"Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding"
With the section opening so strongly on the concept of the voice of the Lord, this connected point about the language of the Lord gains more meaning and deserves more reflection.
First, as a reminder, "hearkening" as we are told to do, not just listen or hear, means that there's an active opening of heart, mind, and will to the message. The implication is that while messages must come from authorized sources, our task as receivers is to convert the symbols into an actionable contribution to our understanding, feeling, and motivation.
As Saussure's lectures on general linguistics establishes, communication presupposes at least two interlocutors (a sender and a receiver), a message, and a shared code, and as Grice adds, there must be a cooperative principle orienting interpretation or else the message received will not be the one intended. This verse insists on all of the above. The message sender is God, who can use proxies and various forms as vehicles for His Word. The receiver is us, and whether through human intermediaries or mediated by the various forms verbal communication can take (audible, textual), we must incline our faculties of interpretation with humble attitudes in order to accept the divine messages. The code we share is the language used.
I find it heartening to know that God adapts his message through codes as part of His design to increase understanding and obtain the goal of everyone "speaking" for the Lord. He spoke to Adam in Adamic, Moses in Egyptian, Isaiah in Hebrew, and to Peter in Aramaic. And while I don't think this principle means He is equally pleased with both King James early modern English and the latest Gen Z slang "translation," it does mean that His messages are not arcane, not meant to be inaccessible, not so far beyond the common tongue that there are educational barriers to understanding.
But that also does not mean that the messages are shallow or lack complexity.
Notice the structure of this section, punctuated and broken down into verse for us after the fact, contains very few independent propositions, but rather includes multiple embedded clauses and other kinds of complex sentence structure. It takes effort to unpack. And I think that's the model for all scripture--it's given to us in understandable form, but the meaning we wring from it is a function of both our effort and our initiation. In fact, it's also a function of our faith: our lived experience heeding and hearkening to what light we have received.
The above image is a common depiction of the Annunciation. Many medieval and renaissance era artists depicted the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove aiming at the ear, not the womb of Mary as the angel Gabriel revealed to her that she would bear the Son of God. The unbelieving poke fun at the idea of a virgin birth, and literalists poke fun at the concept of conception through the tympanic membrane rather than in the usual manner. But these depictions, like all words, are symbolic--sometimes symbolic on multiple levels at once. Just as the Holy Ghost enters only metaphorically through the ear, so the language of the Lord is aimed at our emotion, our reason, and our will, and enters only through our embodied faculties of reception.
Yes, the Being of perfection, or omniscience and omnipotence doesn't compel understanding, even though He could, and even though the behaviors thus motivated would accord with His will more certainly and universally. Instead, this Father adapts to maximize our growth toward Him, which is less about crossing an information gap between us and Him as it is about choosing to take growth steps and beginning what part of the crossing we can begin.
Hearkening has to include effort, but He also makes efforts to be understandable. And since all symbolic communication improves with initiation, the invitation is to learn more about the symbols. Don't just assume that since you are a reader of English your study of the Doctrine and Covenants will transparently grant you the fathoming of all of the Lord's depths.
The dove aimed at Mary's ear to "conceive" of the Savior has another layer--a contrast--that enhances understanding. Eve listened to the serpent and sin was brought into the world. Contrasting Eve and Mary, the serpent and Christ, holiness and sin, the choice to accept temptation versus the choice to accept blessing, all in a single image element draws out multiple facets of the Savior's character and roles. It allows us to identify with new aspects of the avatars for all of us. It allows us new gratitude for the magnitude of Christ's atoning sacrifice.
I hope, in the same way, that as we open our minds and hearts to learning new symbolic entry-points into scripture, our hearkening and gratitude will be continuously drawn toward improvement, toward matching, as best our imperfect selves are able, His model.
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