14 And because they turn their hearts aside, saith the prophet, and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations.
Matthew records the Savior teaching that the first and great
commandment is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). Today we might say devotion,
strength and effort, and thought in place of heart, soul, and mind. Soul and
mind have to do with keeping the commandments, or in other words, controlling
our thoughts and actions. (According to D&C 88:15, “the spirit and the body
are the soul of man,” and I believe that is the sense of the word “soul” used
in Matthew.) The heart has to do with our devotion, controlling our thoughts
and actions for the right reasons. Even if we do the right things, if it is for
the wrong reason, such as personal gain, or out of compulsion it does us no
good, and doesn’t count (see 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, and D&C 58:26–29, and
D&C 64:34).
So the Jews, by turning their hearts aside, in other words,
their devotion to the Lord, could have kept every single point of the Law of
Moses for the wrong reason. And it would have gotten them exactly nowhere. The
scriptures, and particularly the New Testament, are full of verses relating to
the relationship between faith and works. In my mind faith has to do with the
heart. So when we perform even noble works without faith, with a heart that is
turned away like the Jews in Jerusalem that Nephi is talking about, we run the
danger of those works not being counted for righteousness. Because they turned
their devotion away from their God, such that they killed Him, there were bound
to be consequences. Their consequence was that they would “wander in the
flesh,” which could have to do with not having a country of their own, but I
take to mean that they would live in a state of apostasy while here on earth.
They would perish. Everyone dies, but the term “perish” carries with it a
violent connotation. They wouldn’t simply die, but they would be destroyed or
die a violent death. Nephi also prophesied that they would “become a hiss and a
byword, and be hated among all nations.” This ridicule and hatred has certainly
been evident down through the ages. And they brought it all on themselves by
turning their hearts aside. I will take that as a lesson for my own life, so that
I will strive to keep my heart true to the Lord, and not turn it aside.
- 1 Kings 9:7 (6–7)
- 1 Nephi 22:5
- Mosiah 14:3 (3–6)
