"Wherefore thy soul shall be blessed. … Thou shalt dwell safely with thy brother Nephi. And thy days shall be spent in the service of God." Jacob became the keeper of the sacred records, but he also had a special role in the temple that Nephi built in the city of Nephi. Jacob was given priestly duties as the High Priest of the temple. In Hebrew, the same word can be translated as servant or slave. When Samuel was dedicated by his mother, he became a servant in the house of the Lord, he belonged to the temple. Jacob is being dedicated here by his father, as Samuel had been, to spend his days, in other words, his whole life serving in the temple.
We have been commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is a commandment of the Lord, one that we as his servants or slaves are obligated to obey. Now we don’t like to think of ourselves as belonging to anyone else, or being slaves of God, even though it was then, or would be now, a high honor to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It is the greatest wish that David can express in Psalm 23: "That I may live in the House of the Lord." What does this imply? Temple symbolism presents the heavenly realm as a model, a prototype of the eternal world, and to dwell in the temple represents living in the presence of God forever.
The scriptures indicate that we are God’s "peculiar people." The English word peculiar comes from a Latin word, peculia, which means personal property. And indeed, we are bought with a price. We are peculiar because we belong to God, having been purchased by Christ’s blood, and therefore we belong to him as his servants. This is a very important part of the way in which ancient Israelite religion and the relationship between God and man were understood. All this would have applied to Jacob’s consecrated state as a lifetime servant of God.