The Book of Mormon

Jacob 6:9

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~544–420 BC

1830 Edition

Know ye not that if ye will do these things, that the power of the redemption and the resurrection which is in Christ, will bring you to stand with shame and awful guilt before the bar of God, and according to the power of justice? for justice cannot be denied.

Influences

Acts 17:18 (KJV)
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
Romans 8:39 (KJV)
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Changes

Know ye not that if ye will do these things, that the power of the redemption and the resurrection, which is in Christ, will bring you to stand with shame and awful guilt before the bar of God, and according to the power of justice? for justice cannot be denied.

Simple English

If you do these things, Christ’s power to save and bring people back to life will make you stand before God. You will feel shame and terrible guilt. God’s justice cannot be stopped.

Paraphrase

Don’t you know that if you do these things, Christ’s power to redeem and resurrect will force you to stand before God—ashamed, crushed by guilt, facing the full weight of justice? Justice can’t be ignored.

Notes

6:1-13

In Jacob chapter 5 and 6, an allegory of the tame and wild olive trees is attributed to an ancient prophet named Zenos, who supposedly lived before Lehi’s journey to the New World. The allegory, however, closely mirrors material from multiple biblical sources: Apostle Paul’s discussion of olive trees in Romans 11:17–24, Jesus’ parable of the unfruitful fig tree in Luke 13:6–9, and imagery from Isaiah 5:1–7 concerning a vineyard. In the Book of Mormon, these sources are expanded into an allegory spanning over six pages. As Jerald and Sandra Tanner note, “It is probably the most repetitious part of the Book of Mormon. It gives the impression that the author is deliberately trying to use up as much space as possible. It is very hard to resist the idea that it is merely filler material." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 165.

Similarly, Wesley P. Walters observes, “For a grand finale of his work, however, he returned to this olive tree illustration [given by Apostle Paul] and worked it into a mind-boggling allegory, combining it with Jesus' parable about the unfruitful fig tree (Lk. 13:6–8) and working in the words from Isaiah 5:1–5 about God's disappointment with his grape vineyard. The result is a staggering conglomeration that would perplex a horticulturalist and bewilder an exegete” -Wesley P. Walters, "The Use of the Old Testament in the Book of Mormon," (Master's thesis, St. Louis: Covenant Theological Seminary, April 1981), pp. 152-153.