1 Nephi 4

Nephi obtains the sword of Laban

I'm cruising through these first few chapters, but I hope to reach a steady pace of a chapter per day with one or two observations of my own.  As my goal takes shape, I think that I will make "small plates" kinds of comments first, and if I have time and space, I will delve into some "large plates" things.  What I mean by that is that I will try to write first about spiritual matters, or things that stand out to me as doctrine and principles of the Gospel, and then if time allows, I might make a side note or two about other things that I found interesting or worth exploring.  If anyone who is reading the Book of Mormon along with me wants to chime in with comments, ideas, observations, corrections, suggestions, or anything else (within reason), that would be most welcome.

In 1 Nephi 4 there is a perplexing account of Nephi's decision to kill Laban.  It seems to me that by this time Nephi was becoming much more advanced in his faith, or at least his faith in Jesus Christ was becoming much stronger.  It is not typical, at least in my experience, for the Spirit to constrain a person to do something that directly opposes commandments that God has given previously.  This is to say that only in rare circumstances does the Lord give commandments such as that which was given to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  Nephi had reached a level in his faith where he was being lead by the Spirit, no knowing beforehand the things which he should do (v. 6), as had Abraham, but when the Spirit constrained him to kill Laban, Nephi records that he "shrunk" and did not want to slay him.  The Spirit urged him forward again, and again, providing not only promptings, but strong reasons in support of the action.  After much hesitation, and after communing with the Spirit, Nephi followed through and was obedient.

As I mentioned, this does not seem to me to be a typical scenario, but Nephi had come to the edge of his faith, to the edge of the light, until he could see no further, and only at the edge of the light could the Spirit guide him through to the other side.  Although God doesn't normally ask anyone to do the kind of thing that Nephi was asked to do at this time (the example of David and Goliath comes to mind as another exception), it seems to be true for all of us that the Lord leads us to the edge of our faith, and in order to grow in our faith in Christ, we trust God and take another step toward the unseen light ahead. (See Elder Packer's The Candle of the Lord)  It occurred to me that perhaps this is what led Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit (mind you, these are just my speculations).  In any case, Nephi was obedient to the voice of the Lord, and blessings followed from his obedience.

I was  curious about Nephi's interest in the sword of Laban.  He wrote in detail about the sword, the pure gold, the workmanship, the hilt, the blade, and so forth.  I'm sure that someone has already written oodles about metals in the Book of Mormon.

Even though I read the chapters and make my own comments first, I noticed that Dr. Peterson addressed the same topic, more eloquently of course, in his post on 1 Nephi 4.  He pretty much wrote what I meant to write.  Lol.