But behold my brethren, the Lamanites hath he hated because their
deeds have been evil continually. (Helaman 15:4)
Few literary genres from the ancient
world stand out so prominently as the Near Eastern vassal treaty. Scholars have
shown that these political contracts formed between vassal kings and suzerain
provided the conceptual background for the book of Deuteronomy. “The assumption
is that Israel conceived of its relation to Yahweh as that of subject peoples
to a world king and that they expressed this relationship in the concepts and formulas
of the suzerainty treaty.”
In the Near Eastern treaty, vassals
were required to love their superiors: “If you do not love the
crown prince, designate Ashurbanipal,” warns the Assyrian treaty of Esarhaddon,
“[then] may Ashur, king of the gods, who determines the fates, decree for you
an evil, unpropitious fate.” In this ancient context, “loving the king with
one’s entire heart signified the severance of all contact with other political
powers.” Hence, Israel’s command to “love the Lord” presented in the
book of Deuteronomy seems to refer to a political commitment rather than an emotional
attachment (Deuteronomy 6:5).
In recent decades, scholars have shown
that in the biblical world love often represented a covenantal devotion
to one’s superior while its opposite, namely hate, at times signified
the status of an individual outside of this affiliation. While the connotation
of these words for westerns usually signifies an intense emotional charge, in
the ancient Near Hast, love and hate often carried this unique
covenantal connotation.
The Lord told Hosea, “All their [the
Ephraimites] wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them for the wickedness
of their doings I will drive them out of mine house” (Hosea 9:15). As
demonstrated in this biblical passage, the Ephraimites’ wickedness resulted in
their loss of the blessing associated with having the God of Israel serve as
their sovereign. The Lord hated the Ephraimites, “for the wickedness of
their doings,” since in the context of ancient Near Eastern treaties these acts
were tantamount to a political insurrection. As a result, these individuals
were removed from God’s covenantal “house” or “family.” The Hosea passage
continues, “I will love them no more,” declared the Lord, “all their
princes are revolters” (Hosea 9:15). Thus, the words love and hate
in the biblical world often carried a deliberate connotation of political
alliance (or lack thereof). With this observation in mind, the problematic
passages in Helaman 15 where Samuel the Lamanite described God’s love and hatred
seem to convey a specific nuance derived from the world of antiquity.
In Helaman 15, Samuel presented his
inspired message to the people of Nephi. Among his many observations the
prophet declared, “they [the Nephites] have been a chosen people of the
Lord . . . yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved” (v. 3). With these
words, the prophet attempted to remind the Nephites that they had traditionally
served as God’s covenant people. In this relationship, the Lord had acted as
the Nephite suzerain from whom the people of Nephi received reciprocal “love.”
In contrast, Samuel presented his own people, the Lamanites, as those whom God
“hath hated because their deeds have been evil continually” (v. 4).
Significantly, Samuel used the verb to hate in the same context in which
it appears in the book of Hosea. God hated the Lamanites in a parallel
manner to the way he hated the Ephraimites. Their evil acts had placed
them outside the boundary of his covenantal love.
While some modern readers have
expressed concern regarding this apparently harsh statement preserved in the Book
of Mormon, Samuel’s message relates perfectly to the context of love and hate
in the ancient sense of alliance. (David E. Bokovoy and John A. Tvedtnes, Testaments:
Links Between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible [Tooele, Utah: Heritage
Press, 2003], 193-95)