Here, between the lines, we read a remarkable testimony to the truth we find expressed in the history of the Mulekites. In their great hurry to escape from Jerusalem and the ravages of a conquering enemy who showed no pity, the forefathers of these people failed to take with them a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures as Lehi had done a short while before.
At the time Mosiah I found the descendants of the Jewish prince, Mulek, dwelling in their city, Zarahemla, which was situated on the west banks of the River Sidon, they were a very numerous, but an unenlightened people. Their principal business seems to have been warfare, and consequently many had fallen by the sword. Without the light of God's Holy Word to guide them, and bereft of the exhortations of His holy prophets, the Mulekites had continued to sink deeper and deeper into abysmal ignorance of the glories and the mysteries of God. Their language was corrupted because they had no records to preserve their mother tongue. Many even denied the existence of their Creator. However, Mormon tells us in his abridgment that they did exceedingly rejoice, and, that their King, Zarahemla, did also rejoice because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the Plates of Brass "which contained the record of the Jews." We may imagine the joy of the Mulekites at this fresh expression of Divine love. Benjamin told his sons that it was because their Nephite forefathers brought these plates out of Jerusalem with them that they always had the commandments of God before their eyes. These plates, which are sometimes called the Plates of Laban, had engraved upon them, in Egyptian characters, the history of God's dealings with those from whom the Lehites had descended. Lehi, it must be remembered, was a scholar. In some way he had come into contact with the Egyptians; he could read their writings; he understood their language, and he was versed in the learning of their wise men.
It must also be remembered that Egypt was then the greatest and the first in nearly all the pursuits of life. In architecture, in astronomy, in commerce, and in government, its people excelled. Lehi could read what was engraven upon the Plates of Brass. He was not forced to leave to a sometimes faulty memory those things that had been written concerning the handiwork of God; nor, was he compelled to rely on hearsay. He conveyed to all his children, and thus to all the generations which followed him, the knowledge he had obtained, and those things he had learned through actual communion with the people of Egypt. His knowledge and understanding of the ways of the Lord was a mighty bastion in the defense of his faith, and proved to be a firm foundation in the instruction of his children. He read to them from these plates how God had always preserved His righteous children from the attacks of the adversary, and that, not by learning and not by might, but by wisdom in keeping the commandments of God, did man know Him.
Without the knowledge these plates contained, King Benjamin emphatically told his sons, they, too, would have become like the Lamanites who knew nothing of the glories of God, and who did not believe them even when they are taught them. This deplorable condition was because of the traditions of the Lamanite fathers who had neglected these sacred things.
In addition to the Book of Moses,12 which these plates contained, they had engraved on them, the prophecies of Isaiah and a history of the Jews by Samuel and other Hebrew prophets down to the reign of Zedekiah. This included, presumably, the "Psalms of David" and the "Wisdom of Solomon." These represented the "Golden Age of Hebrew Literature."
We may understand, somewhat, of the beauty and the force of the teachings they found written thereon, when we read the wonderful words of the Prophet Samuel. It appears that Saul, the king of the Jews, offered many sacrifices in the hope he would mitigate the severity of any punishment for the disobedience of which he was guilty. Samuel said, "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." (Eccl. 12:13)