“Humble Yourselves Before God”

Brant Gardner

The language of verses 5 and 10 are different, but the intent is the same. In verse 5 the emphasis is on the descriptions of humility ("a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state") and Benjamin makes the theme of humility explicit in verse 10. Verse 10, however, is a true transition from one point to another. After the partial aside of verse 5-9, Benjamin returns to the starting point of humility so that he may move the discourse to the next step. Benjamin wants to move from forgiveness to salvation, from the humility of prostration to the glory of gospel living. His transition is to repeat the things that they would have just gone through, and to indicate that "if you believe all these things see that ye do them." It is this doing that forms the conceptual theme for the next part of his discourse. Benjamin will move from communal repentance to the rules of communal gospel action.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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