“O That I Had Repented”

Like other times in Nephite history, poverty will force them to depend on Yahweh and return to the gospel. Forced to see that their own pride caused their downfall, they will become repentant. But ironically, their riches will still be the focus of their remorseful laments.

Literature: S. Kent Brown has identified the first sentence in verse 33 as a short lament and recasts the structure into a more poetic form:

O that I had repented,

and had not killed

the prophets

and stoned them

and cast them out.

The poetic form of the lament might have been sung or chanted, rather than simply spoken.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this particular lament is the parallel to another lament from later in the Book of Mormon:

O that we had repented

before this great and terrible day,

and had not killed

and stoned

the prophets,

and cast them out;

then would our mothers

and our fair daughters,

and our children

have been spared,

and not have been buried up in that great city Moronihah.

And thus were the howlings of the people great and terrible. (3 Ne. 8:25)

In noting the similarity between Samuel’s short lament and the first stanza of that recorded in 3 Nephi 8:25, Brown suggests that perhaps Samuel composed this lament on the spot, but another possibility may better explain the similarities and differences between the two.

It is possible that both Samuel and Nephi₃ are referencing a lament familiar to the audience, a ritual utterance that would have been chanted or sung. Thus, Samuel could abbreviate the lament, counting on his listeners to bring the full version to mind. For Nephi₃, the lament could be adapted to a specific situation, such as the destruction of the city of Moronihah. The form of the lament would be familiar, while the specific lament for Moronihah would be the new content. By analogy to musical improvisation where an artist might quote a well-known melody and then elaborate upon it, the text would form the quotation, and then the art of the prophet would be in placing the quotation in the larger context, or, in Nephi’s case, expanding on the basic form.