The Book of Mormon

Helaman 13:33

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~6 BC

1830 Edition

O that I had repented, and had not killed the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out; yea, in that day shall ye say, O that we had remembered the Lord our God, in the day that he gave us our riches, and then they would not have become slippery, that we should lose them; for behold, our riches are gone from us.

Influences

Matthew 23:31 (KJV)
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
John 16:23 (KJV)
And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

Changes

O that I had repented, and had not killed the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out;. yYea, in that day ye shall ye say,: O that we had remembered the Lord our God, in the day that he gave us our riches, and then they would not have become slippery, that we should lose them; for behold, our riches are gone from us.

Simple English

'’I wish I had changed! I wish I had not killed the prophets. I wish I had not thrown stones at them and thrown them out.’ On that day you will say: ‘I wish we had remembered the Lord our God when he gave us our riches. Then they would not have become slippery. We would not have lost them. Our riches are gone from us.’'

Paraphrase

'’If only I’d turned back to God! If only I hadn’t killed the prophets, stoned them, driven them out! If only we’d remembered the Lord our God when he gave us our wealth—then it wouldn’t have become slippery, and we wouldn’t have lost it. Our wealth is gone.''

Notes

13:31-35

The phrase, "we have hid up our treasures, and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land." seems reminiscent of 1800s treasure hunting and Masonry. See Helaman 13:18 as well.

In December of 1825 the Wayne Sentinel, printed in Palmyra, NY, printed the following story: "WONDERFUL DISCOVERY-A few days since was discovered in this town [Albion], by help of a mineral stone, which becomes transparent when placed in a hat and the light excluded by the face of him who looks into it, provided he is fortune's favorite, a monstrous POTASH KETTLE in the bowels of Mother Earth, filled with the purest bullion. Some attempts have been made to dig it up, but without success. His Satanic Majesty, or some other unseen agent, appears to keep it under marching orders, for no sooner is it dug onto in one place, than it moves off like 'false delusive hope' only to re-appear in some remote place. But its pursuers are now sanguine of success. They have entrenched the kettle all around, and driven a steel ramrod into the ground immediately over it, to break the enchantment. Nothing now remains but to raise its ponderous weight and establish a mint that it may be coined into federal money. Good news indeed for these hard times..." -Wayne Sentinel, Dec. 27, 1825, ass quoted in The Creation of the Book of Mormon: A Historical Inquiry, by LaMar Petersen, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Freethinker Press, 2000), p. 28.

Martin Harris gave the following account of the Smiths and the money diggers: "Mr. Stowell was at this time at old Mr. Smith's, digging for money. It was reported by these money-diggers, that they had found boxes, but before they could secure them, they would sink into the earth. A candid old Presbyterian told me, that on the Susquehannah flats he dug down to an iron chest, that he scraped the dirt off with his shovel, but had nothing with him to open the chest; then he went away to get help, and when they came to it, it moved away two or three rods into the earth, and they could not get it." -Joel Tiffany, "Interview with Martin Harris," Tiffany's Monthly, vol. 5, no. 4 (Aug. 1859): p. 165.