, he also would have had on a helmet, and he would have been carrying a shield. However, since Nephi mentions neither of those things, we can be comfortable in understanding Laban’s “armor” was only the protective belt that carried the sword.{4}
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FOOTNOTES

{1} For a discussion of the royal clothing see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, First edition, p. 265-67, 483-95; Second edition, p. 189-91, 397-98.

{2} “Weapons and Implements of War,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 5 vols., Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1990), 4:825.

{3} “Weapons and Implements of War,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 4:820-25.

{4} The Nephites continued to call the “girdle belt” their armor. When Captain Moroni “fastened on his head-plate, and his breastplate, and his shields, and girded on his armor about his loins” (Alma 46:13).

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1 Nephi 4:14-18 

14 And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise.
15 Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law.
16 And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass.
17 And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments.
18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

Notwithstanding Nephi was “led by the Spirit,” he needed to be convinced that he must kill Laban. After he had done so, he apparently had no question about what he must do next.

In the mind of the ancient Israelites, there was an inseparable connection between physical and spiritual strength. Consequently, even some of the most intensely spiritual psalms (like 21 and 25) end with a promise of military invulnerability. The Old Testament is replete with the idea that the righteousness of the king brings military success and the wickedness of the king brings military defeat and captivity. In this story of Nephi’s overcoming impossible odds to defeat the commander of the Jewish armies, he gives the details that demonstrate that he is invulnerable because the Lord is with him. This also demonstrates that his claim to kingship is legitimate—not just his personal kingship, but the dynasty he was establishing.

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1 Nephi 4:11-13 

11 And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.
12 And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;
13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.

There is a titanic struggle going on in and for this world, and the combatants in the struggle are myriad and they are fully engaged. From our perspective, there are at least three major questions at issue: (1) How can people be happy while on this earth? (2) How can we be assured that we may ultimately return to our Father in Heaven? (3) Who (Satan or The Meek) will ultimately inherit this beautiful earth?

Of those questions, most people tend to be most interested in the first—and that often to the exclusion of the other two. Often that question is just about wanting an assurance of health, wealth, and pleasure. For that reason, the question is often turned upside-down so that it reads: “How could God allow such bad things?” Thus altered, the question becomes the great and unanswerable dilemma and hovers over human society like a shroud of darkness. Many who ask the question in that way get frustrated and angry, or else they just stop thinking about God altogether.

To other people who look forward to leaving this world with an anticipation analogous to that of a child looking forward to Christmas, the upside-down question is moot because it doesn’t ask anything that is ultimately most important. In their minds, the pivotal question is the second one: “How can we be assured that we may ultimately return to our Father in Heaven?” and the real issue is about the adventure of having enough experiences along the way that we will understand the important things while we are here.

The third question, “Who (Satan or the Meek) will ultimately inherit this beautiful earth?” is enormous. Its answer is already known, but that does not preclude the battle, which has raged throughout our existence. The answer includes the whole panorama of the patterns of our eternal development, and encompasses the eternal biography of each one of us. More recently it focuses on the political and cultural balances and counterbalances of human history.

Heavenly Father’s intent is that the maximum number of his children who are born into this world will receive the blessings of the gospel while they live here. It has to do with sealing powers that guarantee that the earth will not be wasted at his coming.

The righteous include the greatest of our Father’s children— the noble and great ones like Abraham, Joseph Smith, and others like George Washington. A partial list is given in D&C 138:38-56.

The people on Satan’s side are not slouches either. Among them are Cain, who was “Perdition” before he was born (Moses 5:22-25), and the leaders in Jerusalem who took it upon themselves to kill the Savior and sought to destroy his Kingdom.

There were others of the same ilk who came shortly thereafter, who infiltrated the Church so they could destroy it from within. Jude warned against such people, suggesting that they were in league with “the angels that kept not their first estate” (Jude 1:3-6).

There have always been people like that whose aim is to thwart the purposes of God. If Laban was a practitioner of the kind of pagan rites Ezekiel described, then he and those associated with him were engaged in covert activities designed to supplant the worship of Jehovah. The fruit of their intrigues would soon bring about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the captivity of the whole Jewish nation. Lehi’s duty was not only to save his own family and establish a nation in the new world but also to preserve the worship of Jehovah as it had been practiced in the Jerusalem Temple services. This was not a trifling matter, and God’s assurance, “It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief,” is apparently rooted in a much greater and more far-reaching concept than only the thousand-year history of the Nephite people.

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1 Nephi 4:8-9 

9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

When Nephi found Laban drunk and lying by the side of the road, in the gutter, the first thing he tells us is that he removed the sword from its sheath and examined it. That is just what one would expect a boy to do. It was an extraordinary ceremonial sword— designed for beauty rather than for the rigors of war. The hilt was pure gold, but it was the blade that impressed the boy the most—“ I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.”

Nephi’s describing the blade that way may tell us more about Laban, and about Laban’s relationship with Lehi, than any other information we have.

When Nephi was older, he became an accomplished metal worker, but at this time he was “exceedingly young” (1 Nephi 2:16)—probably only 13 or 14 years old.{1} That is old enough for a boy to be well acquainted with the weapons used by military personnel in a garrison city, but a bit young to have sufficient metallurgy skills to be able to recognize “the most precious steel,” especially if such steel was rarely seen. It is more likely that his description of the sword came not from his knowledge of steel but rather from his prior knowledge of the sword itself. If the sword was an ancient ceremonial sword, it was also a most precious family heirloom, and if Nephi were a member of the family, the boy would probably have been more aware of that sword than he was of any other item in the treasury. Now, our question is: In 600 B.C., what was “the most precious steel”?

The Iron Age is usually considered to be from about 1000 to 500 B.C.—that is, from about the time of King David’s reign to a hundred years after Lehi left Jerusalem. There is archaeological evidence of iron before 1000 B.C., but it was not until then that the Greeks started to use it for their weapons. After that, iron weapons and iron tools became more common.

The advantage of iron over bronze was that an iron blade was almost unbreakable. However, ancient smelting techniques could only produce wrought iron, which was very strong but not hard enough for a sword to hold a sharp edge. It was not until just after 670 B.C. that Egyptians learned how to use the process of case-hardening to improve the edges of their tools and weapons. Seventy years is long enough for the Egyptians to have shared either the technology or the advanced weapons with their Jewish allies.

Case hardening is a way of working carbon into the surface of the iron by placing the blade in a sealed jar along with some material containing carbon, usually animal hide or bone, and keeping it red hot until the bone or hide became carbon. During this process a small quantity of the carbon gases infused into the surface of the hot iron, in effect transforming that surface into steel. After the appropriate time the iron was quenched to cool it. The result was a weapon with a high-carbon surface that would keep a sharp edge, with an interior that was still strong iron.

Given the military alliance that Judah had with Egypt, we can be sure that the typical sword for a Jewish military commander would have been made of case-hardened Egyptian steel. But we can also be safe in assuming that such swords had become rather common among the Jewish military. Swords made this way were excellent fighting weapons, but they were not “the most precious steel.”

The famous, beautifully patterned Damascus steel, which, because of its name, is often associated with the ancient world, was not invented until about the ninth century A.D., just before the beginning of the Crusades. So Damascus steel could not have been what Nephi was talking about.

It is unlikely that Nephi would have described a case-hardened blade made in Egypt as “the most precious steel,” when in fact it was not. The most precious steel literally fell from the heavens, and was considered to have been a gift from the gods.

Such steel has a high nickel content and comes to the earth as a meteorite. Because of its scarcity, origin, and extraordinary quality, steel made from meteorites was reserved for implements whose purpose was sacred—either ornamental or ceremonial. A full-size sword blade made of such exceedingly rare material would certainly have been described as “the most precious steel,” and its hilt, most appropriately, would have been made of pure gold.

Throughout the Book of Mormon, from the time that Nephi obtained it, the sword of Laban had a special place in Nephite history. It was part of the royal regalia of the kings, and was occasionally wielded by them in battle—perhaps in somewhat the same way that the Ark of the Covenant was carried with the ancient Israelites when they went to battle (2 Nephi 5:14, Jacob 1:10, Words of Mormon 1:13). The sword was prized among the most sacred regalia of the Nephite people (Mosiah 1:15-16).

The sword was kept by the prophets after the Savior visited America. Moroni kept it with himself after his father was killed. Much later, when Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon, the Lord promised him that the Three Witnesses could see the plates and other sacred things. He mentioned the Urim and Thummim, the breastplate, the Liahona, and the sword of Laban (D&C 17:1). That promise was fulfilled.

David Whitmer recalled that when Moroni came to the Three Witnesses, the angel also showed them “a table with many records or plates upon it, besides the plates of the Book of Mormon, also the sword of Laban, the directors (i.e., the ball which Lehi had) and the interpreters.”{2}

Two months before his death in 1877, Brigham Young described that cave. He explained that his purpose for telling this story was “so that they [these facts] will not be forgotten and lost.” He wanted Latter-day Saints to know and remember what had happened to the plates of the Book of Mormon. The following paragraph is the account of Joseph’s returning the plates to Moroni as Brigham Young reported that Oliver Cowdery told it to him:

This is an incident in the life of Oliver Cowdery, but he did not take the liberty of telling such things in meeting as I take. I tell these things to you, and I have a motive for doing so. I want to carry them to the ears of my brethren and sisters, and to the children also, that they may grow to an understanding of some things that seem to be entirely hidden from the human family. Oliver Cowdery went with the Prophet Joseph when he deposited these plates. Joseph did not translate all of the plates; there was a portion of them sealed, which you can learn from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. When Joseph got the plates, the angel instructed him to carry them back to the hill Cumorah, which he did. Oliver says that when Joseph and Oliver went there, the hill opened, and they walked into a cave, in which there was a large and spacious room. He says he did not think, at the time, whether they had the light of the sun or artificial light; but that it was just as light as day. They laid the plates on a table; it was a large table that stood in the room. Under this table there was a pile of plates as much as two feet high, and there were altogether in this room more plates than probably many wagon loads; they were piled up in the corners and along the walls. The first time they went there the sword of Laban hung upon the wall; but when they went again it had been taken down and laid upon the table across the gold plates; it was unsheathed, and on it was written these words: “This sword will never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Christ.” I tell you this as coming not only from Oliver Cowdery, but others who were familiar with it, and who understood it.{3}

It seems clear from its history that the sword of Laban had significance far beyond its being a beautifully crafted work of art. Ownership of the sword apparently signified overriding kingship and priesthood authority.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the sword did not became that sacred all of a sudden, at the time Nephi first acquired it. The plates contained records that went back beyond the time of Joseph and his great-grandfather Abraham, and “before the days of Abraham” (Helaman 8:18-20). The sword may have done also. It may also have been sacred to Joseph’s most ancient forefathers. Nephi had been promised by the Lord that he would be a ruler and a teacher (king and priest) to his people. It may be that part of the fulfillment of the promise was when Nephi obtained the symbols of kingship and priesthood that characterized one who held that authority—the regalia of the ancient kings and priests—the sword and clothing that Laban had worn and profaned that night.
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FOOTNOTES

{1} For the question of Nephi’s age, see my comment on 1 Nephi 1:4, reign of Zedekiah .

{2} Martin Harris saw the same things. Cannon in Nibley, LDS Stories, 96; Jensen, Biographical Encyclopedia, 1:266, 275, 270.

{3} Oliver Cowdery described this experience to at least two people: The one quoted is Brigham Young (Journal of Discourses, 19:38-39); the other is David Whitmer in Stevenson, Reminiscences, 14-15.

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1 Nephi 4:6-8

6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.
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.

What was Laban doing that night, dressed in the sacred clothing (probably of his kingship and priesthood) and carrying the royal regalia of the house of Manasseh? Nephi may have known or surmised when he said to Zoram that they must carry the plates to “my elder brethren,” and Zoram supposed he spoke “of the brethren of the church”(1 Nephi 4:24-25). The members of Laban’s “church” were “the elders of the Jews” (1 Nephi 4:26-27), probably those same apostates whom Ezekiel called the “ancients of the house of Israel.”

Ezekiel was in Mesopotamia, but had a vision about what was happening back home (Ezekiel 8:1-18).. In his report of his vision, he condemns the “ancients of the house of Israel (v. 11-12), and later refers more specifically to the “house of Judah.” (v. 17) We may read the “ancients of the house of Israel” to include men from tribes other than just Judah. If the leaders of the house of Manasseh were one of those tribes, then Laban may have been among those leaders Ezekiel was condemning for worshiping pagan deities in Jehovah’s Temple.

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