Gospel Doctrine Class Notes for Mosiah 7-11
Posted: Sat May 26, 2012 4:47 pm
Here, at the sufferance of the board generally and Shades particularly, are my notes for Sunday school class covering Mosiah 7-11. I am a bit late in the posting due to an unusually hectic past week.
All the Best!
--Consiglieri
__________________________
Mosiah 7 begins with King Mosiah sending a search party to see what on earth happened to the small group of Nephites who went up to the land of Lehi-Nephi.
This picks up the thread from Omni 1:29-30 where we initially read about this group, which went up under the reign of the original King Mosiah. There has been a King Benjamin since, and a new King Mosiah. It has been three generations and this group has vanished off the face of the earth as far as the people in Zarahemla are concerned.
(It might be worthwhile to note that later on we will encounter a group of people with the name Anti-Nephi-Lehi which may hearken back to the original name of this land/city, although the geographical name will shortly be shortened just to the land of Nephi.)
The text is now going to leave the people in Zarahemla for fifteen chapters while we go in search of this group of people who went up to Lehi-Nephi and find out what they have been doing during the three generations since they left. The story in Zarahemla will resume in Mosiah 22:13-14, although the text will at that point embark on another flashback narrative to account what happened to Alma and his people.
This begins the complicated and interwoven stories that constitute the bulk of the Book of Mosiah. There are flashbacks within flashbacks and groups within groups, all of which is not easy to follow without a lot of concentration (and for me, repeated readings), and maybe a pen and paper to diagram the action.
I think it fair to say that most Mormons have difficulty understanding the circles within circles of this story, which to me is suggestive. If it is hard to follow the ins and outs of the plot just reading it, I expect it took a great deal of intelligence and plotting to put it together in the first place, and yet the text manages to pull off this tour-de-force without a hitch. Here we have Book of Mormon narrative at its most complex, indicating a thoroughly competent (and even expert) author behind the work.
But back to the story, the Zarahemla party travels forty days before they find the land of Nephi. (7:4) The text says they “wandered many days in the wilderness,” so it is likely they didn’t travel a straight line, which is understandable given the fact that nobody is still living who would know how to get back to the fatherland. If we shave off ten days for wandering and make it thirty days of travel in a straight line, more or less, and if we give an average of 15-20 miles per day in travel, we might guesstimate that the two lands are around 450-600 miles apart.
This group from Zarahemla ends up being taken captive by the king’s guard and introduced to the current king, Limhi, who immediately tells them that he is the son of Noah, who was the son of Zeniff (the one who left Zarahemla initially).
Limhi is super happy to meet these guys because, for reasons we will find out later, he appears to have thought they were all dead. Limhi calls a general conference of his people in a manner echoing what King Benjamin did when he gave his speech.
Limhi “sent a proclamation among all his people that thereby they might gather themselves together to the temple to hear the words which he should speak to them.” (7:17)
This sounds a lot like Mosiah 2:1, where Mosiah (son of Benjamin) “made a proclamation throughout all the land; that the people gathered themselves together throughout all the land, that they might go up to the temple to hear the words which King Benjamin should speak unto them.”
Limhi gives a rousing speech filled with themes of deliverance, invoking the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt (7:19) and also the deliverance of the Nephi and his family from Jerusalem (20). This makes sense because he is really hoping for deliverance for himself and his people from the Lamanites.
He then recounts what has happened to his people, and how they got into this jam, by agreeing with the Lamanites to inherit this land of Nephi, but that after this the Lamanites brought them into subjection by degrees and now tax them ½ of everything they make. By this time, there have been many of their brethren slain, and they have fallen into iniquity.
These points are all interesting because we know none of this yet in the text, but the details will be fleshed out later on during the flashback sequence, and we will find that this is exactly what is reported. In other words, the parts that follow will be flashbacks to the past which have not yet occurred in the narrative. And yet what Limhi describes here as already having happened will indeed be what we find in the subsequent narrative is what occurred.
Without mentioning Abinadi’s name, Limhi gets mores specific, saying that among his people’s iniquities which he feels brought them into this awful mess is the fact that they slew a prophet of the Lord, who prophesied of the coming of Christ—that Christ was God, the Father of all things, that he should take up him the image of man, and that God should come down among the children of men and take upon himself flesh and blood and go forth upon the face of the earth—and that this is the reason his people had put this prophet to death. (7:26-28)
It will not be until chapter 15:1 that we get to the part Abinadi’s message referenced by Limhi: “I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men.”
This is pretty much an exact quote of what Limhi said was the reason his people killed this prophet, and will be quoted again by Noah when he says why they are going to kill Abinadi, “Abinadi, we have found an accusation against thee, and thou are worthy of death. For thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men.” (17:7)
This is a good example of the tight harmony of the stories in Mosiah. Even though we understand that the Book of Mormon was dictated by Joseph Smith with his face in a hat (to exclude light so he could see the seer stone/urim and thummim), and even though we understand that Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon page by page and line by line, it appears that the text knows with precision what will come later in the text, even though it occurs earlier in the Nephite history.
I can think of only a handful of reasons to explain this: (1) Joseph Smith was actually dictating an inspired manuscript; (2) Joseph Smith was working from a manuscript already in existence that was not inspired (though it would be hard to reference such a manuscript with one’s face in a hat); or, (3) Joseph had a memory and creative-dictating ability like nothing this world has ever seen.
Another point of interest is why the death penalty should be thought appropriate for somebody who taught that God should come to earth. This is the core message of Christianity, and yet the situation is set up in the Book of Mormon that, for some otherwise unexplained reason, this is one of the seven things you can’t say on radio. And Abinadi seems to know that saying this straight out is what will get him killed, which may account for his equivocating all over the place about the definition the Father and the Son in chapter 15. (But we will get to that later.)
Chapter 8 begins with the conclusion of Limhi’s speech, telling us we are given a severely abbreviated version of the original, he has Ammon get up and tell his side of the story about what has been going on in Zarahemla for the past three generations, concluding with the words King Benjamin gave the people. (8:3).
This tag-team speech between Limhi and Ammon began in the same way King Benjamin’s speech began, and now concludes the way King Benjamin’s speech concluded: “King Limhi dismissed the multitude, and caused that they should return every one unto his own house.” (8:4)
Benjamin’s speech, “he dismissed the multitude, and they returned, every one, according to their families, to their own houses.” (6:3)
The fact that the speeches of Limhi and Benjamin are framed at beginning and end the same way invites exploration of common themes between the two speeches, an invitation I will have to leave to others at this point as time does not permit me to investigate further here. At a minimum, the text intentionally equates the two speeches and, by implication, the two kings (Benjamin and Limhi).
The story now shifts to a private discussion between Limhi and Ammon, and we find out why it is that Limhi was so surprised and overjoyed to find out the Nephites were still alive—because he had sent a group out to search for them who got lost and stumbled upon a bunch of ruins and bones. It is possible Limhi never thought these were his kindred Nephites, but another people entirely. The text is not explicit in this regard. But it is also possible Limhi thought these were the Nephites and that they were all dead. Of course, by the time Limhi is recounting this, he knows that the Nephites are still alive by virtue of Ammon’s arrival, and so may spin what he says to indicate that he never really thought these were the Nephites, but another people entirely.
What we know from the text is that when Limhi meets Ammon and finds out the Nephites are still alive, he rejoices because “now I know of a surety that my brethren who were in the land of Zarahemla are yet alive.” (7:14) We also know that he sent 43 of his people out to find Zarahemla and they come upon a bunch of dead people. The connection was likely irresistible, though unthinkable, that all the other Nephites were dead and that Limhi was now alone with his people in the midst of the Lamanites.
Limhi says the group of 43 explorers brought back 24 gold plates with them which they can’t read and wants to know if Ammon can “translate” or know of anybody who can. Ammon tells him that King Mosiah has such a gift from God by virtue of “interpreters” in Mosiah’s possession. (8:13) A warning is given in the text, though, that “no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish.”
Though no specifics are given, one wonders whether buried treasure might be such a thing one should not use the interpreters to look for.
Then there is a lively discussion as to what constitutes a prophet, a revelator and a seer.
Mormons tend to jumble these terms all together so it is difficult to follow Ammon’s reasoning. It appears Ammon is using these titles to talk about the ability to see the future (a prophet) and the ability to see the past (a revelator). A seer, on the other hand, can see both future and past, and on top of that, can see hidden things and bring them to light, not to mention being able to translate unknown languages.
With this in mind, Ammon’s words make mores sense: “A seer is a revelator and a prophet also; . . . But a seer can know of things which are past (i.e., he is a revelator), and also of things which are to come (i.e., he is a prophet), and by them shall all things be revealed, or rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light.” (8:15-17)
Mormons are accustomed to sustaining the Twelve and the First Presidency as “prophets, seers and revelators,” but according to the Book of Mormon, this is redundant and could all be expressed with the one term, “seer.”
Even Joseph Smith, to whom is appended the fourth title of “translator” would find that title included in the term “seer,” as well. When you say “seer,” you’ve said it all. See?
When Ammon is done telling Limhi about Mosiah’s gift to translate, Limhi erupts in a praise of joy to God which contains what appears to be an allusion to ancient Hebrew wisdom literature, in which wisdom was considered to be female and the first creation of God who thereafter created all things. Mormons are accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the first creation of God who thereafter created all things. Just slip the female wisdom into Jesus’ role, and you will have a general grasp of what some ancient Hebrews believed.
Not to get off on a tangent, but Jesus was seen by many early Christians as fulfilling (and supplanting?) the role of the early female Wisdom. (“Wisdom is justified of all her children.” Remember?)
Getting back to the Book of Mormon, Limhi talks about how blind people can be to the doings of God, “for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them!” (8:20) Is “wisdom” an attribute or a person here? And if an attribute, why is wisdom referred to as a “she”?
Limhi ends his exclamation of gratitude about the existence of a seer who can translate the 24-gold plates at the end of chapter 8, and chapter 9 shifts abruptly to a first person account of Zeniff, the guy three generations back who had led the group from Zarahemla up to the land of Nephi.
We will not rejoin the narrative we just left between Ammon and Limhi until Mosiah 21:28, where it resumes right where it left off: “And now Limhi was again filled with joy in learning from the mouth of Ammon that King Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings; yea, and Ammon also did rejoice.”
This is remarkable. It looks as if whoever was putting this text together broke the storyline between Ammon and Limhi and dumped in the middle 13 chapters of flashback material to explain what had happened from the time of Zeniff down to Ammon, concluding the flashback with a second account of Limhi’s search party that finds the (Jaredite) plates (21:25-27), which leads naturally and seamlessly back into the conversation between Ammon and Limhi we left 13 chapters earlier. This narrative is a thing of beauty.
Going back to chapter 9 and the beginning of Zeniff’s record, we read about the first unsuccessful attempt of Zeniff’s party to go up to the land of Nephi from Zarahemla to possess the land and how everything blew up before they got there and they had to return to Zarahemla.
But this is the second telling of this story, too, as it was first told in Omni 1:27-28 in the third person. Zeniff says he is the one who caused the fracas among the Nephites in the wilderness because he “saw that which was good among [the Lamanites]” and “was desirous that they should not be destroyed.” (9:1) Both stories also recount how the second attempt was successful, or at least initially so.
It is interesting that Zeniff has this attitude toward the Lamanites, because Zeniff will be the one who (in the next chapter) gives a sympathetic rendering of Nephite history from the Lamanite point of view, saying three times how the Lamanites felt they were “wronged” by the actions of Nephi and the Nephites, and giving good reasons to support it. (10:11-18) It is only after the first person account of Zeniff ends (at 9:10) and the story shifts into third person, that the narrator immediately starts describing the Lamanites as “lazy” and “idolatrous.”
The condition of the Lamanites is something we might guess from Zeniff’s first person account shortly before, though Zeniff does not describe the Lamanites in a derogatory manner, but only what his band had to do to spruce up the place after they arrived. Zeniff describes the city of Nephi as being in disrepair when they arrived and received permission from the King to live there; they had to build building and repair the walls of the city and “begin to till the ground,” indicating this had not been done in a long time. (9:8-9) The text references two cities (Nephi and Shilom), each with walls that needed repair. One gets the impression of the Lamanites not being too concerned with building, keeping up walls or farming, but letting the city of Nephi they had inherited when the original Nephites split go into disrepair. But Zeniff seems to have only good things to say about the Lamanites, at least while he is writing in the first person.
Zeniff now echoes themes from the opening story of the Exodus in the Old Testament, where the children of Israel were allowed to settle in Egypt, but as they got more numerous, Pharoah started getting worried: “After we had dwelt in the land for the space of twelve years, that King Laman began to grow uneasy, lest by any means my people should wax strong in the land, and that they could not overpower them and bring them into bondage.” (9:11)
This begins a series of battles between the Lamanites and the Nephites, in which the Lamanites are the aggressors and get defeated twice. But then we come to King Noah in chapter 11, and everything goes downhill for the Nephites because of his wickedness, and that of his priests, and the wickedness he teaches the people to do.
11:8 mentions iron as a “precious thing,” which seems counterintuitive for a modern point of view.
11:11 mentions the seats built for the high priests (in the temple?) “which were above all the other seats,” making me think uncomfortably of general conference.
11:12 mentions a tower built for King Noah. Benjamin had a tower, too, but he used it to stand on and teach his people about the salvation of God. Noah seems to use his tower to play Yertle the Turtle, “a very high tower, even so high that he could stand upon the top thereof and overlook the land of Shilom, and also the land of Shemlon, which was possessed by the Lamanites; and he could even look over all the land round about.”
Now there is a third skirmish with the Lamanites in which the Nephites get the best of them (in spite of Noah’s wickedness) but this will be short-lived, especially since the Nephites boast they did it themselves, not recognizing the hand of God. (11:18-19).
Enter Abinadi, who gives a hearty call to repentance, but then disappears before King Noah can have him caught and killed. Abinadi is gone for two years before he returns at the start of chapter 12.
All the Best!
--Consiglieri
__________________________
Mosiah 7 begins with King Mosiah sending a search party to see what on earth happened to the small group of Nephites who went up to the land of Lehi-Nephi.
This picks up the thread from Omni 1:29-30 where we initially read about this group, which went up under the reign of the original King Mosiah. There has been a King Benjamin since, and a new King Mosiah. It has been three generations and this group has vanished off the face of the earth as far as the people in Zarahemla are concerned.
(It might be worthwhile to note that later on we will encounter a group of people with the name Anti-Nephi-Lehi which may hearken back to the original name of this land/city, although the geographical name will shortly be shortened just to the land of Nephi.)
The text is now going to leave the people in Zarahemla for fifteen chapters while we go in search of this group of people who went up to Lehi-Nephi and find out what they have been doing during the three generations since they left. The story in Zarahemla will resume in Mosiah 22:13-14, although the text will at that point embark on another flashback narrative to account what happened to Alma and his people.
This begins the complicated and interwoven stories that constitute the bulk of the Book of Mosiah. There are flashbacks within flashbacks and groups within groups, all of which is not easy to follow without a lot of concentration (and for me, repeated readings), and maybe a pen and paper to diagram the action.
I think it fair to say that most Mormons have difficulty understanding the circles within circles of this story, which to me is suggestive. If it is hard to follow the ins and outs of the plot just reading it, I expect it took a great deal of intelligence and plotting to put it together in the first place, and yet the text manages to pull off this tour-de-force without a hitch. Here we have Book of Mormon narrative at its most complex, indicating a thoroughly competent (and even expert) author behind the work.
But back to the story, the Zarahemla party travels forty days before they find the land of Nephi. (7:4) The text says they “wandered many days in the wilderness,” so it is likely they didn’t travel a straight line, which is understandable given the fact that nobody is still living who would know how to get back to the fatherland. If we shave off ten days for wandering and make it thirty days of travel in a straight line, more or less, and if we give an average of 15-20 miles per day in travel, we might guesstimate that the two lands are around 450-600 miles apart.
This group from Zarahemla ends up being taken captive by the king’s guard and introduced to the current king, Limhi, who immediately tells them that he is the son of Noah, who was the son of Zeniff (the one who left Zarahemla initially).
Limhi is super happy to meet these guys because, for reasons we will find out later, he appears to have thought they were all dead. Limhi calls a general conference of his people in a manner echoing what King Benjamin did when he gave his speech.
Limhi “sent a proclamation among all his people that thereby they might gather themselves together to the temple to hear the words which he should speak to them.” (7:17)
This sounds a lot like Mosiah 2:1, where Mosiah (son of Benjamin) “made a proclamation throughout all the land; that the people gathered themselves together throughout all the land, that they might go up to the temple to hear the words which King Benjamin should speak unto them.”
Limhi gives a rousing speech filled with themes of deliverance, invoking the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt (7:19) and also the deliverance of the Nephi and his family from Jerusalem (20). This makes sense because he is really hoping for deliverance for himself and his people from the Lamanites.
He then recounts what has happened to his people, and how they got into this jam, by agreeing with the Lamanites to inherit this land of Nephi, but that after this the Lamanites brought them into subjection by degrees and now tax them ½ of everything they make. By this time, there have been many of their brethren slain, and they have fallen into iniquity.
These points are all interesting because we know none of this yet in the text, but the details will be fleshed out later on during the flashback sequence, and we will find that this is exactly what is reported. In other words, the parts that follow will be flashbacks to the past which have not yet occurred in the narrative. And yet what Limhi describes here as already having happened will indeed be what we find in the subsequent narrative is what occurred.
Without mentioning Abinadi’s name, Limhi gets mores specific, saying that among his people’s iniquities which he feels brought them into this awful mess is the fact that they slew a prophet of the Lord, who prophesied of the coming of Christ—that Christ was God, the Father of all things, that he should take up him the image of man, and that God should come down among the children of men and take upon himself flesh and blood and go forth upon the face of the earth—and that this is the reason his people had put this prophet to death. (7:26-28)
It will not be until chapter 15:1 that we get to the part Abinadi’s message referenced by Limhi: “I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men.”
This is pretty much an exact quote of what Limhi said was the reason his people killed this prophet, and will be quoted again by Noah when he says why they are going to kill Abinadi, “Abinadi, we have found an accusation against thee, and thou are worthy of death. For thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men.” (17:7)
This is a good example of the tight harmony of the stories in Mosiah. Even though we understand that the Book of Mormon was dictated by Joseph Smith with his face in a hat (to exclude light so he could see the seer stone/urim and thummim), and even though we understand that Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon page by page and line by line, it appears that the text knows with precision what will come later in the text, even though it occurs earlier in the Nephite history.
I can think of only a handful of reasons to explain this: (1) Joseph Smith was actually dictating an inspired manuscript; (2) Joseph Smith was working from a manuscript already in existence that was not inspired (though it would be hard to reference such a manuscript with one’s face in a hat); or, (3) Joseph had a memory and creative-dictating ability like nothing this world has ever seen.
Another point of interest is why the death penalty should be thought appropriate for somebody who taught that God should come to earth. This is the core message of Christianity, and yet the situation is set up in the Book of Mormon that, for some otherwise unexplained reason, this is one of the seven things you can’t say on radio. And Abinadi seems to know that saying this straight out is what will get him killed, which may account for his equivocating all over the place about the definition the Father and the Son in chapter 15. (But we will get to that later.)
Chapter 8 begins with the conclusion of Limhi’s speech, telling us we are given a severely abbreviated version of the original, he has Ammon get up and tell his side of the story about what has been going on in Zarahemla for the past three generations, concluding with the words King Benjamin gave the people. (8:3).
This tag-team speech between Limhi and Ammon began in the same way King Benjamin’s speech began, and now concludes the way King Benjamin’s speech concluded: “King Limhi dismissed the multitude, and caused that they should return every one unto his own house.” (8:4)
Benjamin’s speech, “he dismissed the multitude, and they returned, every one, according to their families, to their own houses.” (6:3)
The fact that the speeches of Limhi and Benjamin are framed at beginning and end the same way invites exploration of common themes between the two speeches, an invitation I will have to leave to others at this point as time does not permit me to investigate further here. At a minimum, the text intentionally equates the two speeches and, by implication, the two kings (Benjamin and Limhi).
The story now shifts to a private discussion between Limhi and Ammon, and we find out why it is that Limhi was so surprised and overjoyed to find out the Nephites were still alive—because he had sent a group out to search for them who got lost and stumbled upon a bunch of ruins and bones. It is possible Limhi never thought these were his kindred Nephites, but another people entirely. The text is not explicit in this regard. But it is also possible Limhi thought these were the Nephites and that they were all dead. Of course, by the time Limhi is recounting this, he knows that the Nephites are still alive by virtue of Ammon’s arrival, and so may spin what he says to indicate that he never really thought these were the Nephites, but another people entirely.
What we know from the text is that when Limhi meets Ammon and finds out the Nephites are still alive, he rejoices because “now I know of a surety that my brethren who were in the land of Zarahemla are yet alive.” (7:14) We also know that he sent 43 of his people out to find Zarahemla and they come upon a bunch of dead people. The connection was likely irresistible, though unthinkable, that all the other Nephites were dead and that Limhi was now alone with his people in the midst of the Lamanites.
Limhi says the group of 43 explorers brought back 24 gold plates with them which they can’t read and wants to know if Ammon can “translate” or know of anybody who can. Ammon tells him that King Mosiah has such a gift from God by virtue of “interpreters” in Mosiah’s possession. (8:13) A warning is given in the text, though, that “no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish.”
Though no specifics are given, one wonders whether buried treasure might be such a thing one should not use the interpreters to look for.
Then there is a lively discussion as to what constitutes a prophet, a revelator and a seer.
Mormons tend to jumble these terms all together so it is difficult to follow Ammon’s reasoning. It appears Ammon is using these titles to talk about the ability to see the future (a prophet) and the ability to see the past (a revelator). A seer, on the other hand, can see both future and past, and on top of that, can see hidden things and bring them to light, not to mention being able to translate unknown languages.
With this in mind, Ammon’s words make mores sense: “A seer is a revelator and a prophet also; . . . But a seer can know of things which are past (i.e., he is a revelator), and also of things which are to come (i.e., he is a prophet), and by them shall all things be revealed, or rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light.” (8:15-17)
Mormons are accustomed to sustaining the Twelve and the First Presidency as “prophets, seers and revelators,” but according to the Book of Mormon, this is redundant and could all be expressed with the one term, “seer.”
Even Joseph Smith, to whom is appended the fourth title of “translator” would find that title included in the term “seer,” as well. When you say “seer,” you’ve said it all. See?
When Ammon is done telling Limhi about Mosiah’s gift to translate, Limhi erupts in a praise of joy to God which contains what appears to be an allusion to ancient Hebrew wisdom literature, in which wisdom was considered to be female and the first creation of God who thereafter created all things. Mormons are accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the first creation of God who thereafter created all things. Just slip the female wisdom into Jesus’ role, and you will have a general grasp of what some ancient Hebrews believed.
Not to get off on a tangent, but Jesus was seen by many early Christians as fulfilling (and supplanting?) the role of the early female Wisdom. (“Wisdom is justified of all her children.” Remember?)
Getting back to the Book of Mormon, Limhi talks about how blind people can be to the doings of God, “for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them!” (8:20) Is “wisdom” an attribute or a person here? And if an attribute, why is wisdom referred to as a “she”?
Limhi ends his exclamation of gratitude about the existence of a seer who can translate the 24-gold plates at the end of chapter 8, and chapter 9 shifts abruptly to a first person account of Zeniff, the guy three generations back who had led the group from Zarahemla up to the land of Nephi.
We will not rejoin the narrative we just left between Ammon and Limhi until Mosiah 21:28, where it resumes right where it left off: “And now Limhi was again filled with joy in learning from the mouth of Ammon that King Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings; yea, and Ammon also did rejoice.”
This is remarkable. It looks as if whoever was putting this text together broke the storyline between Ammon and Limhi and dumped in the middle 13 chapters of flashback material to explain what had happened from the time of Zeniff down to Ammon, concluding the flashback with a second account of Limhi’s search party that finds the (Jaredite) plates (21:25-27), which leads naturally and seamlessly back into the conversation between Ammon and Limhi we left 13 chapters earlier. This narrative is a thing of beauty.
Going back to chapter 9 and the beginning of Zeniff’s record, we read about the first unsuccessful attempt of Zeniff’s party to go up to the land of Nephi from Zarahemla to possess the land and how everything blew up before they got there and they had to return to Zarahemla.
But this is the second telling of this story, too, as it was first told in Omni 1:27-28 in the third person. Zeniff says he is the one who caused the fracas among the Nephites in the wilderness because he “saw that which was good among [the Lamanites]” and “was desirous that they should not be destroyed.” (9:1) Both stories also recount how the second attempt was successful, or at least initially so.
It is interesting that Zeniff has this attitude toward the Lamanites, because Zeniff will be the one who (in the next chapter) gives a sympathetic rendering of Nephite history from the Lamanite point of view, saying three times how the Lamanites felt they were “wronged” by the actions of Nephi and the Nephites, and giving good reasons to support it. (10:11-18) It is only after the first person account of Zeniff ends (at 9:10) and the story shifts into third person, that the narrator immediately starts describing the Lamanites as “lazy” and “idolatrous.”
The condition of the Lamanites is something we might guess from Zeniff’s first person account shortly before, though Zeniff does not describe the Lamanites in a derogatory manner, but only what his band had to do to spruce up the place after they arrived. Zeniff describes the city of Nephi as being in disrepair when they arrived and received permission from the King to live there; they had to build building and repair the walls of the city and “begin to till the ground,” indicating this had not been done in a long time. (9:8-9) The text references two cities (Nephi and Shilom), each with walls that needed repair. One gets the impression of the Lamanites not being too concerned with building, keeping up walls or farming, but letting the city of Nephi they had inherited when the original Nephites split go into disrepair. But Zeniff seems to have only good things to say about the Lamanites, at least while he is writing in the first person.
Zeniff now echoes themes from the opening story of the Exodus in the Old Testament, where the children of Israel were allowed to settle in Egypt, but as they got more numerous, Pharoah started getting worried: “After we had dwelt in the land for the space of twelve years, that King Laman began to grow uneasy, lest by any means my people should wax strong in the land, and that they could not overpower them and bring them into bondage.” (9:11)
This begins a series of battles between the Lamanites and the Nephites, in which the Lamanites are the aggressors and get defeated twice. But then we come to King Noah in chapter 11, and everything goes downhill for the Nephites because of his wickedness, and that of his priests, and the wickedness he teaches the people to do.
11:8 mentions iron as a “precious thing,” which seems counterintuitive for a modern point of view.
11:11 mentions the seats built for the high priests (in the temple?) “which were above all the other seats,” making me think uncomfortably of general conference.
11:12 mentions a tower built for King Noah. Benjamin had a tower, too, but he used it to stand on and teach his people about the salvation of God. Noah seems to use his tower to play Yertle the Turtle, “a very high tower, even so high that he could stand upon the top thereof and overlook the land of Shilom, and also the land of Shemlon, which was possessed by the Lamanites; and he could even look over all the land round about.”
Now there is a third skirmish with the Lamanites in which the Nephites get the best of them (in spite of Noah’s wickedness) but this will be short-lived, especially since the Nephites boast they did it themselves, not recognizing the hand of God. (11:18-19).
Enter Abinadi, who gives a hearty call to repentance, but then disappears before King Noah can have him caught and killed. Abinadi is gone for two years before he returns at the start of chapter 12.
