Alma 17: Seventeen Verses on the Road Before the Fight

Most of what gets said about Alma 17 is about the arms. I understand why. Verse 37 has a sword and a line of men with clubs, verse 39 has a delivery to the king, and nobody forgets that part. But the fight itself runs from verse 34 through verse 38, five verses out of thirty-nine, and the chapter spends more than three times that on a road, a refusal, a prayer and a parting at a border.

Where does the story of the sons of Mosiah really start?

It doesn't start at verse 1, which is a meeting on a road between men who each had somewhere to be. Alma is walking south from Gideon toward Manti and, "to his astonishment," runs into the sons of Mosiah going the other way, toward Zarahemla. Verses 2 through 5 are Alma taking stock of what he's looking at: men who had searched the scriptures, who had prayed and fasted, who had been teaching among the Lamanites for "the space of fourteen years." Then verse 5 adds that they "had many afflictions" and names three of them, hunger, thirst and fatigue, plus "much labor in the spirit."

Verse 6 opens with "Now these were their journeyings," and the chapter goes back to the beginning. They had taken leave of their father in the first year of the judges. They had refused the kingdom he wanted to give them, and the verse adds "also this was the minds of the people," which is an awkward little clause that tells you the people didn't want it either. If you count fourteen years from the first year of the judges, you land close to where Sunday's post on Alma 16 stopped, since Alma 16:21 ends in the fourteenth year. That count is mine. The chapter doesn't do it for us.

The leaving itself is in Mosiah 28, where Mosiah asks the Lord whether to let his sons go and the Lord says to let them. Alma 17:6 gives the refusal of the kingdom from the sons' side. A word on the name, since it trips people. This Ammon is not the one who found Limhi in Mosiah 7. That man is "a descendant of Zarahemla" (Mosiah 7:3) and leads a party of sixteen.

The part of this stretch I'd slow down for is what the Lord says when they ask for his Spirit. In verse 10 it's two words, "Be comforted," and then comes this:

Go forth among the Lamanites, thy brethren, and establish my word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls.

Alma 17:11

Look at what it asks for, which is patience and good examples, and at what it promises, which is an instrument and not a victory. They had gone out with swords, spears, bows, arrows and slings, and verse 7 gives the purpose as "that they might provide food for themselves while in the wilderness." The Lord's instructions say nothing about fighting anyone.

Verse 14 then describes the people they were going to as "a wild and a hardened and a ferocious people," and verse 16 gives the reason for going anyway: "that perhaps they might bring them unto repentance." The word perhaps appears twice in that one verse. I take it as the sons telling you how little they were counting on.

Why didn't Ammon take the king's daughter?

By verse 17 each of them has gone "every man alone." Verse 19 follows Ammon to the land of Ishmael, named for the sons of Ishmael "who also became Lamanites." The chapter doesn't say whether this is the family of Lehi's Ishmael, so I won't. Lamanites seize him on the way in and bind him "as was their custom to bind all the Nephites who fell into their hands." He's carried to the king, whose name is Lamoni, and it is left to the king's "pleasure" whether to kill him, hold him, jail him or send him off.

The king asks one question, whether Ammon would like to live among the Lamanites or among his own people. Ammon says he would like to stay "for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die." There's the "perhaps" again. The king is pleased, has the cords taken off and offers him one of his daughters. Ammon answers in seven words: "Nay, but I will be thy servant."

The chapter gives no reason for it. What comes next is the assignment, to watch the king's flocks with the other servants, and that's all.

I thought of a woman named Louise Abernathy when I got to that verse. She was a principal engineer at a company I worked for before this one, and I knew her mostly from hallway nods. A friend of mine was on the payments team she was told to help. Their paging setup woke somebody up most nights for alerts nobody could do anything about, and she had the rank to rewrite the rules in an afternoon. She asked instead to be added to the on-call rotation like everybody else. Six weeks of carrying the pager. She answered the same useless pages the rest of them did, at the same hours, and didn't mention fixing anything until near the end of week five. When her proposal went up it deleted nine alert rules and rewrote three, and my friend says nobody argued, because she had been woken at ten past three by every one of them.

I can't tell you Ammon had anything like her reasons. The chapter never says he had a plan at all. The text gives the order of events and nothing under it: he refused the marriage and took the flocks, and three days later he was at the water.

What does Alma 17 say Ammon was thinking at the water of Sebus?

Verse 26 puts him at the water of Sebus "after he had been in the service of the king three days," driving flocks with the king's servants to the place "all the Lamanites drive their flocks." A group of Lamanites who had been watering their own flocks stood up and scattered the king's. The servants started to weep, and verse 28 tells us why, in their own words: "Now the king will slay us, as he has our brethren because their flocks were scattered by the wickedness of these men."

That isn't an exaggeration, as it turns out. Alma 18:6 says Lamoni "had slain many of them because their brethren had scattered their flocks at the place of water." The servants were afraid of something that had already happened to people they knew.

Now to the verse I'd read twice. It reports what Ammon felt, and it isn't what you'd expect from a man standing next to a group of crying, frightened men.

Now they wept because of the fear of being slain. Now when Ammon saw this his heart was swollen within him with joy; for, said he, I will show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me, in restoring these flocks unto the king, that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe in my words.

Alma 17:29

So he feels joy, and the plan is to show his power and win their hearts. Verse 30 closes the thought with a flat sentence, "these were the thoughts of Ammon," and verse 31 says he "flattered them by his words." The chapter's own word is flattered. It doesn't tell us whether it approves of the joy, the plan or the flattery, and it doesn't defend him or condemn him. I find that more believable than a tidier version would be, a man doing a good thing for a mixed set of reasons and the record just writing down the mix.

As for the fight, I'd keep to what the verses say. The men at the water "did not fear Ammon," verse 35 says, because "they knew not that the Lord had promised Mosiah that he would deliver his sons out of their hands." That promise is in Mosiah 28:7: "I will deliver thy sons out of the hands of the Lamanites." It was given before the sons ever left. Ammon slings stones, the men come with clubs, and he cuts off the arms that are lifted against him. Verse 38 does the arithmetic: "six of them had fallen by the sling, but he slew none save it were their leader with his sword." Six and the leader make seven, which is the number Ammon himself gives the king in Alma 18:16. The arms go to the king "for a testimony" (v39), and the chapter ends there with the flocks watered and the servants walking in.

One more piece of the setting that I didn't see until I read ahead. Alma 18:7 says it was the practice of these Lamanites to stand at the waters of Sebus and scatter people's flocks so they could drive off the strays, "a practice of plunder among them." The water was a spot where flocks got stolen, and the king's servants had been getting killed for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Ammon the leader of the sons of Mosiah?

Verse 18 says he was "the chief among them, or rather he did administer unto them," and that second half is a correction the writer makes mid-sentence. I'd take it as a man who was looked to more than he was put in charge. That's my reading of a clause, and the verse doesn't go further.

Did the sons of Mosiah all go to the same place?

No, because verses 13 and 17 have them separating at the border and going "every man alone," and verse 19 follows only Ammon, to the land of Ishmael. Alma 17 doesn't tell us where the others went. Verse 13 says they planned to meet again "at the close of their harvest," and the chapter leaves it there.

Does king Lamoni believe by the end of Alma 17?

He doesn't. Chapter 17 ends with the arms laid in front of him. In Alma 18 he first takes Ammon for the Great Spirit, and only after Ammon teaches him from the creation forward does verse 40 say "the king believed all his words." I wouldn't read that backward into Alma 17.

Why were the Lamanites scattering the king's flocks?

Alma 17 doesn't say, but Alma 18:7 does, and it gives plunder as the reason, since scattered animals could be driven off. That also explains the servants' fear in 17:28, which looks different once you know it happened to people before them.

Reading it this week

If you read the chapter this week, read the first five verses on their own and then stop. Take the next twelve, verses 6 through 17, as a separate piece, and go slowly, because that is where the preparation happens and it is the part most of us skip on the way to the sling. Read the water of Sebus after that, with the prayer and the "perhaps" still in your head.

— D.