3 Nephi cannot be read or understood outside of a family context. The Nephites came to the temple early in the morning. Men, women, and children were there, and may have come fasting; there would not have been much time for breakfast. For what reason were they there? It may have been some type of sacred gathering called, perhaps by Nephi himself, to determine what was going to happen next. They may have been there to give thanks to the Lord that they had survived. Regardless, they were all there. Everything which the Savior says in 3 Nephi is to men, to women, to grandparents, and to children. It is a message that applies to the entire human family.
When Jesus was about to leave at the end of that first day and cast his eyes about to the people, he saw that their eyes were steadfast on him, and that their eyes were filled with tears and his bowels, his soft inner being, was filled, not just with mercy but with compassion, or as the German would say, with Mitleid, “with suffering together.” Jesus’s words in this tender moment are elegant, personal, and inviting:
A | Behold, my bowels are filled | ||||
B | with compassion towards you. | ||||
C | Have ye any sick among you? | ||||
D | Bring them hither. | ||||
E | Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or withered, or deaf, or afflicted in any manner? | ||||
D’ | Bring them hither | ||||
C’ | and I will heal them, | ||||
B’ | for I have compassion upon you; | ||||
A’ | my bowels are filled with mercy. | ||||
Jesus then drew himself close to the people through a series of intimate “I/you” statements. Here we find five such interpersonal elements, the symbolic number of mercy and compassion. These lines emotively and intimately affirm God’s personal relationship to mankind:
I perceive that ye desire
that Ishould show unto you
what I have done unto your brethren at Jerusalem,
for I see that your faith is sufficient
that I should heal you.
The Savior was filled with compassion, so he blessed them—those who had been injured or were ill or were blind, lame, or deaf. As they had come before to touch the Lord “one by one” (3 Nephi 11:15), they now came again one by one. The word “one” at the beginning of verse 9 is echoed again in the throng coming forward with “one accord,” and at the end it is found in the individual acts of love as Jesus healed them, “every one”:
All the multitude, with one accord, did go forth | |
with their sick, and their afflicted, and their lame, and | |
with their blind, their dumb, and their afflicted in any manner; | |
and he did heal them every one as they were brought forth. | |
After they had been healed, those people came—the eyes, here again, are an important factor—and bathed his feet with their tears. I can only imagine that this was everyone—men, women and children—wanting and trying to reciprocate the love that he had shown to them.
If we are going to follow the example of Jesus, we too need to minister one by one. It is not enough to have an impersonal food bank say, “Go and get it.” There is more to it than that. We need to care for the individual needs of others, look at what their circumstances are, and love and serve them.
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did Jesus Minister to the People One by One? (3 Nephi 17:21), KnoWhy 209 (October 14, 2016).
For a discussion of the linguistic and literary elements in the translation of this text, see John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), 179–198.