Alma 10: Amulek Fixes His Own Story, Then Gets Called a Liar

Still in Ammonihah, and I'm going to walk past the lawyers for a minute, because the sentence in this chapter I'd least want to lose is in the middle of verse 5. Amulek has spent three verses on his credentials: a family line back to Joseph in Egypt, a name people know, money he made himself. Then he says he never knew much about the ways of the Lord. Halfway through the next sentence he takes it back, in front of everyone, with no lead-in at all.

I said I never had known much of these things; but behold, I mistake, for I have seen much of his mysteries and his marvelous power; yea, even in the preservation of the lives of this people.

Why does Amulek correct himself in verse 5?

He tells them in verse 4 that he's a man of no small reputation among all those who know him, and "know him" is the phrase to watch, since these are people who have had years to see how he lived. Standing up and saying he knew more than he let on costs him something with the exact crowd he just spent a verse impressing, and he does it anyway.

There's no cushion afterward. In verse 6 he admits he was called many times and wouldn't hear, he knew these things and still wouldn't know them, and he went on rebelling until the fourth day of this seventh month, which is to say recently enough that most of his listeners saw it happen. What he offers as evidence is short: an angel told him to go home and feed a prophet (verse 7), he went, and the man he found on the way is the one who has been speaking to them (verse 8). Then come three verses of one house, one visitor and a blessing on his kindred, vouched for by a man who has just shown he'll change his own account when it's wrong. In verse 12 the people begin to be astonished, "seeing there was more than one witness." I can't prove the correction in verse 5 is part of why that landed.

It is the first thing in his speech that costs him anything.

What were the lawyers after?

A contradiction, and verse 13 says as much when it reports that some of them thought to question Amulek and Alma "that by their cunning devices they might catch them in their words," and verse 16 narrows it to Amulek, so that he might "make him cross his words, or contradict the words which he should speak." Nobody in that room wants an answer. They want two sentences that don't fit together.

Amulek perceives their thoughts in verse 17 and he is not gentle about it: a wicked and perverse generation, lawyers and hypocrites, laying traps and snares to catch the holy ones of God. By verses 20 and 21 he has moved past the lawyers to the whole city, and he tells them the Lord cries through his angels for repentance and promises to come down among his people with equity and justice in his hands. That is a great deal to pour over a crowd that came to hear a man talk about an angel and a houseguest.

The people get angrier in verse 24 and say he reviles "our laws which are just, and our wise lawyers whom we have selected." Amulek stretches out his hand in verse 25 and asks why Satan has such a hold on their hearts, and then in verse 26 comes the sentence I'd set next to verse 5.

For behold, have I testified against your law? Ye do not understand; ye say that I have spoken against your law; but I have not, but I have spoken in favor of your law, to your condemnation.

Now look at verse 28, which lands right on top of it, where the people cry out that he's a child of the devil, "for he hath lied unto us; for he hath spoken against our law. And now he says that he has not spoken against it."

Between them they've done the lawyers' work, because in their ears he said one thing and then said the opposite, which is the contradiction verse 16 was waiting on. What they leave out is "to your condemnation," where the whole sentence turns, because he's saying the law read straight convicts the people holding it. Maybe they heard it and maybe they didn't. The verse only shows what they repeat. His own complaint in verse 27 names the men and says nothing against any statute. The foundation of destruction, he says, is beginning to be laid by the unrighteousness of the lawyers and the judges. In verse 24 the crowd had already folded "our laws" and "our wise lawyers" into one grievance, so an attack on one sounds like an attack on the other.

In verse 30 the lawyers put it into their hearts that they should remember these things against him.

Who picked the lawyers, and what did they get out of it?

Verse 14 says the lawyers were hired or appointed by the people to administer the law at trials, and verse 15 says they were learned in all the arts and cunning of the people so that they might be skilful in their profession. The cunning goes on the list of qualifications.

Then verse 32, the last verse of the chapter, which is short and flat: "Now the object of these lawyers was to get gain; and they got gain according to their employ." Zeezrom comes in just before it in verse 31, foremost to accuse, one of the most expert, with "much business to do among the people." The text says gain followed employ. It doesn't say what the employ was, so I'm not going to tell you how many trials it took.

What I notice is the order. In verse 24 the crowd calls the lawyers wise and says it selected them, and in verse 32 the narrator tells us what the lawyers were there for. The people defending them are defending their own hiring, and Amulek's turn to Mosiah in verse 19, about a people governed by their own voices, goes right at that. Alma put hard questions to a whole congregation back in Alma 5, but those were questions for people willing to answer. Here nobody is.

I once wrote a postmortem that gave the wrong time for a deploy, caught it the next morning and sent the correction to the same thread. Two people thanked me.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Amulek's conversion happen all at once?

The angel came on one day, and verse 8 has him obeying and going home. Verse 6 says he was called many times before that and wouldn't hear. So the saying yes was fast, but he'd been saying no for a while.

Why does Amulek list his ancestors in verses 2 and 3?

He names Giddonah, Ishmael and Aminadi, the man who interpreted the writing on the temple wall that was written by the finger of God. Then he runs the line back through Nephi and Lehi to Manasseh and Joseph who was sold into Egypt. My guess is he wants the crowd to know he isn't an outsider. The chapter doesn't say how they took it.

What does verse 22 mean about the prayers of the righteous?

Amulek says that without the prayers of the righteous in the land, the people would be visited with utter destruction right now, by famine and pestilence and the sword, though not by a flood like Noah's. Verse 23 says that if they cast the righteous out, the Lord will stop holding back. It's an uncomfortable verse for a city to be told, and he tells it anyway.

Who is Zeezrom?

Verse 31 names him as one of the lawyers, the foremost to accuse Amulek and Alma. That's all this chapter gives us about him, and he's back in the next one.

Verse 25 has Amulek asking why they'd hand themselves over to Satan, and verse 28 has the crowd answering by calling him a child of the devil. Neither side budges. So here's the question I'd like answered, from anyone who's been there. You stood up and corrected your own account in front of people who knew the first version, and then somebody used the correction against you. What did you do next?

— D.