This verse assumes that Jacob’s call to repentance will not succeed. He seems to believe that they will continue in their path, and he is asking if they are fully cognizant that their actions will condemn them before Yahweh.
Culture: Jacob apparently has no legal power to compel obedience from his people. To fully comprehend the significance of why Jacob pleads with his congregation, we need to remember that, for most ancient societies, religion and politics were not neatly separated realms. Malina and Rohrbaugh explain: “Neither the biblical authors nor their primary audiences could have anticipated anything like the formation of European nation-states or the formation of an Enlightenment nation-state like the United States. Our new social arrangements, with the separation of religion and economics form kinship and politics, would have been inconceivable to them. In fact, the separation of church and state, and of economics and state, are truly radical and unthinkable departures from what has heretofore been normal on the planet.”
From their Jerusalem inheritance, the Lehites would have accepted a political king, but one who had been anointed and who therefore had at least the tacit assumption of religious support. In addition, many political offices would have been occupied by priests. After the fall of the first temple, the priestly class exerted even more political power.
In non-Nephite Mesoamerica, rulership was also assumed to be sanctioned by the gods, and ruling families likely supplied priests in the smaller city-states. Nevertheless, the ability to rule, even in the late Aztec period, depended on tracing legitimate descent to a line sanctioned by the gods.
In societies with such strong religious underpinnings, the threat of religious sanction was extreme. Religious sanctions could easily comprise mild forms of control but range up to exile or death. In most ancient cultures, violating a god’s rule also violated the rule and sanctity of the community itself and would bring down that god’s wrath, a condition that could not be tolerated.
In Jacob’s community, a significant number of the people are violating Yahweh’s mandates. Jacob has no direct authority over them and, consequently, cannot threaten them exile or excommunication. He does not place them under sanction from the ruling body of the religion. Instead, he pleads.
Jacob’s pleading confirms that he has no political/religious power. While he denounces the actions of his people, he cannot do anything about it directly. This fact suggests a greater division between religious and political power than would have existed during Nephi’s life. In the comparatively brief period since Nephi’s death, Jacob is a somewhat marginal figure, even when (as is the case in this discourse) he declares that he is speaking by prophetic authority. This may not mesh with modern assumptions of the prophet as the leader of the church, but it does follow the frequent Old Testament model of the prophet who is not part of the ruling class (Lehi himself having been such a prophet).
The continuation for what Jacob clearly sees as a major apostasy shows that the Nephite community is undergoing a rapid social transformation, one consequence of which is the growing distance from the religion of Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob. Jacob’s lineage will be increasingly marginalized. This may not indicate a separation of religion and state but rather a separation from the doctrinal purity of Nephite religion as preached by Nephi and Jacob. By the end of the small-plates tradition, the crisis in the community’s religious practices will not only marginalize the believers in the pure Nephite religion, it will create a social fission that expels those who remain true to that pure faith (Omni 1:12–13).