The Book of Mormon and Isaiah 5:20

Let me give you a disclaimer right up front. I’m going to pretty viciously attack the Book of Mormon and the ideas that it expresses. I think this is absolutely acceptable and necessary because the Book of Mormon is claiming to say things about God that I think are horribly wrong and will lead people wrongly. The Book of Mormon should never be believed or taught as saying anything authoritative about who God is. BUT!!!!! I want to do everything I can to never belittle a person. There are two reasons for this. First, every person is made in the image of God and is seen by God as valuable enough for his Son to die for. God loves and values every person. I want to do the same. Second, attacking a person while trying to show that their ideas are wrong is a logical fallacy called ad hominem, and is a weak, ineffective way to get to the truth. I only want to attack ideas and not people. If you read this and you believe the Book of Mormon, I think you shouldn’t. I love you with the love of Christ, but I believe you’re wrong.

Now, onto the point of this post!

I've been reading the Bible for 30 years, and I've been teaching the Bible for at least half of that. I have two masters degrees in Old Testament. I've studied biblical Hebrew and biblical Greek at an academic level. And for my PhD, I did a lot of study on a different false religion (Islam) that shares a shocking number of similarities in its origin story to Mormonism.

So, when I read the Book of Mormon, that’s trying so hard to be like the Bible, there are so many things that jump out at me as glaring, unmistakable examples that the book is a fabrication. Most often these examples are anachronisms (We have no examples of people from that time period talking that way. That kind of talk comes from a much, much later period.) Sometimes these examples are theological: things that God supposedly says or does or commands that clashes with everything I know about God from the Bible. I’ve been told by Mormons over and over again to just read the Book of Mormon, asking God for wisdom, and He will show me the truth. Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve done that, with the Bible as my guide, and the truth that I’ve discovered is that the Book of Mormon does not represent that God that I read about in the Old and New Testaments. 

The most glaring example of this kind of thing that I’ve come across so far in the Book of Mormon is the famous (at least to Mormons) story of Nephi killing Laban. Here's the story and why I think it's heretical, dangerous, abhorrent, and a clear indication that the Book of Mormon is false.

The Book of Mormon mimics the layout of the Bible by presenting different sections that I think we’re supposed to call books. The first book in the Book of Mormon is called First Nephi. In 1 Nephi, chapter 4, the title character, Nephi (who was supposedly a Jew living in Israel in the 600s BC) was told to go get some metal plates from a guy named Laban because these plates had the whole record of Israel written in them (1 Nephi 5:12). Nephi’s family needed to get these plates and their info before they fled from Israel and escaped the destruction that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was about to bring.

Nephi’s family tried to get the plates from Laban before, but he drove them away. So, late one night, the Holy Spirit told Nephi to mosey on over to Laban’s house, and when he got there he found Laban drunk and passed out in the street.

This is where the story takes a dark turn. I’m going to quote 1 Nephi 4:10-18 in full, so buckle up and be discerning.

10 And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him. 11 And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. 12 And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; 13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. 14 And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise. 15 Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law. 16 And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass. 17 And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments. 18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

As a lifelong Bible reader, this story is shocking in what it claims. It claims that the Holy Spirit is directing Nephi to murder a man. When I first read this story, Isaiah 5:20 came to mind: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! The Book of Mormon is clearly saying here that God commanded murder, when murder is sinful. It is calling the evil of murder good. 

Now, if you look up Mormon interpretations of it, you’re going to hear a lot of things that try to justify Nephi in killing Laban. I suspect that you’re going to find that most, if not all of them, fall flat when compared to what you know from the Bible. For example: one argument you might hear goes something like this: “It’s not murder, it’s a justified killing. God wanted to punish Laban for his sin, and since the government of that time was corrupt, Nephi’s only option was to kill Laban himself.” So, we should begin with the 6th commandment. Go ahead and say it with me, “Thou shalt not murder.” That’s our baseline. Individuals have no authority among the people of God to kill other individuals. Especially when they are passed-out drunk in front of their own house in the dead of night. Also, we have plenty of examples of God straight up killing people as judgement for their sinfulness. Some big, public examples we could point to are Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19), Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10), Korah and his crew (Numbers 16), Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5). Some of the less public examples are Er and Onan (Genesis 38), or Nabal (1 Samuel 25). God doesn’t need to use anyone to dish out judgement for him. He’s plenty powerful to do it on his own.

And it’s true that God has used the sinful actions of others to bring about his judgments, but the Book of Mormon is saying something else entirely here. It’s saying that the Holy Spirit commands one individual with no authority to kill another individual without trial, without defense…without consciousness! That is calling evil good.

Let me briefly give you one more comparison that Mormons will make with the story of Nephi. Often, justifiers of Nephi’s story will reach for Genesis 22 where God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Admittedly, this story has interpretive and moral difficulties. Why would God command Abraham to do something that God clearly states he hates later on, i.e. human sacrifice? (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 12:31, 18:10) That’s a difficult question and it does pose problems. However, the glaring difference between Abraham’s story and Nephi’s story is that Abraham DIDN’T kill Isaac and Nephi DID kill Laban. In the biblical story, God was testing Abraham’s faith, but prevented him from killing. In the unbiblical story, “God” told Nephi to kill Laban and rewarded Nephi for doing it. Again, the Book of Mormon is calling evil good. There’s no way around it.

And these are just a couple examples of arguments I’ve found in defense of Nephi killing Laban. There are numerous others. Charles Swift was a long-time Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, the premier Mormon university. In a 2019 article, Swift worked through many of the Mormon justifications for Nephi’s actions, but in the end he rejected all of them except one. Swift writes, “In my view, there is only one justification for what Nephi did: God commanded him to kill Laban.” (CLICK HERE for the article, p. 160) 

This is a striking admission. A Mormon scholar acknowledges that all the reasons we could come up with to explain away what Nephi did fall flat. At the end of the day, the only real reason we can point to is that “God” commanded it, so Nephi had to obey. The problem is that this command from “God” clearly and unequivocally contradicts his real commands from the Bible not to murder. Nephi’s interaction with the “Spirit” and his obedience to it have no precedent in the Bible. That leaves us with really only one thing to say about the story of Nephi killing Laban: it’s a fabrication masquerading as Scripture that must be whole-heartedly rejected as slander and falsehood targeting God.

I’ll say again what I said in my disclaimer above: the Book of Mormon is claiming to say things about God that I think are horribly wrong and will lead people wrongly. The Book of Mormon should never be believed or taught as saying anything authoritative about who God is. Friends, the Book of Mormon teaches us to view God in a way that flatly contradicts how God has revealed himself in his true Word, the Bible. If you read the Book of Mormon, keep that in mind and stay discerning.