Jacob establishes a context for the Gentiles’ participation in the conflict between the covenant people and those who fight against them. Assuming the Gentiles to be believers (v. 13), he associates them with Israelites as “the people of the Lord… who wait for him.” Thus, the Gentiles become part of the “people of the Lord.” Therefore, the blessings of redemption can come through them.
Rhetoric: Jacob has introduced the theme of the Messiah (to which he will later return), yet he begins with Isaiah’s prophecy that the Gentiles will bring salvation to Israel. In his introduction to this theme, Jacob assures his audience that Isaiah’s words are directly relevant to them, presumably in their lifetimes: “And now, the words which I shall read are they which Isaiah spake concerning all the house of Israel; wherefore, they may be likened unto you, for ye are of the house of Israel” (2 Ne. 6:5).
Given the Isaiah text, the theme, and Nephi’s request for Jacob’s focus, we should consider possible reasons for a discourse on Israel’s salvation by the Gentiles. Because of the post-Messiah dating of the future restoration, Jacob obviously positions these events far in the future. Jacob seems to be telling his audience a story—one that applies to their existence as a new people—but without making direct reference to his point. Nephi also used scripture (the Exodus from Egypt, for example), allowing the audience to draw the correct conclusion from the close parallels. This interactive technique of drawing on the audience’s fund of information to engage the speaker’s meaning is typical of the “high-context” culture from which Nephi and Jacob had come. (See Behind the Text: Chapter 1, “Text and Context.”) This method continued to be used in Jesus’s time. Malina and Rohrbaugh explain:
The ability to use the Great Tradition [the store of common understanding and literature] creatively implied extensive, detailed knowledge of it and brought great honor to the speaker able to pull it off. Often the phrases drawn from the tradition are given in cryptic bits and pieces that do not need to be filled out by the speaker because the audience knows how to finish each fragment out. A good example can be seen in John 10:34, where John presumes that the audience knows the circumstance of the quotation from Psalm 82:6. Unless the audience could fill in the quotation, the argument by Jesus would make no sense.
Jacob is quoting a lengthy passage but assumes that his audience will understand its immediate applicability. Possibly Nephi instructed Jacob to give this sermon because the congregation consisted of Nephites joined with “Gentiles” (natives). If so, the sermon’s relevance becomes obvious. Not only is it a conciliatory sermon that would help the Nephites rethink the role of the Gentiles in their midst, but it also lets the Gentiles see themselves as future saviors of lineal Israelites, recipients of Israel’s blessings through being linked with the future Gentiles who are awaiting the Atoning Messiah.
This potential background provides an interesting context for verse 13: “Wherefore, they that fight against Zion and the covenant people of the Lord shall lick up the dust of their feet; and the people of the Lord shall not be ashamed.” Nephi has already recorded contentions with the Lamanites. Now Jacob identifies the Gentiles as allies of Israel and their means of redemption. Giving the community this vision of itself is a compelling reason for Jacob’s sermon, one in which these particular passages from Isaiah have striking relevance.
John Gee, assistant research professor of Egyptology at Brigham Young University and Matthew Roper, a resident scholar at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), see a similar application of these passages to Nephi’s people:
In addition to explaining the latter-day application of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jacob’s sermon can be read as addressing the question of how Lehite Israel is to relate to non-Lehite peoples in the promised land. The answer, Jacob taught, is that they may, if they so choose, join with the people of God in seeking to build up Zion as joint inheritors of the land. Once they do so, they become Israel too and are numbered with Lehi’s seed.
Rather than apply this directly to the current mix of Gentiles and Nephites as I do, they suggest that this also indicates the way that the Nephites generated their insider/outsider or Nephite/Lamanite worldview:
Some have wondered why, if other people were present in the land during Book of Mormon times, they are not mentioned more frequently in the record. This teaching, delivered by the Nephites’ first priest, would be foundational for later Nephite prophets and would likely have set a precedent for viewing all other peoples in the land, ideally in covenant terms. Previous cultural identity from the Lehite perspective would be swallowed up in this frame of reference. An example of this can be seen in the case of Nephi’s righteous brother Sam.… Lehi, who blessed all of his children, uses the term “numbered” only in Sam’s blessing Interestingly, when Lehite tribal designations are mentioned, there is no tribe of Sam (Jacob 1:13, 4 Ne. 1:35–38). Why? Apparently because when one is “numbered” with a people, one takes upon himself the name and identity of that people. Gentiles, once numbered with Abraham (Abr. 2:10), Isaac, Jacob (3 Ne. 21:22), Moses and Aaron (D&C 84:34), or Lehi (1 Ne. 14:2, 2 Ne. 10:18–19), are thereafter identified with their covenant fathers, without respect to biological origin. From then on they are simply Israel.
Therefore, the identification of the “Gentile” population of the New World as part of the Nephites occurs when they join with the Nephites who represent Israel. Similarly, those “Gentiles” who mix with the lineage of the Lamanites are also absorbed into that “lineage” of Israel. Nevertheless, because they have mixed with the Lamanites, they become cursed (2 Ne. 5:23) and do not have access to the blessings of Abraham even though they are classified under the Lamanite Israelite identity.