One more time they went up to Jerusalem. Nephi drew some parallels with Moses. The great deliverer from Egypt was backed up with his people against a wall of water. He had no further human recourse, so the Lord took over. If the Lord could deliver all those Israelites from the pharaoh, He could also deliver these Israelites from Laban. The four approached the walls of Jerusalem at night. Nephi “crept into the city and went forth towards the house of Laban.” He had no plan in mind but was led by the Spirit.
Finding Laban lying drunk in the road, Nephi was told by the Spirit to kill him. Hugh Nibley wrote of Laban: “A few deft and telling touches resurrect the pompous Laban with photographic perfection. We learn in passing that he commanded a garrison of fifty, that he met in full ceremonial armor with ‘the elders of the Jews’ (1 Nephi 4:22) for secret consultations by night, that he had control of a treasury, that he was of the old aristocracy, being a distant relative to Lehi himself, that he probably held his job because of his ancestors, since he hardly received it by merit, that his house was the storing place of very old records, that he was a large man, short-tempered, crafty, and dangerous, and to the bargain cruel, greedy, unscrupulous, weak, and given to drink.” 11
Nephi was repulsed by the idea of slaying Laban. Nevertheless, the Spirit again counseled him: The Lord delivered Laban to Nephi; it was in answer to a prayer; Laban was a thief and a murderer; and there were precedents for the Lord’s slaying wicked people to accomplish his righteous purposes (the Flood, the conquest of Canaan, and so on). As Joseph Smith taught, “Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.” 12 It would be better for this one man to die than for an entire (future) nation to dwindle and perish in unbelief, which would happen without those records. Slaying one man to preserve a people seems to have been an ancient oral legal tradition in Judaism because it surfaces again when Jewish leaders were contemplating a rationale for executing Jesus of Nazareth. Said Caiaphas, the high priest, “Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:49–50).
Nephi continued to reason that future generations would need the commandments on the plates and the Lord had devised this method for Nephi to obtain them. Having reasoned this out, Nephi obeyed the Spirit and carried out the unpleasant job of dispatching Laban into the next world by cutting off his head. He then disguised himself and imitated Laban well enough to convince Laban’s servant to open the treasury, get the plates, and follow Nephi outside the walls of the city.
Along the way there was talk about what the elders of the Jews had been discussing that night, possibly including the delicate political turmoil in which they were enveloped. Nephi reassured his frightened brothers that he was not Laban. He also convinced Zoram that he could stay with them and be a free man, and he bound him with an oath to do so. Then the five set out down through the wilderness on the long journey back to the main camp.
On the matter of oath-taking and the trust Nephi and others placed in Zoram, an example from modern times is instructive. It comes from W. F. Lynch and his team from the United States Navy who conquered the wilds of the same Rift Valley in the mid-nineteenth century:
“Sometime after the agreement was made, Akil [their Arab guide] returned and expressed a wish to be released. I ascertained that some of his timid followers had been dissuading him, and held him to his obligation… . At our former meeting I advanced him money for his expenses and the purchase of provisions, for which he refused to give a receipt or append his seal… . I had, therefore, nothing but his word to rely upon, which I well knew he would never break. ‘The bar of iron may be broken, but the word of an honest man never,’ and there is as much honour beneath the yellow skin of this untutored Arab, as ever swelled the breast of the chivalrous Coeur de Lion. He never dreamed of falsehood.” 13
Nephi and his brothers could trust Zoram because of the sanctity of oaths in those cultures, ancient and modern. In the gospel sense, an oath is a solemn declaration or absolute promise, calling on someone or something considered sacred by the oath-maker (often God) to witness the truth of the declaration or the binding nature of the promise being made. Throughout the ancient world, oaths carried an added measure of sanctity beyond a mere promise. In ancient Israel oaths were regarded as extraordinary promises, binding the oath-maker’s very soul: “If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth” (Numbers 30:2). We have reason to believe that even among dishonorable persons, oaths were regarded as inviolable. When the daughter of Herodias danced before Herod the tetrarch and his entourage, Herod “promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask” (Matthew 14:7; see also Mark 6:23). She asked for the head of John the Baptist. “And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake … he commanded it to be given her” (Matthew 14:9).