Alma 3: The Amlicites Marked Themselves, and Nobody Made Them
"So is it true that your book says dark skin is a punishment?" Ravi asked it Thursday, right after our standup ended, with his camera still on and his coffee halfway to his mouth. He sits two seats from me on the payments team, and he'd been reading a thread somewhere that quoted Alma 3:6 with the rest of the chapter cut off.
I said I'd get back to him. I'd been planning to read Alma 3 anyway. It turns out to be the one chapter where Mormon explains what he means by the mark, and he does it twice, in two different directions, so I've read it several times since Thursday with Ravi's question next to it. This is what I'm going to tell him.
What does Alma 3 say the curse was?
Verse 6 says the skins of the Lamanites were dark, as a plain fact about how they looked, and I'm not going to tell you it means something else.
But the same verse says what that mark was: "a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren." A thing they did comes first and the consequence second. Verse 8 gives the purpose in one long sentence, and the worry in it is "incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction." Traditions. Beliefs handed down that pull a people away from the commandments.
Verse 10 says whoever "suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites was called under that head, and there was a mark set upon him." The label goes to a person who went along, whatever his parents were. Verse 11 is the same thing turned over, and the Nephites are whoever "would not believe in the tradition of the Lamanites" and kept the records and the commandments.
Even the original pronouncement to Nephi, quoted in verse 14, has a door in it. The Lamanites are separated from Nephi's seed "except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them."
And what about verse 9?
Ravi would find verse 9 on his own in about four minutes, so it gets its own section. It says "whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed," and verse 15 repeats it with the Lord saying he will set a mark upon "him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren." Those are about descent and marriage. I won't pretend otherwise and I don't think the chapter asks me to.
What I can say is what the chapter hangs those verses on. Verse 8 says the separation was so the people "might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions," so the stated danger is belief, and it's sitting right above the verse about mingling. Then verse 10 puts the same mark on a man who simply follows the Lamanites, with no marriage mentioned. I take the chapter to be using one word for two overlapping things, who your people were and whose teaching you'd taken up, and Mormon seems to care far more about the second. Where I'd stop is saying anything more than that about verse 9, because I don't think I've got more than that.
Why did the Amlicites paint their own foreheads?
Verse 4 says the Amlicites "had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites," and then adds "nevertheless they had not shorn their heads like unto the Lamanites." I laughed at that the first time. They'd copied the paint and kept the haircut, which sounds like a uniform assembled by a committee that ran out of time. Verse 5 lists what the Lamanites wore into a fight, shorn heads and skin girded about the loins and bows and arrows and stones and slings and so forth, and a man on the Nephite side of that river needed to see who was coming at him. Red on the forehead was a practical choice for anyone who wanted to be counted on the other side.
They weren't Lamanites.
Amlici was a Nephite who got himself made king over his own followers (Alma 2:10), and verse 11 of that chapter says his people "were distinguished by the name of Amlici, being called Amlicites." What that rebellion cost is counted in Alma 2, and chapter 3 opens with the burying.
Now look at Mormon's sentence in verse 13. He says the Amlicites "also had a mark set upon them," and before the clause is even over he corrects himself: "yea, they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads." That reads to me like an editor catching his own passive voice.
Verse 18 says they "knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God" when they did it, and the curse comes down because "they had come out in open rebellion against God." The red paint was how that showed from across a river. Then comes the sentence the chapter has been walking toward:
Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation.
Alma 3:19
Mormon has been describing two peoples at once and here he widens it to every man. Whatever he meant by the Lamanite curse back in verse 6, he's put it under this sentence too.
What do I do with 2 Nephi 5 and the people who used these verses badly?
I wouldn't smooth it over, because the chapter says what it says and 2 Nephi 5:21 is harsher still, where Nephi writes that the Lord "did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." Plenty of people in my own church have used these verses to say things about living people, and a good deal of that was wrong. The seminary manual for this chapter says the mark and the curse are two separate things and that the Church "unequivocally condemns racism." That's the sentence I'd want in the mouth of anyone who has to read verse 6 aloud.
Then I'd go to 2 Nephi 26:33, twenty-one chapters after the first. The Lord "denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female," and "all are alike unto God." Nephi wrote both passages and they're hard to hold side by side, and the second is the one I'd build on.
Alma 23 tells it from the other end, where the converted Lamanites took a new name, Anti-Nephi-Lehies, "and were no more called Lamanites," and verse 18 says "the curse of God did no more follow them." Nothing there mentions anyone's skin.
The last eight verses
The Nephites bury their dead and throw the Lamanite and Amlicite dead into the Sidon, where "their bones are in the depths of the sea, and they are many" (v. 3). The talk about marks that comes after reads differently once you've stood at that riverbank.
He closes with wages. A second Lamanite army comes in and Alma stays behind "afflicted with a wound" (v. 22) and sends a large army instead, and the war is over by the end of the fifth year of the judges. Verse 27 ends on "every man receiveth wages of him whom he listeth to obey," which is verse 19 again as bookkeeping. If you want the same idea from the start of this stretch, Alma 1 has Nehor.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the mark and the curse in Alma 3?
The mark is the part you can see, and for the Lamanites verse 6 says it was dark skin, while for the Amlicites it was red on the forehead. The curse is what came from rebellion, and the Church's seminary manual describes it as being cut off from the presence of the Lord. Verse 18 keeps them apart too, since the Amlicites put on the mark and the curse fell on them because of the rebellion behind it.
Were the Amlicites Lamanites?
No, they were Nephites who followed Amlici, who was made king over them in Alma 2:10. They joined the Lamanite army and copied the red paint, but verse 4 says they didn't copy the shaved heads.
Did the Lamanites' skin change when they repented?
The text doesn't say, and I'd be guessing if I answered. Alma 23:17-18 tells you the converted Lamanites took a new name and that the curse stopped following them. That's all it claims.
What do I say when somebody asks about verse 6?
Read it without dodging, then read verses 10, 11 and 19 out loud, because they're what the chapter says about how people get sorted. Add 2 Nephi 26:33 and say plainly that the Church condemns racism. If they ask something you can't answer, tell them that too.
If you're going to read Alma 3 with anyone this week, read verse 6 and keep going. Verse 11 and verse 19 are only a few lines further down.
— D.