1 Nephi 4

Christlike Attributes

verse 1:

"he is mightier than all the earth" Green

verse 3:

"the Lord is able to deliver us" Blue

verse 6:

"I was led by the Spirit" Blue

verse 10:

"I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban." Red

verse 11:

"the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands." Red

verse 13:

"the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes." Red

verse 14:

"Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise." Blue

verse 31:

"also having received much strength of the Lord" Blue

Commentary


Verse 6 made me wonder, if the Spirit does something, is it a Christlike attribute? I talked to BJ about it and he pointed out that I would mark if Christ destroyed the wicked, so I should also mark when He leads the righteous, which He does through the Spirit. So I did.

I chose to make verse 11 red for the same reasoning that I used in 1 Nephi 3:29.

Verse 31 was another difficult decision. I've started to question my logic behind the color blue. Am I marking Christlike attributes that are "nice" and typically of how we view the NT Christ? Or am I marking the Christlike attributes that are "nice" that I can possibly emulate? Because, let's be honest, I can't give anyone strength. So if I'm going with the latter, verse 31 should be green instead of blue. I didn't have a decision, so I just marked it blue because it was a "good" attribute. But now that I think about it more, I realize that the majority of the red things I can't emulate, either. I can't deliver someone into someone else's hands to be destroyed. I can't destroy the wicked. So this is officially going with the former. Red for the stereotypically OT Christ and Blue for the NT Christ. And green for the things that are attributes but aren't "good" or "bad". Which is what I've been doing all along without really realizing it.

Lastly, the sudden lack of markings in this chapter surprised me. In the first 14 verses we have 7 markings. That's one every other verse. Which in general (all 4 chapters I've done) is pretty typical. But then it really gets into narrative of Nephi's encounter with Zoram and stops referring specifically to Christ. It's kind of surprising and kind of not that narrative has less focus on Christ. It'll be interesting to see how much more I learn this time around since I have a harder time focusing on the non-narrative scripture passages.

A few questions I have in general (that have nothing to do with the attributes of Christ):

1. Why in the world did Nephi cut off Laban's head and then take off his garments?  Wasn't there blood everywhere?  Wasn't Zoram even the least bit suspicious when "Laban" showed up with blood on his garments?  Or was that just something common enough to not be worthy of note to Zoram?  (Which, I admit if true, is rather disturbing to me.)
2. Why did Nephi take Zoram with him to meet his brothers?  In verse 36 it says, "Now we were desirous that he should tarry with us for this cause, that the Jews might not know concerning our flight into the wilderness, lest they should pursue us and destroy us."  Ok, that's fine.  But a) hasn't their estate been completely empty for a week or so?  Hasn't anyone noticed?  Were they that anti-social?  Was the society set up so that people often went weeks between social interactions?  Were there servants left behind that lied to anyone that came to visit?  But also, couldn't all of this have been avoided if "Laban" had just left Zoram at the treasury?  Why did he, verse 25, "[bid] him that he should follow [him]"? The only reason Zoram ever suspected it was Nephi that killed Laban is because he saw Nephi's brothers.  Had they just parted ways at the treasury, he wouldn't have had any clue and Nephi's family would still have been safe.

Anyway, nothing really testimony-shattering or -making, but things that have always made me shake my head a little at Nephi's reasoning when reading this chapter.