1. See Joel S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 16–29.

2. For example, Genesis 18–19 (the Lord is willing to spare all the people within Sodom and Gomorrah if only ten righteous can be found); Joshua 6:17–7:26 (Joshua’s army faces a setback because Achan has violated the ban on plundering Jericho; in turn, Achan’s family and animals are stoned for Achan’s sin); 2 Samuel 21:1–14 (famine is visited upon Israel because of Saul’s slaying of Gibeonites; the problem is remedied by acceding to Gibeonite demand that they be allowed to hang seven of Saul’s offspring); Judges 19–21 (the Benjamites suffer until the city of Gibeah is destroyed); Jonah 1:1–16 (Jonah’s boatmates suffer until Jonah confesses that he is the source of the problem and allows himself to be cast overboard); Deuteronomy 5:9–10 and Exodus 20:5–6 (“for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments”). Some scholars have challenged the view that ideas of collective responsibility in the Old Testament are really a departure from more modern ethical constructs. See Saul Levmore, “Rethinking Group Responsibility and Strategic Threats in Biblical Texts and Modern Law,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 71 (1995): 85–86, 120. Levmore’s thesis is that most of the so-called group responsibility for individual error in the Old Testament occurs in the context of warfare, where even modern law recognizes that innocents can properly be made to suffer for the actions of others within their country. His view is that ancient legal systems shared our inclination to use group responsibility and strategic threats sparingly and were concerned primarily with individual responsibility.

3. See Deuteronomy 26:17–18. Kaminsky draws a useful lesson from this point: “Ancient Israel’s fundamental insight into the fact that we are all our ‘brother’s keeper’ could provide a corrective to many of our current philosophical and political tendencies that inform us only of our rights as individuals but rarely of our responsibilities as members of larger communities” (Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility, 13–14). Although collective responsibility and reward were an important aspect of Israel’s understanding of its relationship with the Lord, individual obligations and consequences are also present in the Old Testament. For example, Genesis 19:17–26 (Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for disobediently looking back upon Sodom); Deuteronomy 29:18–21 (the Lord “shall separate . . . unto evil” certain wicked, individual Israelites “out of all the tribes of Israel”).

4. For example, 3 Nephi 10:5 (“O ye people of the house of Israel, who have fallen; yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen; yea, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not”); 2 Chronicles 7:14 (“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land”); Exodus 32:9 (“And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people”); Deuteronomy 26:18–19 (“And the Lord hath avouched thee this day . . . to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name”).

5. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 4:1–3, Paul exhorts the Thessalonian Saints: “As ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. . . . For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.” Although Paul uses the plural “ye,” his intention appears to be an injunction to each individual and a statement that their individual “sanctification” depends on their individual obedience. See also 3 Nephi 9:14 (“Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life”); 3 Nephi 12:1–2 (“after that ye are baptized with water”).

6. President Hinckley has focused on the collective blessings associated with tithing: “May all be honest, and even generous, in the payment of tithes and offerings, and may the windows of heaven be opened and blessings be showered down upon us as a people as we walk with boldness and in faith before the Lord to accomplish His eternal work.” Ensign 28 (May 1998), 88, emphasis added.

7. This is not to suggest that every member of the Church who is wealthy is wealthy as a result of the collective righteousness of the Church. Plainly, individuals can become wealthy by other principles upon which the acquisition of wealth is predicated. See Doctrine & Covenants 130:20–21 (“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated”). Nor can one conclude that individual blessings are never associated with paying tithing. The experience of individual tithe-paying and the message of Doctrine & Covenants 64:23 witness that individual blessings do attach to obedience to the law of tithing, but it is not at all clear that one of those individual blessings is financial wealth.

8. See Alma 49:30 (“And there was continual peace among them, and exceedingly great prosperity in the church because of their heed and diligence which they gave unto the word of God,” italics added); Alma 1:30 (“And thus they did prosper and become far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church”). See also Helaman 3:24–25 (equating prosperity with the growth of the Church and the number of convert baptisms).

9. Alma 28:13–14. The source and nature of adversity is a topic beyond the scope of this short study. Although we may not be able to determine which hardships are individual tutorials designed by the Lord and which are merely the result of the plan of salvation working itself out among men, the understanding that the Lord often speaks collectively as well as individually helps avoid improper anger at God for suffering that he may not have aimed at us personally.

10. Kevin L. Barney, “Divine Discourse Directed at a Prophet’s Posterity in the Plural: Further Light on Enallage,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6, no. 2 (1997): 229.

11. Barney, “Divine Discourse,” 229–34, points to probable examples of this same sort of enallage in the Book of Mormon (citing 1 Nephi 12:9; 2 Nephi 1:31–32; and 2 Nephi 3:1–2). For a further inquiry into enallage in the Book of Mormon, see Kevin L. Barney, “Enallage in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 3, no. 1 (1994): 113–47. For another significant shift from singular to plural between Matthew 6:5 and 6:9, see John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 79.

James R. Rasband

BYU Studies Publications