Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

20:13 – TB notes in his lecture that the Hebrew word used originally is “ratsach” which is more accurately translated as “murder,” meaning “unjust killing and only unjust killing… whether intentional or unintentional… Murder is a very good translation for the word ratsach, and the way the Western world of today things of Murder or manslaughter is exactly as this verse intends.” Of course there has to be a law against murder because it’s horrific and deprives a person of their life, there’s no way to undo that. And as far as I know, Jesus has said that murderers will have to suffer for their own sin, that of murder. Not saying that He can’t or didn’t atone for it because of course He would have had to, but because the sin of murder is so serious, He’s deemed it necessary for the murderer to experience that suffering. I could be wrong, but that’s just what I remember reading. TB goes on to ask what constituted unjust killing and therefore what constitutes just killing. He spent a lot o...

20:13 - This sixth word is the one I find the most interesting which is “Thou shalt not kill.” The interesting part isn’t that it’s prohibited, because of course it should be, but it’s application. The God of the Old Testament was brutal in taking life in war and for disobedience, so for killing to be forbidden begs the question, how do we follow this commandment while also living in this world? I was in the army, and a big part of that is learning how to kill in combat. The Book of Mormon is full of war and battle, and the constant mention of murder. It seems like taking the life of others is such a common issue for humanity for how absolutely horrific it is as a concept. If we consider that as spirit’s in the pre-mortal world, we waited for eons of time for our chance to come here to be born. And if this earth life truly was the most important part of our existence, then anything short of living a long, happy, healthy life full of love and laughter would be a tragedy. But this isn’...

20:12 – The fifth word is “Honour thy father and they mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee.” This one is tricky for me because, as I’ve mentioned here before, I don’t have good parents and “honouring” them has brought me nothing but heartache. I struggle with anything that says “your parents are good people, you are just making up this story for attention, it didn’t really happen,” because this is what I’ve been told my whole life, especially from church leaders. Even though that’s not what this commandment says specifically, that’s what I get from it, and I understand that I’m projecting, I’m working on it. After I had kids, I thought about this commandment as being for teenage boys who do stupid stuff to listen to their mothers so they wouldn’t die in accidents, that’s what made sense to me at the time. TB notes that a lot of this commandment is necessary for societal structure and stability saying, “part of the reason for this principl...

20:8-11 – There is a lot about this 4th word or “commandment” and to be honest, it’s overwhelming. TB mostly only talks about how the proper day of observance is Saturday, which I don’t care about, and the IM has a TON of stuff about it, but so much of it is about how bad the people are who go to the park or the beach or hiking or women who “do their cleaning and other housework.” I think at this point, people all have their own beliefs, and shouldn’t be condemned because they don’t share the church’s beliefs. I’m really pretty tired of the mindset that everyone who drinks alcohol or doesn’t go to my church or don’t keep the commandments the way that “I” think they should be kept are bad. My mom has a firm stance that if you go to church, you can do nothing wrong and if you don’t go to church you can do nothing right, so many people here in Utah have that stance and honestly, it’s exhausting and I’m over it. So instead of going on and on about how inapplicable the condemnation of “wome...

20:8-11 – The fourth word or “commandment” is “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Interestingly, TB’s almost entire lecture about this one is about which day of the week we are actually supposed to consider as the Sabbath. He notes that the Sabbath was always observed by Israel on Saturday because it was the 7th day of the week and it wasn’t until Constantine who changed it to be different than the Jews and to keep the kingdom of Rome more profitable, he arranged for God’s holy day to be aligned with the popular worship of the sun god on Sunday (apparently that’s where the name came from.” I personally don’t think that the observance of the Sabbath being on Sunday as opposed to Saturday matters that much. I’m not saying that church members should get to pick whatever day they want the sabbath to be on and then do that, I’m just saying, if the church sets Sunday to be God’s holy day, then I think that God will use that as the same obedience He did for Isreal. There is a lot w...

20:7 – The third word is from verse 7 which says, “Thou shalt not take then name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” I always had been taught that the only meaning of this statement was that you can’t say “oh my g*d,” and that’s it, that’ the only interpretation I was ever aware of. However, the IM and TB both teach that there is much more significance to it than that. To put some context on it, TB notes that in about 95% of the time where the word “God” or “Lord” appears in our Bibles, the original Hebrew version is his actual name Yehoveh. This would be like “don’t take the name of God in vain,” then have the whole rest of the book refer to this God as David or something. This sets a completely different context because my understanding of this would be like if it said “thou shalt not take the name David in vain,” and then the entire rest of the book calls God David. Anyway, the main teachings about taking God’s name ...

20:5-6 - There’s just a quick note that I want to make about verse 5-6 from the 2nd commandment we talked about yesterday that discusses “for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” First, let’s discuss the use of the word “jealous” here. We’ve talked about this extensively historically throughout the scriptures but let’s do it again since it’s been a while. The reason that the word usage here of “jealous” has always made me feel so uncomfortable is perfectly summed up by TB when he says, “that has always kind of bothered me because frankly when we think of a man or woman being jealous it’s a negative statement. IN some ways when we harbor the emotion of jealousy it reveals serious faults in us even if there might be reasonable cause for it.” I’m not a jealous person, and I agree that jealousy i...

20:3-6 - Even though there might be some disagreements with what actually constitutes the first and second “principle” or “word” or “commandment,” it’s pretty much universal what constitutes the second one, which is “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heave above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” There is an ancient reason why this concept was so far up on the list of statements but there is also a modern one because, as TB points out that this one “might be the principle most consistently violated by God’s people throughout the entirety of the Bible.” Why is that? TB suggests that is because human nature makes us a very visually oriented species and we use symbols to express ourselves and our beliefs and identities. TB suggests a few different reasons why this principle was included and the first was because “every known god form the time Mankind turned corrupt, right on up to the time ...

20:1-2 - Just to give a context for exactly how significant chapter 20 is, the IM has a whole section devoted to just this chapter and TB has 4 hour long lectures about it, so it is substantial. Yesterday we established the fact that chapter 20 doesn’t necessarily comprise 10 “commandments” but instead more like 10 “foundational principles.” This matters because verse 2 says, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This doesn’t sound much like a “commandment” to me but it sure does sound like a statement that can serve as a foundation that all other statements, commandments, beliefs, understandings, and behaviors can be built on. This is THE most important part of the whole thing, everything that God has been trying to do for the Hebrew people. TB makes a couple of important points here, first is that while our version says “I am the Lord thy God,” the Hebrew actually says, “I am Yehoveh your Elohim, noting, “It uses BOT...

The people of Israel have gotten themselves as ready as they can at this point of their experience, and while it seems like God was the one who said “you aren’t ready for this,” when God starts speaking, the people freak out and need some distance, but we’ll discuss that later. TB has a really long technical lecture about chapter 20 but I’m going to skip most of the because I don’t think it adds a ton to what I want to look at. One thing that I thought was really interesting was that he said that the chapter heading of almost any Bible says that this chapter is where God introduces the Ten Commandments. But the Greek was translated as “Decalogue” meaning 10 words. Additionally, TB notes, “not until later, in Exodus 34:28, is this speech of God to Israel (vs. 2-17 of Ex. 20) given a formal title; and this formal title, in Hebrew, is ‘eser dabar,’” which means in Hebrew 10 words. So what are the 10 words? Instead of meaning “commands” or “commandments,” TB notes that it is more like 10...

19:1-25 - It seems like the people of Israel are finally getting settled in their new place at the foot of a mountain called Sinai. Moses has his family back, has established a new social order with delegated authority, and Israel has won it’s first military campaign against their enemies. All in all, it sounds like a they were finally doing ok. It is during this break in trials that God introduces the idea that He is accessible to all people, not just Moses and Aaron. Initially, God tells Moses to tell the people, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” This sounds like a covenant to me, and it introduces a few new ideas to the people, that they are special, that God is protecting them person...