Jacob 4:14

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14 But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.

Quotes for Discussion

Joseph Fielding McConkie explains the phenomenon of looking beyond the mark which was prevalent among the Jewish intellectuals:

“So rigid did the literal and ceremonial become that righteousness was overshadowed by legalism and salvation became the reward for outward conformity. Pharisaism and scholasticism ruled supreme. God himself was said to spend three hours a day in the study of law.

‘All liberty of thought was abrogated; all Gentile learning was forbidden; no communion was allowed with the human intellect outside the Pharisaic pale. Within the circle of Rabbinism the Jew was ‘the galley-slave of the most rigid orthodoxy.’ The yoke of the Romans was not so exacting as that of the Rabbis, which dominated over a man's whole existence and intruded itself into the most trivial actions of life. The weak were tortured by the knowledge that they could not so much as wash their hands or eat a meal without running the risk of deadly offences. The ‘ordination’ of the Rabbis made them oracles for every subject and every action, from the cleaning of the teeth to the last prayer in which the dying commended their souls to God.’ (Farrar, Frederic W. History of Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1961., pp. 60-61.)

‘The hedge was made; its construction was regarded as the main function of Rabbinism; it excluded all light from without and all egress from within; but it was so carefully cultivated that the shrine itself was totally disregarded. The Oral Law was first exalted as a necessary supplement to the Written Law; then substituted in the place of it; and finally identified with the inferences of the Rabbis.’ (Farrar, Frederic W. History of Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1961., p. 62.)” (Joseph Fielding McConkie, Gospel Symbolism, pp. 217-8)

Neal A. Maxwell

“Jacob speaks of ancient Judah as having rejected the words of its prophets…Intellectual embroidery seems to have been preferred to the whole clothing of the gospel—the frills to the fabric. In fact, one can even surmise that complexity was preferred over plainness by some because in conceptual complexity there might somehow be escape, or excuse, for noncompliance and for failure. In any event, this incredible blindness which led to the rejection of those truths spoken by prophets and which prevented the recognition of Jesus for who he was, according to Jacob, came ‘by looking beyond the mark.’ Those who look beyond plainness, beyond the prophets, beyond Christ, and beyond his simple teachings waited in vain then, as they will wait in vain now. For only the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us of things as they really are and as they really will be. There is more realism in the revelations than in reams of secular research, for secularism is congenitally shortsighted. Without revelation and its absolute anchors, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would also follow the fads of the day, as some churches have done; but as Samuel Callan warned, the church that weds itself to the culture of the day will ‘be a widow within each succeeding age.’ This is but one of the marks of the ‘true and living’ Church: it is spared the fruits of faddism” (“On Being a Light,” address delivered at the Salt Lake institute of Religion, 2 Jan. 1974, p. 1 as taken from the 1981 Book of Mormon Institute Manual, p. 131)