The choice is between life and death, to be gathered in or cast off. Jacob asks poignantly: “Why will ye die?” This eternal death comes because individuals will not exercise their personal option of repentance. Jacob knows that, if they will give place to Yahweh’s word, it can work their salvation—but only if each individual makes the personal decision to give place to the word. He therefore exhorts his listeners not to harden their hearts. They need not die eternally, because repentance is readily available.
Jacob does not tell us why his people need to repent. This written sermon seems to come at a different historical point than the oral discourse in his early chapters. He had concluded his first discourse with a clear ending: “These plates are called the plates of Jacob, and they were made by the hand of Nephi. And I make an end of speaking these words” (Jacob 3:14). The intervening chapter discusses the plates and the reason for writing upon them. Now comes this written sermon. It seems likely that the problems explicitly discussed in his first sermon (pride and particularly the multiple wives) are sins that endured among the people. Jacob would not be the first, and certainly not the last, prophet to admonish his people and have only a limited effect upon changing their behaviors. In the absence of other specific sins, we may assume that Jacob was continuing his original call to repentance for the same causes.