Wounded in the House of His Friends

In a new video recently made available online, President Nelson bore witness of the Savior from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.  He told of how in a coming day we would all recognize that Jesus is the Christ, and that He would come again and speak these words: “These wounds are the wounds with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. I am he who was lifted up. I am Jesus that was crucified. I am the Son of God.”  These words come from Doctrine and Covenants 45:52, and they are the words the Lord will say to the Jews who ask Him, “What are these wounds in thine hands and in thy feet?”  This prophesied conversation will come when the Lord will “set his foot upon this mount, and it shall cleave in twain, and the earth shall tremble, and reel to and fro, and the heavens also shall shake” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:48).  So it was very fitting that President Nelson would quote those words of the Savior from the Mount of Olives that He will one day speak from that same location. 

               The wording of this verse that President Nelson quoted is similar to this passage from Zechariah: “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”  Taken out of context this verse clearly sounds like it applies to the Savior and the wounds that He received as part of His atonement, but when reading it with preceding verses it’s not as clear what is being spoken of.  When reading the entire passage, perhaps the most important question is who the “him” is of verse six.  This appears to be the same “he” from verse five who is quoted as saying, “I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth” (Zechariah 13:2-6).  So who is this person that says he “is no prophet”?  Could that be the Savior since we know other verses of scripture specifically refer to Him as a prophet that the Lord will raise up (for example, 1 Nephi 22:20).  In verses 2-4 of this passage from Ezekiel the Lord told us how he would “cut off the names of the idols out of the land” and “cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.”  In this context the prophets are not true prophets but those who “speakest lies in the name of the Lord.”  We are told that in “that day” (I presume this refers to the Second Coming), these so-called prophets will “be ashamed” and recognize the error of their ways, thus no more deceiving the people.  Therefore one potential answer to the question about who is being referred to in verse 5 is that it is one of these people described in verse 4 who called themselves prophets but then, learning the error of their ways, subsequently declared, “I am not prophet.”  But that would then lead us to conclude that it is one of these false prophets of who the important verse 6 refers to.    

               I think there is indeed another way to interpret this.  Instead of the passage “he shall say, I am not prophet” referring to one of these false prophets now become ashamed from verse 4, it could be a reference to the Savior who says, “I am no prophet like these false prophets.”  In other words, the passage is not telling us that the Savior is not a prophet (for of course He qualifies as that), but that He is not one of those “prophets” just referenced who “speakeast lies in the name of the Lord.”  We know that Lord is “the good shepherd,” and He also told us, “my Father is the husbandman” and so the person who is a “husbandman” and a keeper of cattle “from [his] youth” from verse 5 certainly can point us to the Savior (John 10:11, John 15:1).  This interpretation then leads to the “him” in verse six indeed being the Savior who will say that His wounds are “those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”  The most important thing for us to know about this passage, though, is that Christ was indeed wounded in the house of His friends.  We, those who should be His “friends” in the latter days, must be all the more diligent to make sure our actions or sins do not wound Him, or as Pual put it, “crucify… the Son of God afresh” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:45, Hebrews 6:6).    

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