D&C 98 and What Happens on the Fourth Offense

Dale on the Cub Scout committee caught me by the chair rack after church yesterday and said section 98 is the seventy-times-seven chapter and everything else in it is Kirtland housekeeping. He wasn't being careless about it. He's a kind man who has forgiven more people than I have, and I think he meant it as a comfort. I don't buy it, though, and I told him so while we stacked folding chairs, which is the only place I ever win an argument.

The chapter has forty-eight verses and "seventy times seven" lives in one clause of verse 40. Around that clause there is a counting system, firsts and seconds and thirds and then a fourth, and a good deal of it is hard to read. If we flatten the chapter to its friendliest sentence we lose the part that was written for people who were actually getting hurt.

Does D&C 98 really say to forgive seventy times seven?

The count starts back in verse 23, before forgiveness comes up at all. If men smite you or your family once and you bear it patiently and revile not, you'll be rewarded (v23), and if you don't bear it patiently it's "accounted unto you as being meted out as a just measure" (v24). The second time, borne patiently, brings a reward of "an hundred-fold" (v25), the third time a reward "doubled unto you four-fold" (v26), and verse 27 gathers it up: "these three testimonies shall stand against your enemy if he repent not." That word, testimonies, is what the later verses keep pointing back to.

So when verses 39 through 44 arrive they're working from a ledger already open. If an enemy comes the first time and then repents and asks forgiveness, you forgive him and "hold it no more as a testimony against thine enemy" (v39). The same goes for the second and third time, "and as oft as thine enemy repenteth of the trespass wherewith he has trespassed against thee, thou shalt forgive him, until seventy times seven" (v40). That's the verse Dale was thinking of, and it matches Matthew 18:22 almost word for word.

Then the chapter turns to the man who doesn't repent, and verses 41, 42 and 43 take him one trespass at a time and tell you to forgive him anyway, even the third time, when the wording is "thou shalt also forgive him."

And then verse 44.

But if he trespass against thee the fourth time thou shalt not forgive him, but shalt bring these testimonies before the Lord; and they shall not be blotted out until he repent and reward thee four-fold in all things wherewith he has trespassed against thee.

I can't get that to say what Dale wanted, because it says "shalt not forgive him." The next verse says that if he does repay, "thou shalt forgive him with all thine heart," and if he doesn't, the Lord will avenge, a hundredfold (v45). What the verse leaves out matters as much to me. It doesn't tell you to hate him or to do anything to him at all, since what you do on the fourth time is carry the testimonies to the Lord, and the Lord is the one who acts.

That lines up with something in D&C 64. Verse 10 says "I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men," and verse 11 says to tell yourself in your heart, "let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds." Put that beside 98:44 and the two don't contradict each other as badly as they first look. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that "forgive" in section 98 means something close to ending your own bookkeeping. On the fourth offense the account goes to the Lord. Section 64 describes the same handoff from the inside, as a thing you say in your heart.

Luke 17:3 has a condition too, for what it's worth: "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him." The Gospels already had both strands, forgive without limit and forgive when repentance comes, and section 98 doesn't say which one wins. It lays them side by side and gives you a count.

Fourfold made me go looking for where else it turns up, and in Nathan's parable David rules that the rich man must "restore the lamb fourfold" (2 Samuel 12:6), and Exodus 22:1 asks four sheep for a sheep and five oxen for an ox, while Leviticus 6:5 asks the principal plus a fifth, which is the one I wrote about in the Leviticus 6 post on restitution coming before the ram. So four isn't a strange number to find at the heavy end of what the old law asked. Here it's asked of the offender, and the offended doesn't collect it.

A truck in my driveway, three Saturdays running

A chapter about people smiting each other is a strange place to bring up a flatbed truck. The Saints in Missouri were in real trouble in 1833 and my problem was parking, but I'll tell it anyway because the count in verse 41 happened to me in miniature and I didn't know I was keeping it.

Two doors down, a family was putting in a pool this summer, and the excavation crew started parking a flatbed across the bottom of our driveway around quarter past six. The first Saturday in June I had a lumber order waiting at the yard for seven o'clock, eight-quarter walnut they'd held for me, and I stood at the kitchen window in my work boots with the keys in my hand. I waited eleven minutes until somebody came out of the house, said "oh, sorry" and moved it, and I thought nothing more of it.

The second Saturday I walked down and mentioned it to the foreman, politely, and he said they'd keep it in mind. The third Saturday the flatbed was back and I stood at the window again and noticed that the truck wasn't what I was annoyed at, it was the number. Three, and I'd been counting the whole time without deciding to, and I had a sentence ready, and the sentence started with "this is the third time."

I said it, and the owner came out in a bathrobe, apologized like a decent person and said he'd talk to the guys, and the following week they parked on the other side of the street, and that was the end of it. What stays with me is how ready I was and how little I had to be ready for. I hadn't forgiven anybody in that story because nobody had hurt me, only held me up for eleven minutes at a time, a man digging a hole for his kids.

Verse 28 says to warn the enemy "in my name, that he come no more upon you," and I'd warned a neighbor in my own name, with a clenched jaw, over a delay I'd have forgotten by Tuesday. If I kept a tally like that when it cost me nothing, I'd like to know what I'd do with one that cost something real.

The chapter doesn't seem surprised that people count.

The war verses use the same count

Most people skip these and I understand why, but verse 33 says the ancients were not to "go out unto battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people, save I, the Lord, commanded them." Verse 34 says if a nation declares war on them, they should "first lift a standard of peace." If that people doesn't accept it "neither the second nor the third time," they bring the testimonies before the Lord (v35), and then the Lord gives a commandment and justifies going to battle (v36).

This is the machine from the personal verses run at a larger size, and where those had three smitings and then a warning, this has three standards of peace and then testimonies before the Lord, and in both the Lord decides what comes next. Alma 43:46 has the Nephites working from a version of this: "Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies." Verse 47 of that chapter adds that they were to defend their families "even unto bloodshed."

Seventeen verses before all this the same revelation says "renounce war and proclaim peace" (v16). I don't think you can hold up verse 16 and wave away verses 33 through 37 or hold up 33 through 37 and wave away verse 16. The chapter says both, and the way it does is a process with steps and a long wait at each one.

Why are the constitutional verses first?

I think it's because the chapter is about what you do when the people with power over you are not good, and the first thing it says about that is to use the law that protects rights. Verse 5 calls "that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges" justifiable before the Lord, and verse 6 says the Saints are justified "in befriending" it. Befriending is a smaller word than obeying or worshiping, and verse 7 says that whatever is "more or less than this, cometh of evil." Verse 8 adds the line I picked for the top of this post, that "the law also maketh you free," which is an odd thing to hear in a chapter this full of enemies. Verse 9 is the one I'd underline: "Nevertheless, when the wicked rule the people mourn," and then verse 10 tells them to look hard for honest and wise men. I wrote about the same instinct in the post on Mosiah 29, where a people gets handed the job of choosing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does D&C 98:44 mean I can stop forgiving someone after four offenses?

Not that I'd lean on it. The verse says "thou shalt not forgive him" until he repents and makes it right, but what it tells you to do instead is take the matter to the Lord, and verse 45 says that if he does repay you forgive him with all your heart. It isn't permission to hold a grudge, and next to D&C 64:10-11 it looks to me more like a hand-off than a cutoff, though I wouldn't use it to win an argument with anyone.

What does "constitutional law of the land" mean in verse 5?

The verse defines its own term, a law "supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges." Anything more or less than that, verse 7 says, comes of evil. Joseph Smith's later revelation in D&C 101:77-80 speaks of the Constitution of the land and says it was established "for the rights and protection of all flesh," which is the same concern in wider language.

Does the chapter approve of war?

It allows it under conditions and puts those conditions in order. A standard of peace first, the offer repeated, the testimonies carried to the Lord, and then a commandment from him (vv33-36). I find that harder to use as a justification than it looks at first, since three refusals and a commandment is a lot to wait for.

Who was this written to?

Verse 1 calls them "my friends" and tells them to fear not, and then verses 19 through 21 turn and say the Lord is "not well pleased with many who are in the church at Kirtland." The revelation is dated August 1833 and it comforts and rebukes in the same chapter, which I take as a sign that the Saints weren't all behaving well while they were being mistreated.

Dale is still wrong about it being a one-verse chapter, and I'll say so again next Sunday over the chairs. Last night I picked the first four Roma tomatoes off the vines on the north side of the garden and set them on the windowsill over the sink, where Melissa said they'd ripen faster. Two were still green at the shoulders.

— D.