Jacob finally begins the first of his two condemnations. He will deal first with pride through wealth, and secondly with "whoredoms" which Jacob sees in the acquisition of multiple wives. These are not two randomly selected elements, but both are part and parcel of the same condemnation. As we will examine, it is the acquisition of wealth that will lead directly to the "whoredoms."
Economics: Modern readers can easily make a mistake in reading these two verses. We may suppose that the finding of the precious ores is the very thing that has made them wealthy. While it is certainly related, it is not the possession of the precious ores that Jacob complains about, but rather the "costliness of your apparel." In order to understand why the "costliness of your apparel" is the problem rather than obtaining gold and silver, we need to understand more of the economics of the New World.
As a first step, we need to understand the value of gold and silver to the Mesoamericans. Perhaps most intriguing is the word for both gold and silver in the language of the Aztecs: teocuitlatl "god excrement" (both Molina and Simeon agree on the basic meaning. There are extensions in Simeon that appear to give regnal value to gold, but since one of these uses the Spanish word corona "crown" all such references are suspect as later alterations of the value system through European contact). To a people like the Aztecs who used night-soil as a fertilizer, certainly there is some value to excrement that is much greater than for many a modern society. However, the very fact that there is a collective label for the two metals suggests that neither was of sufficient importance to warrant a specific name (much as many males would assume that "brown" and "purple" are sufficient, while their wives insist upon further distinctions into "taupe" and "mauve").
Mesoamerica was no a money economy, it was a barter economy. The closest thing to a universally accepted token of exchange was cacao beans. For anything else, the value of something depended entirely upon whether or not someone else wanted it. In this context, it is interesting to examine the Codex Mendoza, a tribute book for the Mexica (commonly called Aztecs) empire. The price of Mexica conquest over a city or village was an annual tribute. The types of items recorded in the tribute book show the types of goods valued by the empire. Most common are blankets are warrior uniforms and shields. Other items might include some foodstuffs, and large wooden beams. Incense was required as tribute. In most cases, the tribute is processed goods of a fairly pragmatic nature.
To be sure, there are some inclusions of what might be termed luxury items - jade beads and bars of gold. However, since the Codex Mendoza was created after the conquest, it is not absolutely clear whether or not the gold was included for the Spaniards or for the Mexica. In any case, the emphasis of the tribute is on things other than gold, and the gold occurs in bars much like the large wooden beams appear as raw materials. The wood and the gold are raw materials to be worked later, not items of manufacture.
Two exceptions to this occur for a list of several pueblos on plate 98 where a worked head band of gold and a breastplate of gold are listed ("Codex Mendoza" In: Antiguedades de Mexico. Secretaria de Hacienda y Credito Publico. 1964. 1:100). This worked form of gold fits better into the categories of worked goods that fit the majority of the tribute items, and I suspect it is more representative of the types of tribute that would have been required prior to the conquest.
All of this simply points to a lesser value for gold and silver among the Mesoamericans than among the Europeans. The Lehites would have brought a tradition of value for gold and silver from the Old World. The question is whether the Mesoamerican or the Old World value for gold and silver is driving Jacob's discourse.
I suggest that it must be the New World's relative value of the metals rather than the Old World intrinsic value. In the first place, Jacob notes in verse 12 that these ores are "abundant." Economic value is usually associated with scarcity. Consider the joke about the man who receives special permission to take something of value with him into the next life. As he approaches Peter at the Gates, Peter notices a suitcase, and asks the man what is in it. The man proudly announces that he had special permission to bring it, and opens the suitcase to show off bars of gold. Peter then asks him why he wanted to bring paving bricks. In much the same concept, the ease of finding the ores suggests again that the metal does not have an intrinsic value.
If we remember that part of the value in the Old World is as a medium of measurement for the value of a monetary economy, which was absent in the New World, we understand a little more of the nature of gold and silver in the New World. They were abundant ores, and as something relatively abundant, they held no intrinsic value. This may be contrasted with jade, which in addition to an esthetic attraction, appears to have had a religious significance, and certainly an intrinsic value greater than either gold or silver for the Mesoamerican cultures.
We should also note that while Jacob is going to chastise the men, he does not chastise them for looking for gold and silver. What he says is: "that many of you have begun to search for gold, and for silver, and for all manner of precious ores, in the which this land, which is a land of promise unto you and to your seed, doth abound most plentifully." This appears to indicate that the presence of the gold and silver are simply part of the land of promise.
It is the next phrase that is the most important. Jacob notes that after the search for gold and silver "…the hand of providence hath smiled upon you most pleasingly, that you have obtained many riches." The finding of the ore leads to "many riches." So far, even the "many riches" are part of "the hand of providence" smiling on them. The first very point that Jacob makes is that the riches are not in and of themselves bad.
We now must answer the question of how the discovery of the relatively unvalued ore has been transformed into "many riches." Of course we are once again in speculative territory, but understanding the nature of Mesoamerican economies in general can supply some important information. The Nephites have found ore that is abundant. Nephi has brought with him a knowledge of metal working. Thus the Nephite village perhaps has an advantage over other villages in their ability to extract the metals from the ore.
In addition to refining the metals, Nephi also understands something of metal working, having made tools to build a boat (1 Nephi 17:9-11). Certainly once in the New World, Nephi again demonstrated both the ability to extract and work metal with the creation of the two sets of plates. Thus Nephi brings with him the ability to both extract the metal from its naturally occurring state, and to work that metal into something that is useful. We may therefore presume, without much of a leap of imagination, that the Nephites refined their gold and silver, and then made something from the metals. In a labor intensive society, finished goods are of much greater value than raw materials, and so it is most likely that the Nephites went as far as the creation of some type of object from the gold and silver they refined.
With artisans in the Nephite colony making metal goods, does that make them wealthy? No. As Jacob will specifically note, wealth occurs only when there is a relative difference in the accumulation of valued goods. Since the Nephites had fairly easy access to the raw materials, and presumably each artisan would create more objects that could be used (or worn, in the case of objects of adornment) it is also quite likely that objects of gold and silver would be very common among the Nephites, and with easy availability comes depreciation in value.
Jacob's distress is not over the accumulation of goods, but the social segregation that it is costing. Notice the particulars of his complaint in verse 13: " and because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they."
Jacob's problem is in their pride and the supposition of superiority held by those who are wealthy. Jacob's indicator of that wealth is "costliness" of apparel. This gives us yet another economic problem. How do we get costly apparel in a village of 300 households? In an ancient village, we must suppose that the village would need to be as self-sustaining as possible. In addition to raising sufficient food to feed their own population, they will need to make their own dwellings (as well as cooperate on public edifices). In addition, one would suspect that they would make their own clothing. Once again we enter the realm of raw materials. What is available to one is available to all. If all are making their own clothes, and all have access to the same raw materials, how could some garments be more "costly" than others?
The only answer in ancient Mesoamerica is trade. Only in the exchange of goods between communities can we begin to make sense of Jacob's evidences. The scenario would be that the worked gold and silver pieces become trade items with other communities. It is very likely that many different types of goods were traded, as trade creates social networks and extended bonds that are as important as the trade goods themselves (Radin, Paul. The World of Primitive Man. London, Abelard - Schuman. 1953, p.130). However, in this case we are interested in the worked gold and silver.
Worked gold and silver are luxury items, not because of the metal, but because any functional use can be replicated in other means. They might be made into cups, but many other substances may also be used for cups. They might be used to write on (as did Nephi and Jacob) but other materials were available, and perhaps easier to work with than the metal. Because the metals themselves held no intrinsic value, whatever was made of them was not a necessity, but an item of surplus and luxury. This excess in the Nephites would be traded for a similar excess item from another village. In this case, the evidence is that the trade was made for apparel. Being from another location, this apparel would have a different appearance, and perhaps be of different materials entirely. In any case, the necessity of having worked to produce an exchange good, travel to the trade community, and make the exchange, all increases the value of the apparel brought back to the land of Nephi.
Anthropologists have long known that clothing serves a social function, with different types of clothing being appropriate to different classes. For instance, Jesus tells of a story about a rich man and a beggar. In the introduction to the story we learn: " Luke 16:19
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:" We are told that he is a rich man, but the rest of the verse answers the question "how rich was he?" Perhaps no modifier is more telling than that he was "clothed in purple." The purple dye was very difficult to come by, and therefore extremely expensive. Only those of great wealth could afford to wear purple. Indeed it was restricted to royalty in certain ages of England, hence the term "royal purple." Clothing is an immediate outward sign of a social segregation of class.
Jacob's complaint is precisely this division into classes, that those who are wearing the "costly apparel" deem themselves better than others. Jacob had been with the Nephites from their formation, from a time when there were no such social divisions, from the time when Nephi would have fought with the sword of Laban in their defense. This unified society was now fragmenting through the trade connections that inevitably brought in differences in material goods, but just as inevitably outside ideas as well.