Whoa, Jacob
Jacob is one of the most distinct personalities in scripture.
I would … all men would believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross and bear the shame of the world;
O that he would show you that he can pierce you, and with one glance of his eye he can smite you to the dust!
In Chapter 2 Jacob hits his guys for taking concubines and also for accumulating too much wealth differential. For me the strong implication is that the Nephites are an elite ruling a native population. If its just the Nephites, there just aren’t that many women. Concubines were lower-class wives, so especially there aren’t enough people to have developed strong class separations. It its just the Nephites we are looking at a few hundred people tops. Jacob’s segue into wealth- and gold-seeking fits the same pattern. You just don’t have the leisure for lots of people to hunt gold with just a small population. Jamestown tried that and they starved, even with overseas suppliers.
Here’s a less pleasant implication. It looks to me like Jacob is partly concerned about race-mixing. He talks about concubines hurting the “fair daughters” of the Nephites and segues into contrasting the Nephite behavior with the Lamanites who are morally better even though they have been “cursed” with a loss of ethnically distinctive features. The thing to remember is that our society is probably the least racist in history; we want the Book of Mormon to be an authentic ancient document but we don’t want it to have some of the disquieting attitudes that the ancients had.
John Mansfield
April 3, 2024
Monday night before we read the first chapter together, I said, “This book has a mood. When we’re done reading it, tell me what the mood is.”
Jacob G.
April 3, 2024
I wonder if Sherem was not the offspring of a native nth wife that was less favored, and that was the reason for the chip on his shoulder, and also how he knew their language and scripture.