Alma 21: Seven Questions for Aaron, and One Back

The Amalekite who stands up in the synagogue in Alma 21 asks seven questions. Four are in verse 5 and three are in verse 6, and the three in verse 6 all begin the same way: "How knowest thou." Aaron's reply is one question of his own, in verse 7. The man answers that with three sentences in a row that start "We do not believe," and only then does the chapter have Aaron say what he had come to say.

I got a small version of this once outside a bakery in Diadema, waiting on a bus with my companion on a gray morning. A man in a work shirt with a company patch on the pocket asked where my proof was. Before I'd finished the first sentence of my answer he asked who was paying for us, and then why God would send two kids in white shirts to his neighborhood when his brother-in-law had been out of work since March, and then something about the Pope that I missed because the bus was pulling in. He got on. The bakery had just put out its trays, so my companion bought two rolls and we ate them standing there, and he spent the rest of the walk sure the man had said Pope when he meant a soccer player.

Why does Aaron answer with a question in verse 7?

The four questions in verse 5 split down the middle. Two are about Aaron: what is it that he has testified, and has he seen an angel. Two are about the Amalekites: why don't angels appear to them, and aren't these people as good as Aaron's people? In verse 6 Aaron's own warning, "except we repent we shall perish," comes back as three "How knowest thou" questions about what he could possibly know of their hearts. Then the man points at what they've done: "we have built sanctuaries, and we do assemble ourselves together to worship God." The verse ends on a statement, "We do believe that God will save all men."

Here is the whole of Aaron's reply:

Now Aaron said unto him: Believest thou that the Son of God shall come to redeem mankind from their sins?

The chapter records no answer to the angel questions or to the three "How knowest thou" questions, and what Aaron does is take the man's word, God, and ask about the Son of God. I notice that move because Ammon opens the same way in Alma 18, with "Believest thou that there is a God?" in verse 24 and "Believest thou" again in verses 26 and 28. I wrote about how he built those questions on the king's last answer two weeks ago. The difference is that the king answered every one of them, including the one where he said he didn't know what the word meant.

This man doesn't answer that way. What comes back in verse 8 is three sentences that begin "We do not believe," and none of them says yes or no to the Son of God coming. The first is "We do not believe that thou knowest any such thing." The last takes in the fathers on both sides: he doesn't believe his fathers or Aaron's knew what they were talking about when they spoke of what is to come. He says what he doesn't believe Aaron knows, which is where he'd been standing since verse 5.

The nearest thing to an answer to any of the seven comes in verse 9, and it answers the first one, "What is that thou hast testified?" Aaron "began to open the scriptures unto them" on four things: the coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, that there could be "no redemption for mankind save it were through the death and sufferings of Christ," and "the atonement of his blood." The result takes one sentence in verse 10. They were angry with him and began to mock him and would not hear.

What happens after the mocking?

Aaron leaves the synagogue, goes to a village called Ani-Anti, and finds Muloki there preaching, along with Ammah and his brethren. They "contended with many about the word" (verse 11). Then they see the people harden their hearts, so they leave for Middoni, where they preach to many and "few believed on the words which they taught" (verse 12). Then verse 13: Aaron and a certain number of his brethren are taken and cast into prison, and the rest flee into the regions round about.

Who took them, and on what charge, the chapter doesn't say. Prison runs through verses 13 to 15 and what happened inside gets a clause: "suffered many things," in verse 14. The same verse has them delivered "by the hand of Lamoni and Ammon" and fed and clothed, and verse 15 says they were delivered "for the first time out of prison" and that they had suffered.

What stopped me was the first half of verse 15, "And they went forth again to declare the word." Again, after the mocking and the prison and the few who believed. In verse 16 they go out "whithersoever they were led by the Spirit of the Lord," and the places it names are "every synagogue of the Amalekites" and every Lamanite assembly "where they could be admitted." That last phrase means some doors stayed shut. The Amalekite synagogue is also the kind of room verse 10 happened in, and the verse sends them back into every one.

Then "the Lord began to bless them," many came to the knowledge of the truth, and they "did convince many of their sins, and of the traditions of their fathers, which were not correct." Traditions is the man's word from verse 8, where he called what Aaron brought "these foolish traditions." Nine verses on it comes back naming the fathers' own, and I find it hard to read verse 17 without hearing verse 8.

What does Lamoni say is free, and where does it stop?

The last six verses go back to Ishmael. Ammon and Lamoni return from Middoni to "the land of their inheritance," and Lamoni won't let Ammon serve him or be his servant (verse 19).

Lamoni has synagogues built and his people gathered, and then he rejoices over them and teaches them many things and tells them they are a free people, "free from the oppressions of the king, his father." The grant behind that is in Alma 20, and I wrote about the road to Middoni in the Alma 20 post last Thursday. In Alma 20:26 the father says Lamoni may keep his kingdom "from this time and forever," and that he will "govern him no more," which he says after Ammon has raised his sword. Alma 21:21 puts it as a grant too: "his father had granted unto him that he might reign over the people who were in the land of Ishmael, and in all the land round about." So the freedom Lamoni announces rests on something his father gave him.

Verse 22 is the one I keep going back to:

And he also declared unto them that they might have the liberty of worshiping the Lord their God according to their desires, in whatsoever place they were in, if it were in the land which was under the reign of king Lamoni.

The liberty is wide, "according to their desires" and "in whatsoever place they were in," and the same sentence puts its edge where you can see it, at the border of one man's reign, and moves on. A grant with its border written in is how I'd describe it.

I set the next two things side by side myself, since the chapter doesn't. The Amalekites have built synagogues, and their man says in verse 6 that they assemble to worship God. Lamoni in verse 20 has synagogues built and his people made to assemble. Same buildings, same gathering. The hearing is where they differ. In verse 10 they "would not hear the words which he spake." In verse 23 Ammon exhorts the people daily, "with all diligence," and they "gave heed unto his word." The Amalekites, verse 4 adds, built theirs "after the order of the Nehors," and verse 20 gives Lamoni's no order at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Jerusalem in Alma 21 the one in Judea?

Nothing in the chapter says so, and verse 1 says only that it was called Jerusalem by the Lamanites, "calling it after the land of their fathers' nativity," and verse 2 says the Lamanites, Amalekites and people of Amulon had built it. It sits next to the borders of Mormon, and the chapter says nothing more about where.

Why was Aaron put in prison?

Verse 13 says he and some of his brethren "were taken and cast into prison," and that's the sentence. No charge, no captor named. The chapter gives a time and a place, which is Middoni after a few believed, and leaves the reason out.

Is "We do believe that God will save all men" the same as what Nehor taught?

Verse 4 says many of the Amalekites and Amulonites were "after the order of the Nehors," and Alma 1:4 says Nehor testified "that all mankind should be saved at the last day." The wording is close enough, and with many of them "after the order of the Nehors" I'd say it's the same teaching, though Alma 21 never names Nehor as the source of the man's line.

Did Lamoni give his people full freedom to worship?

Wide, but with the boundary in the verse. Alma 21:22 says "in whatsoever place they were in, if it were in the land which was under the reign of king Lamoni." Inside his land, according to their desires. Outside it, the verse is silent.

The water dish for the hens had a skin of ice on it this morning, and Penny stood there looking at it until I tapped it out with the heel of my hand.

— D.