The setting is described with unusual care. The people come up to the temple by families, pitch their tents with the doors turned toward the building, and stay in them to hear, because the assembly is too large to fit inside. A tower is raised for the king, and when even that proves insufficient the address is written out and circulated to those beyond the range of his voice. The scene runs to several days and ends in a mass covenant.
The address itself moves through three arguments. It opens with an accounting of kingship: the king declares that he has not taxed the people, has laboured with his own hands for his keep, and has not permitted slavery, and he sets that record against the burden a self-serving ruler places on those he governs. It turns from there to the position of the creature before its creator, arguing that a debt which can never be discharged is the honest description of the human situation, and that the only response available is service. The third movement reports an angelic visit and states what the angel is said to have declared about a redeemer to come, his mother, his suffering and his atonement.
Within Latter Day Saint reading the discourse is treated as the fullest statement of the movement's understanding of grace and works held together, because it insists both that the debt cannot be repaid and that service is nevertheless required. The phrase about being in the service of one's fellow beings while in the service of God is quoted more often than any other line in the Book of Mormon, and appears routinely in the movement's welfare and missionary teaching.