Comparable to the Bible: Lamentations

When I started the previous post, I wanted to write this one, but found it impossible to pass over Smith's terrible exposition without comment.  What I wanted to do is compare (or more, contrast, since they are nothing alike) the attitudes of prophets during the time of Zedekiah, the final king of Jerusalem.

According to the Book of Mormon, Lehi was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem during Zedekiah's reign and first began to prophesy during that time, as reflected by the verses below:

And he read, saying: Wo, wo, unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations!  Yea, and many things did my father read concerning Jerusalem--that it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon.  And it came to pass that when my father had read and seen many great and marvelous things, he did exclaim many things unto the Lord; such as: Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty!  Thy throne is high in the heavens, and thy power, and goodness, and mercy are over all the inhabitants of the earth; and, because thou art merciful, thou wilt not suffer those who come unto thee that they shall perish!  And after this manner was the language of my father in the praising of his God; for his soul did rejoice, and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him.

There are a few things I don't want to get distracted by here.  The first is that woe has been misspelled, even though it is an exceptionally simple word.  The second is the repetitive and jarring reminders that we are lacking crucial details here that Smith simply couldn't remember when he rewrote this section (the most logical explanation, unfortunately).  What I do want to focus on is Lehi's reaction here.

Here he is, a Jew.  He has lived his entire life in Jerusalem.  He's raised his family there.  Probably, as a boy or a young man he saw it restored to glory under Josiah (the last good king).  Now he watches as moral decay takes over under wicked king after wicked king.  He's seen the city sacked three times by two different foreign powers (Egypt after the death of Josiah and Babylon twice).  Still, the city survives and the Jews bravely try to carry on.  Then, in a dream, he receives a book from an angel informing him that his home city will be destroyed, most of his neighbors will die violent deaths, and the rest will be taken as prisoners of war to a far away land, never to see their homeland again.  What is his reaction to this news?

Well...he shouts praises to God and rejoices wholeheartedly?  I'm sorry, but that's how the passage reads.  I'm sure this is not how it was meant to read and that there were other revelations that softened the blow--and that it was to these Lehi responded with praise and joy.  But the abridgment skips over those completely.  We can only assume they were there.  All we know for sure is that Lehi is told his hometown, the pride of Israel and the place where God set His name and His house, is to be destroyed along with its inhabitants...and that Lehi rejoices and praises God.

Just thinking about it from a human perspective it's difficult to believe that anyone could be happy having just heard such terrible news.  I know I would not be filled with joy and praise God upon learning that Colorado Springs was to be nuked and the survivors carted off to POW camps in North Korea.

But maybe that's the point.  One might argue that the Book of Mormon is trying to teach us to look beyond the merely human perspective, where such things might grieve us, and--by looking on a higher level--praise God and rejoice in Him when these things happen.  After all, the Bible does say to rejoice and praise God for everything?

While this may sound really spiritual, it isn't actually what the Bible says.  Philippians 4:4 says we're to always rejoice in God and verse 6 says we should give Him thanks with all of our prayers, and should pray about everything.  Neither of these imply that we have to be cheerful and grateful for everything God sends our way.

Or does it?  The only way I can think of to resolve the question is to search the scriptures and look at examples of people who faced similar circumstances.  It really does not take long to find a suitable candidate.  Jeremiah lived and ministered during the reign of Zedekiah and was, therefore, (supposedly) a contemporary of Lehi.  Like Lehi, he received many prophecies about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and proclaimed them to the people, often at his own peril.  I reread parts of Jeremiah today, and I don't remember any talking about how happy these prophesies made him or how much he praised God and was filled with joy after receiving them.  What did Jeremiah do instead?  He wrote a book called Lamentations.  As the title implies, its about as cheery as a dirge.  While the book acknowledges that God is right and justified in the actions He's taken, it is wholehearted in bemoaning Jerusalem's fate.  It is only after the turn in Lamentations 3:22 that there is any praise, and this is in reflecting that the destruction is not absolute and that God has promised to bring His people back again.  Still, the book remains dismal even thereafter.  Jeremiah's reaction to the prophesies he'd received of Jerusalem's fate (and his later witness of the same) is evident: the prophet mourned.

But perhaps this is because he was a man and had the wrong perspective.  After all, no one is perfect, except the one man the Bible says was without sin: Jesus.  He also had a prophesy of Jerusalem's destruction:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

We do not have as much evidence of how this impacted His mood, but there is no happiness in the way those words are delivered.  Indeed, from looking around the Bible, it is clear that bringing disaster on His people is something God does not relish.  He does not seem to expect us to relish it either.

Now, perhaps this is not the intent of the passage.  Perhaps there is something truly vital missing which would account for Lehi's joyful reaction.  Whether there is or isn't, it remains that when disaster strikes--even if it is just punishment from God--we are free to weep (we are commanded to weep with those who weep, truth be told--Romans 12:15).  If the author of the Book of Mormon simply did not see that this would have been Lehi's natural reaction and sufficiently account for it in the abridgment, which I see as the most likely explanation, I see it as another example of how their work does not compare with the Bible.