“Ye Shall Be Redeemed Without Money”

D. Kelly Ogden, Andrew C. Skinner

This passage is quoted three different times in the Book of Mormon. Explanation is given in Doctrine and Covenants 113:7–10. Zion, the New Jerusalem, is to “put on thy strength” and “put on thy beautiful garments,” which represent the authority of the priesthood. Doctrine and Covenants 113:10 indicates that the remnants are exhorted to return to the Lord. Recall that Isaiah’s son was named Shearjashub, meaning “the remnant shall return”—return not only to the land but to the Lord. Hebrew lashuv means both “return” and “repent,” the idea being that backsliding Israel will come back to her God. The bride, the Lord’s wife, will return from playing the harlot and repent and adorn herself with beautiful, clean wedding garments as she prepares for the coming of the bridegroom, her husband, the Savior (Jeremiah 3:14; Matthew 22:1–14; 25:1–13; D&C 133:10, 19).

Israel is to rise up from her dejected position and sit down in a more glorious and honored place, the New Jerusalem, the redeemed Zion.

To loose herself from the bands of her neck means to repent and remove herself from “the curses of God upon her … [in her] scattered condition among the Gentiles” (D&C 113:10); in other words, to flee Babylon, the wicked world, and free herself from the captivity of the devil.

Israel had sold herself as a harlot, having prostituted her sacred relationship with her Husband, “for naught”; that is, she had betrayed her God, searching for the worthless lusts of the flesh and pleasures of worldliness. Nevertheless, she can be “redeemed without money” through the atonement of her Savior, whose loving invitation comes “without money and without price” (2 Nephi 9:50).

Verse by Verse: The Book of Mormon: Vol. 2

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