Evidence #172 | March 22, 2021
Peace Treaty
Post contributed by
Scripture Central
Abstract
The ten-year peace treaty between the Nephites and Lamanites was established in the 350th year since Christ’s birth. This would have been the seventh jubilee since that occasion, a time that was meant to be filled with peace, rest, prosperity, forgiveness, and blessings.After briefly reporting on 24 years of continuous war and wickedness, Mormon said that the Nephites entered into a treaty with the Lamanites in the 350th year (Mormon 2:28). The terms of the treaty required the Nephites to forfeit all their territory in the land southward (v. 29), but it brought peace for ten full years in return (Mormon 3:1).
Assuming that the Nephite festival schedule reset when they started counting their years from Christ’s birth (3 Nephi 2:8), this would have been a jubilee year. The jubilee year was an additional sabbatical year observed at the end of the seventh seven-year sabbatical period.1
According Robin J. DeWitt Knauth, “The Year of Jubilee … is the last layer in the extension of the Sabbath principle.”2 Being the pinnacle of the sabbatical system, the jubilee year came every fifty years. It is easy to imagine that a people who saw significance in calendrical cycles of seven3 would have noticed that this jubilee year in the 350th year was not just any jubilee—it was the seventh jubilee since the birth of Christ (350 being 7 x 50).4 Stated another way, the 350th year concluded the seventh cycle of seven cycles of seven-year periods since Christ’s birth.5
Resting the land was central to both the jubilee law in general and to this treaty in particular. The jubilee was intended to be “a year of ‘rest’ for the land.” It was also a time when “land was to be restored to its original inherited line of ownership.”6 Thus, at a time when land was supposed to be restored to its proper owner, large portions of Nephite and Lamanite lands were reallocated under the terms of this ten-year treaty, as they “did get the lands of their inheritance divided” (Mormon 2:28).
Conclusion
The jubilee year was meant to be a time of peace, rest, prosperity, forgiveness, and blessings.7 The timing of the ten-year peace treaty reported in Mormon 2:28, established precisely at the outset of the seventh jubilee year since Christ’s visitation, hints at elaborate calendrical and time keeping practices among Book of Mormon peoples that are consistent with those known among some ancient Jews and Israelites.
John W. Welch, “Mormon 1–6,” in John W. Welch Notes (Springville, UT, Book of Mormon Central, 2020), 1049–1050.
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Is The 10-Year Peace Treaty Important? (Mormon3:1),” KnoWhy 228 (November 10, 2016).
John W. Welch and J. Gregory Welch, “Benjamin’s Themes Related to Sabbatical and Jubilee Years,” in Charting the Book of Mormon: Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), chart 91.
Terrence L. Szink and John W. Welch, “King Benjamin’s Speech in the Context of Ancient Israelite Festivals,” in King Benjamin’s Speech: “That Ye May Learn Wisdom,” ed. John W. Welch and Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 193–199.
BibleLeviticus 25:10–15Book of MormonMormon 2:28–29Mormon 3:1Bible
Book of Mormon
- 1 See Robin J. DeWitt Knauth, “Sabbatical Year,” in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, ed. David Noel Freedman (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 1147.
- 2 Robin J. DeWitt Knauth, “Jubilee, Year of,” in Eerdmans Dictionary, 743.
- 3 Corbin Volluz, “A Study in Seven: Hebrew Numerology in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2014): 57–83; Evidence Central, “Book of Mormon Evidence: Lehi’s Seven Tribes,” September 19, 2020, online at evidencecentral.org.
- 4 There may be evidence for something similar happening at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Calendric Signs (Otot) scrolls (4Q319) describe a 294-year cycle of 6 jubilees (of 49 years each), correlated to a separate, priestly cycle of 6 years. See Geza Vermes, trans., The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, revised edition (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 365. According to Roger T. Beckwith, Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian (Boston, MA: Brill, 2001), 92, “in some manuscripts it was extended to seven jubilees.” 4Q319 does mention “[The signs of the] seventh [Jubilee].” (Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 369.)
- 5 Knauth, “Jubilee, Year of,” 743 defines the Jubilee as the “50th year in a series of seven Sabbatical Years.” However, there is some ambiguity as to whether the jubilee was the 49th year (the seventh sabbatical year) or the 50th. Christopher J. H. Wright, “Jubilee, Year of,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 3:1025, explains: “Lev 25:8–10 specifies it as the 50th year, though some scholars believe it may have been actually the 49th—i.e., the 7th Sabbatical Year.” Terrence L. Szink and John W. Welch, “King Benjamin’s Speech in the Context of Ancient Israelite Festivals,” in King Benjamin’s Speech: “That Ye May Learn Wisdom”, ed. John W. Welch and Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 222 n.162 reason: “The inclusive mode of sometimes counting the last year as the first of the next jubilee cycle accounts for the frequent confusion between 49- and 50-year jubilee counts.”
- 6 Knauth, “Jubilee, Year of,” 743.
- 7 For themes of the jubilee year, see John W. Welch and J. Gregory Welch, “Benjamin’s Themes Related to Sabbatical and Jubilee Years,” in Charting the Book of Mormon: Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), chart 91.
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