The Lovely One read Lehi’s deathbed counsel to his children recently. She found some interesting points that I had not remarked before.

Lehi’s rebuke to Laman and Lemuel is not phrased as a rebuke. It isn’t even just good counsel for good living.  He urges them to repent in heroic terms.

O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.

Awake! and arise from the dust

The image here is a nobody—a slave, a captive, a sleeping man—suddenly rousing himself to become a serious player on the board through a heroic act of rebellion (against Satan). He then tells his sons that if they do, they will have the esteem of the Lord (i.e., glory).  The heroic tenor is even more clear a few verses later.

Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.

Here the act of repentance is explicitly situated as moving from a slave to a warrior, and as becoming a person of status and fame, a person of reputation, which means a person of glory. In other words, a hero.

Then Lehi speaks to his son Jacob.  What is interesting is that his description of Adam and Eve has subtle parallels to his prior exhortations to wayward Laman and Lemuel.  He says that Satan was Adam and Eve’s opposition,  and they came out of the Garden and brought forth children, just as Lehi urged his sons to come forth out of obscurity.  Lehi then explains that leaving the Garden was necessary to do worthy deeds.  And adds that even so we would all be vanquished if it were not for Christ.

It is all very suggestive of an image. An image of a reckless and foolhardy hero daring far beyond his means.  But accomplishing much anyhow and coming out safe in the end because a much greater hero rescues him.  There may come a point in the quest when the reckless hero realizes he was reckless.  But by then there is no going back.  All of us, like Adam and Eve, have set out from the Garden on the foolish quest to be as the gods.  If we try to return to Eden, our last state will be worse than the first.  “Do not dare not to dare.”