Numbers 10

(April 14, 2014)
One difficulty in reading and understanding the scriptures is that different things have different meanings to the ancient mind and audience than they do to our modern minds.  For example, as I read through the description of the silver trumpets in this chapter my mind was drawn to certain writings in Revelations that I think are directly related.  Because I don’t understand the way the trumpets were used, I don’t understand Revelations as well as I should.  Only by putting ourselves in the minds of the recipients of God’s word can we truly understand it.

I think that this is what is actually meant by likening the scriptures unto ourselves.  We sometimes hear that phrase and think that it means putting ourselves into the scriptures – and from what I am learning about visualization, there is value to that.  But there must also be an effort to hear the scriptures with ancient ears and interpret them with ancient minds.  This is a difficulty in the Bible, but even more so in the Book of Mormon – where so much of the culture and society of the book is still unknown.