Nibley on King Benjamin's address




Hugh Nibley's classic essay, "Work We Must, but the Lunch Is Free," includes a discussion of King Benjamin's address. Here is an excerpt:

Benjamin now recognized that they were ready to “hear and understand the remainder of my words,” because at last they were “awakened... to a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state” (Mosiah 4:4–5), aware that they could only put their “trust in the Lord,... keeping his commandments;... Believe in God;... believe that ye must repent;... always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and longsuffering;... If ye do this ye will always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God” (Mosiah 4:9–13). 

That being so, “ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due” (Mosiah 4:13). And who decides what is due him? Not you! The Lord will tell you that: “And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked, [or] ... transgress the laws of God” (Mosiah 4:14). Lunch will be provided, and “ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another,” with no fighting or quarreling among themselves—this was not to be a competitive society (Mosiah 4:15). 

And beyond your family, “ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him.” 

A beggar is one who asks, for some reason or other not having what he needs: “Ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish” (Mosiah 4:16). He begs because he is hungry, and we must all eat to stay alive—to turn any beggar down, for all you know, is to sentence him to death—it has happened (Mosiah 4:16). The usual pious appeal to the work-ethic—there is no free lunch—will not do: “Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I... will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just”—I worked for mine! (Mosiah 4:17). 

Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be—but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition. Anyone who explains why he denies help to another who needs it, says Benjamin, “hath great cause to repent... and hath no interest in the kingdom of God” (Mosiah 4:18), which kingdom is built up on the law of consecration. 

“For behold, are we not all beggars?” That is no mere rhetoric—it is literally true: we are all praying for what we have not earned. No one is independent: “Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for ... food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver and for all the riches which we have?— You are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are” (Mosiah 4:19–20). And that is just what you must consecrate to the building up of the kingdom: “O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another” (Mosiah 4:21–22). 

We all give and we all receive, and never ask who is worthy and who is not, for the simple reason that none of us is worthy, all being “unprofitable servants” (Mosiah 2:21). “And if ye judge the man,” who asks for your “substance that he perish not,” and find him unworthy, “how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God,” who wants you to hand it on, and is testing you to see just how willing you are to hand it back to him when he asks for it—not at some comfortably unspecified date, but right now (Mosiah 4:22). 

Benjamin says he is speaking here to the rich, but the poor may not hold back either, for everyone should have enough but not wish for more; hence the poor who want to be rich, who “covet that which ye have not received,” are also guilty (Mosiah 4:24–25). In giving, the poor may keep what is sufficient for their needs, and food, clothing, and shelter covers it (Mosiah 4:26), for the rule is summed up simply, that every man “should impart of [his] substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath”—which is also the wording of Deuteronomy, for all have a right to food, clothing, and medical care, “both spiritually and temporally according to their wants” (Mosiah 4:26; 18:29).