Certain episodes in the Old Testament establish the legal precedent of justifying the sacrificing of one individual for the purpose of preserving an entire group of people. One example is the beheading of the traitor Sheba by the inhabitants of the city of Abel in order that the entire city might be spared destruction by David’s army (see 2 Samuel 20). Another example, closer to the time of Lehi, is the deliverance of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, to the Babylonians by the Jewish counsel in order to defuse Nebuchadnezzar’s threat that he will otherwise destroy the entire nation (see 2 Chronicles 36:6). Lehi is likely aware of this precedent of “one for many”—but Joseph Smith could not have been, since this rather obscure aspect of Jewish law was, as legal scholar John W. Welch has pointed out, not well known until quite recently. (See Echoes, 356–357.)