Jeremiah, Laban, and the Plates of Brass

When Lehi obtained the plates of brass, he found that they contained “many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” (1 Nephi 5:13).  I’ve wondered about this before since Jeremiah was preaching at the time of Lehi and Laban was a wicked man.  How did those words of a contemporary prophet get on the plates?  Surely Laban was not interested in recording what Jeremiah was saying, and so I’m convinced that they must have been on the plates before they were in the possession of Laban.  We know that “Laban also was a descendant of Joseph” and that “he and his fathers had kept the records” (1 Nephi 5:16).  According to the Bible Dictionary, Jeremiah started preaching around 626 B.C., and so he had been preaching for nearly 30 years by the time Nephi obtained the plates from Laban.  So it must be that those who had the records before Laban were righteous, and they had had the words of Jeremiah engraved upon the plates of brass.  Laban then would have simply inherited the plates when his father died, and surely he was very uninterested in them considering his wickedness and lust for wealth. 

It seems most likely that Lehi and his family were closely related to Laban since the genealogy of both were contained upon the same plates.  When Lehi gave the commandment to Nephi to go get the plates, he said without preface about Laban, “For behold, Laban hath the record of the Jews and also genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass.  Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records” (1 Nephi 3:3-4).  The language seems to assume that Nephi knew who Laban was already and that he knew where the house of Laban was.  Being both from Joseph and considering the fact that most of those in Jerusalem were from the tribe of Judah at the time (the majority of Joseph had been scattered with the 10 tribes), it only makes sense that Nephi would have lived in close proximity to Laban.

                So which of the prophecies of Jeremiah were contained upon the plates of brass?  When Nephi the son of Helaman was teaching the Nephites he mentioned this almost in passing: “Jeremiah, (Jeremiah being that same prophet who testified of the destruction of Jerusalem) and now we know that Jerusalem was destroyed according to the words of Jeremiah” (Helaman 8:20).  I believe that’s the only explicit reference we have to what the words of Jeremiah said on the plates, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there are quotations or references to some of the words of Jeremiah in parts of the Book of Mormon text.  In our Old Testament the first 20 chapters of the book of Jeremiah contain the words of Jeremiah that were spoken before the reign of Zedekiah.  The first 6 chapters are from the reign of Josiah and go up to 608 BC and chapters 7-20 were given by Jeremiah between 608-597 BC.  So if the words of Jeremiah on the plates of brass match the words we have in our Bible, they would have to come from those chapters.  Among those chapters there are at least two explicit prophesies of the destruction of Jerusalem. Jeremiah said under the reign of Josiah, “O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem… for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction….  Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited” (Jeremiah 6:1, 8).  Under Jehoiakim he prophesied, “For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall go aside to ask how thou doest? Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee” (Jeremiah 15:5-6).  Both of those prophecies may have been on the plates of brass, and likely much more that we don’t have in our Old Testament.  At any rate, perhaps one of the lessons in this story of Laban and Lehi is that the writings of Jeremiah and the rest of the prophets did Laban little good even though they were in his possession (and apparently he thought they were of some value because he refused to give them up)—for the scriptures will only condemn us unless we read them and live by them!