Talk:Alma 34:1-35:14

Verse 34:9

It is interesting that verse 9 uses the word expedient instead of necessary. To me expedient feels more like saying "it was practical." It is softer than the word necessary. The Webster's 1828 makes me think that the meaning of expedient at the time was the same as today. I didn't write anything up though on the commentary page because, though interesting, I wasn't really sure what to make of it. I interpret expedient as a softer than necessary but Amulek's point doesn't seem to aim at soft. From the surrounding verse it seems he actually means something like necessary. --Matthew Faulconer 04:51, 23 Jan 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I can't believe I'd never looked up the word "expedient" before. You have revealed to me my own ignorance, Matthew. I had always misunderstood the word, and now I'm rethinking a lot of different passages. --Joe Spencer 16:15, 23 Jan 2007 (UTC)

Verse 34:13

Hi all,

Several people have changed the content that now looks like this.

In verse 13 Amulek is saying that under the Law of Moses there must be "an eye for an eye" for there to be justice. But when Christ dies for all of our sins, we do not have to rely on the Law of Moses, because we have the atonement and the mercy of God.

I read these verses in a different way. I would suggest the following revision to the exegesis.

In verse 13 Amulek says that after the great and last sacrifice there should be a stop to the shedding of blood. As verse 14 explains, this great and last sacrifice is the sacrifice of Christ, the Son of God. Why is it that with this last sacrifice there comes a stop to the shedding of blood? In this context, the shedding of blood refers to blood sacrifices required in the law of Moses. As we see in the Book of Mormon, these sacrifices stop after Christ's death.

This is a pretty big change, though, so I wanted to give people a chance to comment on it before making this change. Comments anyone?

--Matthew Faulconer 15:54, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

I agree that this verse does refer to animal sacrifices. However, in verse 12, there is an allusion to the "eye for an eye" penalty, so I'm not sure that was is said here is entirely off-base either. Eric 16:49, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

I like the change, but I think an additional phrase or question should be added suggesting the possible meta-meaning of "stop to the shedding of blood." Recent posts have me thinking about grace and Christ as the Prince of peace--appreciating the atonement should lead to an end of violence. The "eye for an eye" phraseology (and v. 12 as Eric pointed out) conjures a different image for "shedding of blood" than just animal sacrifice, an image that suggests Christ's "great and last sacrifice" should lead to the end of human bloodshed (not only in the narrow blood atonement sense but perhaps all human violence), not just animal sacrifice. I'm not articulating this very well, hopefully someone else can improve this into a separate point on the commentary. --RobertC 17:19, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

P.S. Eric posted just before I tried to post, and I couldn't recover my original post. Not sure if there's a way to fix this 'bug' or not, but thought I'd mention it before I forget to.

I had a similar problem. I was editing a post and didn't finish it when I decided to go to bed. The next morning I finished it and posted. I didn't get an error but my post never showed up anywhere in the recent changes. Then I noticed that someone else had edited the same page in the meantime. Does this sound like it is the same problem you had? In my view this is a bug. The site should at least say that due to a conflict my post wasn't posted. Anyway, in my case I was able to recover my post by clicking back back back. I was using IE at the time.--Matthew Faulconer 17:40, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

When I clicked "save page" it gave me a message that someone had edited the page while I was writing. But when I clicked "back" I couldn't get to what I was writing. My browswer is Maxthon v. 1.3.3.--RobertC 18:19, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

This sounds like a different problem since you properly got an error but then couldn't recover what you wrote. What I don't know is whether your problem is a browser problem or a server problem. (For my problem I was in the haze of "last thing before going to bed" and "first thing after getting up in the morning." Given this, mine could easily have been a user error.) Anyway I think your problem needs to be tested to determine whether it is browser or server related. If you get around to testing it on your own in another browser let me know the results. Or, if you aren't able to, I'll try to test it at some point. I use firefox and ie. --Matthew Faulconer 18:38, 13 Sep 2005 (CEST)

I like the idea that a stop to the shedding of blood may have broader connotations. I had never understood verse 12 to be talking at all about the Law of Moses. I always thought about this as just talking about the demands of justice. Rereading it now I sort of see this other interpretation as well, though I am so used to my own that it still seems a bit foreign to me. So anyway, I don't have time now but sometime to work on it myself now but sometime I would really like to get back to this whole set of verses to work on it. In the short term I am going to take my comments above and add in something about broader connotations. Feel free to edit it and make the eye for an eye case stronger.--Matthew Faulconer 07:10, 14 Sep 2005 (CEST)

Verse 34:34

When I read verse 34 here I think that Amulek might be saying that by putting off repentance we become someone who doesn't repent. Amulek says "the same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life ... will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." In this reading if we are the type of person who doesn't repent now, then we will be the type of person who won't repent later. However, this seems to gloss over the fact that Amulek believes there is something very significant that happens when someone dies. In verse 35 he says that at this time, if we haven't repented, the devil "doth seal you his." The word seal suggests, as earlier verses indicated, that there is no possibility of change after that. Of course we know that people can change (at least if they didn't have knowledge of the gospel) after they die. And for many of us who know people who did know about the gospel (at least they seemed to) but did not accept it, we also hope that they may still accept it in the next life. How then are we to make sense of Amulek's focus on the point of death and the end of "this life" as the crucial point for determining where we stand? --Matthew Faulconer 14:04, 10 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I think what's interesting is what verse 34 says and doesn't say: "...that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." Note that he doesn't say that the same spirit that possesses the body at death will possess that body afterward, but instead will have the power to possess the body. They aren't exactly the same thing. I'm not sure how well I can justify it by scripture (I guess that's why we have this site), although this verse might somewhat support this belief, but the way I look at things is that after death it becomes more difficult to change direction — difficult, not impossible. Maybe another way of looking at it is that the desires of our hearts won't change, but perhaps we'd respond to those desires differently once we don't have some of the obstacles posed by our bodies, brain chemistry and all sorts of other things. Obviously, something has to change at the time of death, or it wouldn't be such a big deal that we have bodies. --Eric 15:58, 10 Dec 2005 (UTC)