“Drawn Out in Prayer Unto Him Continually”

Brant Gardner

Literary: At this point we would see Amulek departing from the cited poem and expanding the theme. He has begun with these couplets that describe the relationship between the supplicant and the king – those things that are licit for one to ask of the king. He tags his first expansion onto the localized emphasis of the previous couplet. That couplet focused on fields, and he now moves the locational focus inward to the home and family (a similar directional shift that we saw in Zenos as cited in Alma 33:5-6. Zenos had moved his supplication from field to household, and Amulek is clearly intentionally paralleling Zenos’ direction of literary movement. Amulek expands on Zenos, however, because he even covers our attitude when we are not in active supplication.

What Amulek is describing is the dependent state of those in the kingdom upon the mercies of the king. Even when not in active supplication, there is still a remembrance of the relationship. This is not a relationship of equals, but very much one where the king is the grantor of requests that the member of the kingdom cannot do for himself.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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