Culture: Foodstuffs appear at the end of this list of taxed items, even though a levy of food in some form is essential to provide for a hierarchy of rulers who do not farm. In the context of verse 4 that these taxes are to “support [Noah] himself, and… his priests, and their wives and their concubines,” the mention of animals and grain show that Noah and his court ate food produced by the labor of others.
Economics: We assume that gold and silver are precious, but this entire list is specifically identified as “precious” (v. 8). Why are the other metals also precious? The presence of brass as an alloy suggests that it is their malleability that makes them precious. As noted in Jacob (see commentary accompanying Jacob 2:12–13), they are precious for what can be made with them, not simply because they exist. Like Asians, Mesoamericans apparently valued jade above gold. Historian David Drew notes: “As a precious material gold remained secondary to blue-green jade, the colour of fertility and the essence of life itself.”
Also as in Jacob, the metals are economically important. This land was previously inhabited by Lamanites. Had it abounded in ores that had the intrinsic value that the Spaniards assigned to gold, it seems logical that the Lamanites would have been unwilling to give up the land if gold was still readily available. Nevertheless, in a single short generation (Zeniff was already an adult when he joined the first expedition), Noah could tax specific workable metals, valuable because of the goods created from them, not because of the metals’ mere existence. If these metals are sufficiently abundant that Noah can require a fifth of them, then he would not necessarily be significantly wealthier than others dealing in precious metals. Trade and the exchange of goods produces wealth; that exchange with outside communities led to wealth that, in turn, fostered social and religious divisions in the city of Nephi. Noah is back at the scene of the crime, very literally, repeating the same economic and religious errors as the Nephites of Jacob’s time. (See commentary accompanying Jacob 2:12–13.)