Nephi’s Gethsemane: Seventeen Comparisons from the Literary Record - a podcast by PDF feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Abstract: This note explores a literary comparison between Nephi’s confronting of Laban and shrinking from the act of shedding blood, to Jesus’s experience in the Garden of Gethsemane of shrinking from the act of shedding blood. Comparing these two stories suggests that we can profitably read Nephi’s experience with Laban as Nephi’s personal Gethsemane.





Everyone faces their own moment of truth. That fateful moment when one’s life hangs on the thread of decision, an awful decision of the most serious magnitude, a decision that could affect the eternal life of the individual and the salvation of a multitude of souls.

Nephi stood at the anguished crossroad of decision entirely unforeseen, unbeckoned, undesired. If the tormenting possibilities momentarily distorted his view, the darkness of that horrific night covered any signs in the merciful depths of blackness. At his feet lay his personal Goliath,1 the man who had slandered his brother, stolen the family wealth, and mercilessly sought his life — the infamous Laban. And in his heart the shocking impressions from the spirit reverberated, “Slay him.”2

[Page 2]Nephi was no bloodthirsty warrior. Though prone to anger at times because of the awful dilemmas he faced with his older brothers (see 2 Nephi 4:16–35); and even though Laban had sought to violate Nephi’s life with various egregious acts and words, Nephi did not delight in the shedding of blood, as evidenced by his anguished response to the Lord. He pled that the constraining impressions flee: “never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him” (1 Nephi 4:10). The voice of the spirit persisted, urging Nephi to the act of bloodshed, using reasoning such as “It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief” (1 Nephi 4:13).

What is striking about this episode are the potential comparisons between Nephi’s most anguished moment and that of Jesus Christ.3 The Doctrine and Covenants preserves a heart-wrenching first person account from God Himself about His experience in the garden: “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit — and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink — ” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:18, emphasis added).

I find compelling that both Nephi and Jesus shrank at the need to shed blood (the obvious and gargantuan difference being, of course, that Christ would have His own blood shed, both by bleeding at every pore in Gethsemane and being slain on the cross, while Nephi would shed Laban’s blood).

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