Alma 16

Where we are

Alma 16 is one of the Book of Mormon's most disquieting chapters. A great city, warned at length by Alma and Amulek, refused the warning — and in a single day, every soul in it is dead. The chapter does not flinch from naming what happened: the Lamanites came in upon the wilderness side, slew the people, destroyed the city, took captives from the borders of Noah, and were gone before the Nephite armies could be raised against them. By the time Zoram leads the Nephite force across the Sidon to retrieve the captives, the city of Ammonihah is already a heap of unburied dead.

The chapter is also the Book of Mormon's clearest text on what the Lord does with the rest of the land while one city is being judged. The same Spirit that has been withdrawn from Ammonihah is poured out on everyone else. The temples and sanctuaries and synagogues fill with worshippers. Angels appear to wise men. Many things look forth for the coming of Christ. Judgment on the rejector and preparation of the receiver happen in the same historical stroke.

The chapter has four movements:

1. The destruction of Ammonihah in a single day and the Lamanite captive-taking (vv. 1–3).
2. The revelation to Zoram and the interception at Sidon (vv. 4–8).
3. The renaming of the land as the Desolation of Nehors (vv. 9–11).
4. The preaching tour of Alma, Amulek, and many others, with the editorial note on the coming of Christ (vv. 12–21).

Four verses carry most of the weight:

1. v. 2 — the Lamanites came in upon the wilderness side, into the borders of the land, even into the city of Ammonihah.
2. v. 9 — thus in one day was the great city Ammonihah destroyed.
3. v. 11 — the land was called the Desolation of Nehors.
4. v. 16 — the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men… at the time of his coming.

The destruction of Ammonihah in a day (verses 1–3)

And it came to pass in the eleventh year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, on the fifth day of the second month, there having been much peace in the land of Zarahemla, there having been no wars nor contentions for a certain number of years, even until the fifth day of the second month in the eleventh year, there was a cry of war heard throughout the land. — Alma 16:1

The verse is dated to the day. Mormon will give other dates in the Book of Mormon — the fourth day of the seventh month, the fifth day of the second month — and the pattern is the same one Ezekiel uses (in the fifth year, in the fifth day of the month, Ezek. 1:1). The Lord's mighty acts are not myth; they happen in real time, on particular calendar dates, and the editor refuses to round those dates off.

The verse also pairs the date with peace. There having been much peace in the land of Zarahemla, there having been no wars nor contentions for a certain number of years. The peace is the precondition; the cry of war breaks into it. The Book of Mormon's clearest pattern of judgment is the one in which the alarm comes during peace. Joel will say the same thing: blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh (Joel 2:1). When the cry of war comes during the years of peace, the cry is the Lord's alarm.

And it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites had come in upon the wilderness side, into the borders of the land, even into the city of Ammonihah, and began to slay the people and destroy the city. — Alma 16:2

The direction of the attack matters. The Lamanites come upon the wilderness side. They are coming in from the direction no one was watching. The pattern repeats throughout scripture: judgment comes from the place no one was guarding. Joshua's ambush at Ai (Josh. 8:14) follows the same logic — the Israelites drew the defenders out of the city, and then the city fell from behind. Ammonihah's defenses, whatever they were, were on the wrong side.

The verse is also a direct fulfillment of Alma 9:18: I say unto you that the time shall come, yea, and it shall be at the door, that except ye repent he shall come out unto you, and visit you with utter destruction. The door has opened. The visitor has come.

And now it came to pass that before the Nephites could raise a sufficient army to drive them out of the land, they had destroyed the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, and also some around the borders of Noah, and taken others captive into the wilderness. — Alma 16:3

The judgment is faster than the defense can be mustered. The verse is one of the Book of Mormon's clearest texts on the speed at which the Lord's withdrawal of protection becomes the enemy's opportunity. Lamentations 2:21 catches the same speed: the young and the old lie on the ground in the streets… thou hast killed, and not pitied. There is no time for the Nephite armies to ride out before Ammonihah is dust.

Captives are carried away as well. The Lamanite practice of carrying off Nephites into the wilderness has been the story arc of Mosiah 7–23; here it happens again. The Lord allows it — but he does not abandon the captives, and the next paragraph shows what he does about them.

The revelation to Zoram and the interception (verses 4–8)

Therefore those who were in the borders of Noah, who had gone forth desirous to know whither their wives and their children, and also their brethren, who had been taken captive by the Lamanites, were carried into the wilderness; and the name of him who was appointed the chief captain over the Nephites was Zoram, and he had two sons, Lehi and Aha — now Zoram and his two sons, knowing that Alma was high priest over the church, and having heard that he had the spirit of prophecy, therefore they went unto him and desired of him to know whither the Lord would that they should go into the wilderness in search of their brethren, who had been taken captive by the Lamanites. — Alma 16:4–5

The chief captain's name is Zoram. He is not the Zoram of 1 Nephi 4 (Laban's servant, taken into the Lehite camp by oath), but the name is the same — the same covenant-name of the man who bound himself by oath to Lehi's family. His two sons are named Lehi and Aha. The naming is load-bearing. The Nephite chief captain is a man whose household carries the names of the founding camp. The Book of Mormon's clearest text on the Nephite military leader as covenant-keeper is this verse.

What Zoram does is also worth seeing plainly. He does not march on his own intelligence. He goes up to the high priest first. The pattern is one David will later use: David inquired of the Lord through the priest Abiathar with the ephod (1 Sam. 23:9–12). When the Lamanites had taken captives out of Israel, David did not move until he had asked. Zoram is doing the same thing in the Nephite eleventh year of the judges — and the chapter teaches, by example, what the civic leader is supposed to do when the war breaks.

And it came to pass that Alma inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And Alma returned and said unto them: Behold, the Lamanites will cross the river Sidon in the south wilderness, away up beyond the borders of the land of Manti. And behold there shall ye meet them, on the east of the river Sidon, and there the Lord will deliver unto thee thy brethren who have been taken captive by the Lamanites. — Alma 16:6

The revelation is tactical and exact. Four elements: where the Lamanites will go (south wilderness, beyond Manti), where they will cross (the river Sidon), where Zoram should meet them (east of the river), and what the Lord will do (deliver the captives). Elisha will give Israel the same kind of revelation two centuries later: Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down (2 Kings 6:9). The prophet tells the king the very place of the enemy's movement.

This is the founding pattern for what will become the standing arrangement between Nephite commander and prophet through the Alma–Helaman war chapters. Captain Moroni will ask Alma where to march (Alma 43:23). Helaman will rely on Nephite priests for revelation in the campaign of the stripling warriors. The pattern starts here.

And it came to pass that Zoram and his sons crossed over the river Sidon, with their armies, and marched away beyond the borders of Manti into the south wilderness, which was on the east side of the river Sidon. And they came upon the armies of the Lamanites and the Lamanites were scattered and driven into the wilderness; and they took their brethren who had been taken captive by the Lamanites, and there was not one soul of them had been lost that were taken captive. And they were brought by their brethren to possess their own lands. — Alma 16:7–8

Not one soul lost. The phrase will reappear when Jesus describes his own work: of those which thou gavest me have I lost none (John 18:9, echoing John 6:39). The good shepherd recovers every captive. Zoram, acting on revelation, recovers every captive. The pattern is the same one — and the Nephite chief captain, in this brief episode, is functioning as a type of the shepherd Christ will later be.

The Desolation of Nehors (verses 9–11)

And thus ended the eleventh year of the judges, the Lamanites having been driven out of the land, and the people of Ammonihah were destroyed; yea, every living soul of the Ammonihahites was destroyed, and also their great city, which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness. But behold, in one day it was left desolate; and the carcases were mangled by dogs and wild beasts of the wilderness. — Alma 16:9–10

The verse names the city's particular sin: which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness. The pride of the great city is the pride of Babel — the assumption that scale equals security. The Book of Mormon's clearest text on the divine answer to that assumption is this one. In one day it was left desolate. Revelation will use exactly the same phrase of Babylon: therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her… for in one hour is thy judgment come (Rev. 18:8, 10). The pattern is one day for the great city, in both visions.

The bodies mangled by dogs and wild beasts of the wilderness is a deliberate echo of the Mosaic covenant curses. Deuteronomy 28:26 promises an Israel that has broken the covenant: thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth. Jeremiah 7:33 repeats it. The chapter is telling us, in unsoftened language, that the Mosaic covenant curses are not rhetorical. They land. They landed here. The Ammonihahites had broken the covenant by adopting the order of Nehor, and the curse fell on them in the exact form Deuteronomy had described.

And their lands remained desolate; and the bodies of the slain were heaped up upon the earth and they were covered with a shallow covering. And now so great was the scent thereof that the people did not go in to possess the land of Ammonihah for many years. And it was called Desolation of Nehors; for they were of the profession of Nehor, who were slain; and their lands remained desolate. — Alma 16:11

The land is renamed by what happened on it. The Book of Mormon often does this — Achor, Ramah, Bountiful, Cumorah — but here the naming is unusual. The land is not named for a person or a feature; it is named for a religious profession. The Desolation of Nehors. The order of Nehor came in with Nehor's execution in Alma 1; it had its full flowering in Ammonihah's lawyers; it ends as a place-name on a piece of unusable land. Jeremiah 22:18–19 says something similar of Jehoiakim: he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. The wicked are buried as their works deserve.

The shallow covering and the scent are not gratuitous detail. They tell us that no one was willing to do the work of proper burial. The Lamanites left. The Nephites would not come. The bodies stayed where they fell, and the land became, for as long as anyone could remember, the smell of a covenant broken.

Preaching after the destruction (verses 12–21)

The narrative now picks back up. The Nephites return home. The land has peace. Alma and Amulek begin a preaching tour that runs the length of the Nephite cities, and the editorial pace slows down to describe what is happening across the whole country.

And it came to pass that Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance to the people in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews. — Alma 16:13

The verse gives us three tiers of Nephite religious architecture: temples (the major sanctuaries, plural because there are several Nephite cities, each with its central sanctuary — see Nephi's temple at 2 Nephi 5:16), sanctuaries (lesser holy places), and synagogues. The qualifier which were built after the manner of the Jews is the load-bearing one. The Nephites had synagogues, and their synagogues were built in the Jewish form. This is a contested datum in secular scholarship, which has often assumed synagogues are a post-exilic Jewish invention. The Book of Mormon attests Jewish-style synagogues in the Western hemisphere in the second century BC — synagogues whose form already existed in the Lehite tradition when Lehi left Jerusalem around 600 BC. Luke 4:16 will record Jesus walking into one in Nazareth and reading the scroll. Alma and Amulek are walking into the same kind of building, generations earlier, on the other side of the world.

And the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming — — Alma 16:16

The chapter's quietest doctrinal claim, and one of its largest. The Lord pours out his Spirit on all the face of the land — not only on the believers, not only at the temple, but on everyone — to prepare their minds and hearts. The verse is one of the Book of Mormon's clearest pre-Joel articulations of the Joel 2:28 promise (I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh), the same verse Peter will cite at Pentecost (Acts 2:17–21). It is, in fact, the Book of Mormon's clearest pre-Christian text on what Christians often assume began only at Pentecost: a general outpouring of the Spirit on a whole people.

And the purpose of that outpouring is stated. The Spirit is preparing them at the time of his coming. The Lord did not wait until Bethlehem to begin preparing his people. He began preparing them in the Nephite cities a hundred years out — and the chapter is willing to say so.

Many things did they teach which cannot be written; nevertheless they did teach with much plainness; and they did declare unto the people that the prophets had spoken concerning the coming of the Son of God; and they did teach much concerning his death and resurrection; and many things did look forth for the coming of Christ. — Alma 16:19

The verse contains three explicit doctrinal items the Nephite priests are teaching: that the prophets had spoken concerning the coming of the Son of God, that he would die and rise again, and that many things looked forth to that coming. This is full Christology, eighty years before Bethlehem. The reach of the Book of Mormon's gospel is here at its widest. The Nephites are not waiting on shadow and type; they are teaching the death and resurrection of the Son of God by name.

The verse also contains the most striking phrase: many things did look forth, for the coming of Christ. Hebrews 11:13 will later say of the Old Testament saints that they all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them. The Nephite saints of Alma 16 are doing the same thing — seeing the coming of Christ afar off, and embracing it.

And angels did appear unto men, wise men, and did declare unto them glad tidings of great joy; thus in this year the scriptures began to be fulfilled. — Alma 16:20

The angelic ministry mirrors the angel's words to the shepherds outside Bethlehem: I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people (Luke 2:10). The Christmas evangelium — glad tidings of great joy — is already being preached, by angels, to wise men in the Nephite cities, eighty years before the manger. The phrase men, wise men even anticipates Matthew 2's wise men from the east. The Book of Mormon is telling us that the wise men of Matthew were not the only wise men, and that the glad tidings reached Lehi's people through the same angelic agency. The good news is older and wider than Christians often remember.

The chapter's architecture

Four movements. The destruction. The revelation and the rescue. The renaming. The preaching and the outpouring.

The chapter's two halves rebuke any reading of the Lord that is purely judgment or purely mercy. The first half is the Lord destroying one city in one day. The second half is the same Lord pouring out his Spirit on every other city, sending angels to wise men, and preparing the whole land for the coming of his Son. Both halves are him. Both halves are the same season. The Book of Mormon's clearest texts on the simultaneity of judgment and mercy include this chapter.

The chapter is also worth reading for what it teaches about the relationship between a prophet and a chief captain. Zoram does not ride before he asks. Alma does not answer before he inquires. The Lord gives the answer in tactical detail. The army moves. Every captive is recovered. This is the founding pattern for the relationship between Nephite military and Nephite priesthood that will hold through the entire war narrative of Alma 43–62. The Book of Mormon's clearest text on what civic leadership looks like when it submits to revelation is this short episode at Sidon.

Finally, the chapter is the textual hinge between the Ammonihah arc and the Sons of Mosiah arc. The narrative has just closed the story of Alma and Amulek's mission to the Nehorite cities. Alma 17 will open with Mormon's flashback to the Sons of Mosiah, who have been preaching to the Lamanites for fourteen years at the same time. The two stories belong together — judgment on the Nehorite city and mercy on the Lamanite house — and Mormon is structuring his history so that the reader sees them side by side.