D&C 109 and the Mob Who Get Mercy First

A reader named Terry wrote to me last week after the Section 107 post. He said he'd tried Doctrine and Covenants 109 twice and quit around verse 40 both times. "It's eighty verses of asking," he wrote. "Doesn't he ever just say thank you?"

I told him I'd look again, and I did, this morning. He's partly right. It's long and most of it is a request. But the first word is thanks, the requests come in a particular order, and one stretch in the middle isn't what I expected from a prayer like this.

Does the prayer ever say thank you?

The prayer opens with thanks, since verse 1 begins "Thanks be to thy name, O Lord God of Israel, who keepest covenant and showest mercy unto thy servants who walk uprightly before thee, with all their hearts" and then the sentence just keeps going into verse 2, where the house comes in. After that the prayer reports on the work. Verse 3 says the servants "have done according to thy commandment" and verse 4 asks the Lord "to accept of this house, the workmanship of the hands of us, thy servants, which thou didst command us to build."

Then verse 5, which I'd skipped past on earlier readings because it sounds like a line from a fundraising letter.

For thou knowest that we have done this work through great tribulation; and out of our poverty we have given of our substance to build a house to thy name, that the Son of Man might have a place to manifest himself to his people.

D&C 109:5

Everything after it gets built on a house that people paid for with what they didn't have, and the stated purpose is a place for the Lord to "manifest himself." The Saints aren't asking for the building to be praised. They're asking that the thing they spent themselves on be taken, and then they spend eighty verses saying what they hope happens inside it and because of it.

One small note on the text, since it tripped me the first time through. Verse 2 reads "in this place [Kirtland]." The brackets are the Church's own insertion, not part of the prayer's wording. The prayer says "this place" and an editor told us where.

Incomings, outgoings and salutations

Verses 8 and 9 are quoted back to God from an earlier revelation, and they are the center of the first third of the chapter.

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;

D&C 109:8

Seven houses are listed and order is the sixth, and verse 9 turns that into movement, "that your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord." When the prayer picks the same idea up again in its own voice, it splits it into three verses, 17, 18 and 19. Incomings, "into this house." Outgoings, "from this house." Salutations, with "holy hands, uplifted to the Most High."

The list comes back in the prayer's own words, so I think they were asking about how people come in, how they leave and what they say to each other on the way.

Verses 20 and 21 stay at the door as well. Verse 20 asks "that no unclean thing shall be permitted to come into thy house to pollute it" and verse 21 goes straight on to the people who are already inside.

And when thy people transgress, any of them, they may speedily repent and return unto thee, and find favor in thy sight, and be restored to the blessings which thou hast ordained to be poured out upon those who shall reverence thee in thy house.

D&C 109:21

I would have guessed the sentence after "no unclean thing" would be about enforcement. It's about a way back. Any of them, speedily, restored.

Two other verses are worth a look. Verse 7 tells them to "seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith." Verse 14, a few verses after verse 9, asks that those who worship in the house "may be taught words of wisdom out of the best books." So a house of learning is given as an instruction in verse 7 and asked for again in verse 14. It's a prayer from people who expected to study when they got there.

The mob in verses 47 to 53 gets mercy first

This is the part I went back to the most, and it's where I'd send Terry if he only has ten minutes.

Earlier in the prayer there's language that's hard to read in a calm voice. Verse 27 says "if any people shall rise against this people, that thine anger be kindled against them." Verse 29 asks the Lord "to confound, and astonish, and to bring to shame and confusion" those who have spread lying reports, and then adds "if they will not repent." Verse 30 goes on to works swept away "by the hail." They're hard, and they're there.

Right after the stretch where the servants ask to be delivered from their enemies, this happens.

O Lord, we delight not in the destruction of our fellow men; their souls are precious before thee;

But thy word must be fulfilled. Help thy servants to say, with thy grace assisting them: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.

D&C 109:43-44

I stopped on the second half of verse 43 and read it three times. "Their souls are precious before thee." Said about the people the prayer has just been asking to be delivered from. And verse 44 doesn't tidy it up. "But thy word must be fulfilled" is a hard sentence sitting right there next to the tender one. Then comes a request to be helped to say "Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours." They aren't saying it yet. They're asking for help to say it.

Jackson County comes next, and verses 47 through 49 are about the Saints driven from their lands, with a line in verse 49 that carries real grief, "how long wilt thou suffer this people to bear this affliction." Then the verses I want to put in order.

Verse 50 asks for mercy on "the wicked mob, who have driven thy people," that they "may cease to spoil, that they may repent of their sins if repentance is to be found." Mercy comes first, and verse 51 begins "But if they will not" and asks the Lord to "make bare thine arm." Verse 52 is the hardest of the set, and it opens with "And if it cannot be otherwise," asking that anger be kindled, that they be "wasted away, both root and branch." Then verse 53 opens with "But inasmuch as they will repent, thou art gracious and merciful, and wilt turn away thy wrath."

Of the four verses, three start with a turn: "if they will not," "if it cannot be otherwise" and "inasmuch as they will repent." The last turn is the one that names the Lord, "gracious and merciful." Verse 52 isn't written by people who had got over anything, and verse 53 doesn't pretend it is. The severe verse just doesn't get the last word on the mob.

Who else is in the prayer

The chapter drifts, and Terry would be right about that too. It goes from a house in Ohio to the servants going out, to enemies and then to Missouri, and then out past the people who are even in the story.

Verse 54 asks for mercy "upon all the nations of the earth" and "upon the rulers of our land," and then asks that the principles "so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever." The verse is a request to God, and it doesn't say what anyone should do about the next election.

Verse 55 asks the Lord to "remember the kings, the princes, the nobles, and the great ones of the earth, and all people, and the churches, all the poor, the needy, and afflicted ones of the earth." A prayer from a small, short-of-money congregation in a town in Ohio, and the list runs from kings to the afflicted without a pause between them. The same pass includes verse 60, which says they have spoken "concerning the revelations and commandments which thou hast given unto us, who are identified with the Gentiles," and then verses 61 through 67 spend seven verses on Israel and Jerusalem. I know less about those, so I'll leave them at that.

Then it comes back in close. Verse 68 remembers "thy servant, Joseph Smith, Jun., and all his afflictions and persecutions," verse 69 asks mercy "upon his wife and children," and verse 71 asks the Lord to remember "all the presidents of thy church." Verse 72 gets to "all their sick and afflicted ones, with all the poor and meek of the earth."

Read section 110 straight after, though it has its own heading and I won't guess at its date. In D&C 110 the Lord says in verse 7, "I have accepted this house, and my name shall be here." Compare that with the request in 109:4 to "accept of this house." And verse 8 of the later section says he will appear "if my people will keep my commandments, and do not pollute this holy house," which sounds like an answer to 109:20. That pairing is mine, but the vocabulary lines up closely.

If you want to read the two sections alongside the ones just before them, I wrote about D&C 108 and Lyman Sherman and D&C 107 and Noah's ordination age earlier this month.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is D&C 109?

It's the prayer offered at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple on March 27, 1836, read aloud by Joseph Smith. It's a request for the house, for the people who would use it, for the Saints driven from Missouri and for people well outside the room.

Did Joseph Smith write all of it himself?

Not that simply. The Joseph Smith Papers describe several men meeting the day before to prepare it, and they don't say who wrote which parts.

Why does it ask God to deal with enemies?

Because the Saints had been driven out of Jackson County, Missouri, and verses 47 through 53 are about that. The harsh requests are real. So are verse 43, where the prayer says their souls are "precious," and verse 53, where it comes back to the Lord being "gracious and merciful" toward those who repent.

What does verse 36 mean by the gift of tongues and cloven tongues as of fire?

It's a request modeled on Pentecost and the verse doesn't define the form of what's being asked. Later accounts of that week describe particular events, but those accounts are separate from the prayer. Keep them separate when you read the chapter.

Is the Constitution in verse 54 a political statement?

I read it as a petition. The Saints ask that certain principles be established, and the verse puts the request in the same sentence as mercy for rulers and nations.

The furnace came on for the first time this season while I was finishing this, and the house smelled of warm dust for about ten minutes.

— D.