“Sake”

Alan C. Miner

John Welch notes that in several passages in the Sermon at the Temple, subtle changes bring the divine influence more explicitly to the surface. One suffers, not just "for righteousness sake," but "for Jesus' name's sake" (3 Nephi 12:10). [John W. Welch, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount, F.A.R.M.S., p. 102 ]

“Blessed Are All They Who Are Persecuted”

According to John Welch, there's an interesting thing you should know a little about. . . . In Matthew it says for whosever shall suffer persecution and so on for righteousness's sake shall be blessed. Now as people have tried to translate the Sermon on the Mount in Greek back into the Aramaic that Jesus might have spoken, that [phrase in Matthew] is a very difficult expression to put back into Aramaic. A very strong and cogent argument has been made that Jesus didn't say that we should suffer for righteousness's sake, but that in Aramaic that most likely would have been "whosoever will suffer for the Righteous One's sake." In other words you're suffering for whom? For God. He is the Righteous One. The Book of Mormon is consistent with that where it says that you will suffer for "my name's sake" (3 Nephi 12:10). It is the Lord that is behind that. [John W. Welch, "Sacrament Prayers, Implications of the Sermon at the Nephite Temple," in Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 4, pp. 150-151]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

References