Mosiah 29: The Two Verses About Judging the Judges

The part of Mosiah 29 that does the real work is verses 28 and 29, and the chapter's reputation rests on verse 26 instead. Choosing judges by the voice of the people is the famous bit. What you do when a judge turns out to be wrong is the bit somebody had to sit down and figure out.

I have a small reason for thinking so, which is a pull request I opened two winters ago against the retry logic in our refunds service. About 400 lines, and a reviewer approved it seven minutes after I posted it. He's a careful engineer who trusted me, and most days he'd have been right to. The change double-posted a refund whenever a request timed out and then retried. A reconciliation job caught it in staging at two in the morning, and nobody read the bad line until that job's report told us where to look.

Who judges the judges in Mosiah 29?

And now if ye have judges, and they do not judge you according to the law which has been given, ye can cause that they may be judged of a higher judge. If your higher judges do not judge righteous judgments, ye shall cause that a small number of your lower judges should be gathered together, and they shall judge your higher judges, according to the voice of the people. (Mosiah 29:28-29)

Read slowly, the higher judges get judged by a handful of the lower ones, which turns the ladder partway upside down, and nobody sits at the top with the last word. The one doing the causing in both verses is "ye", meaning the people. Mosiah did ask for wise men back in verse 11, and verses 28 and 29 are what he wrote for the day the asking doesn't work.

Why not just keep a good king?

In verse 13 Mosiah concedes the best point against himself, saying that if you could always have kings like his father Benjamin, "then it would be expedient that ye should always have kings to rule over you." Kings as a class don't come in for blame. His reason follows three verses later, "because all men are not just" (verse 16).

The weight of the argument sits in verses 21 through 23. You can't remove an iniquitous king "save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood", because he has "his friends in iniquity" and keeps "his guards about him." Noah is his example in verse 18 ("remember king Noah"), and Mosiah's account of the damage is the one the people have heard secondhand from Limhi's group. So the case against kings turns out to be a case about what it costs to correct one, and the case for judges is that correcting a judge has a procedure and doesn't need a war.

"I will be your king the remainder of my days," he says in verse 11, so nothing gets handed over on the spot and the judges are appointed alongside him. The old system keeps running while the new one gets set up, which is the kind of cutover plan I've seen sensible people write and seldom seen anyone follow.

The people did have a candidate, since they asked for Aaron (verse 2) and verse 3 says Aaron had gone up to the land of Nephi and none of Mosiah's sons would take the kingdom. Mosiah then spends verses 7 through 9 on why he won't just name somebody else: he fears contentions, and he worries that his son "to whom the kingdom doth belong" might turn angry and draw away part of the people, or later "claim his right to the kingdom." Even with a willing heir, he sees a war coming over the succession. The sons' departure is set up in Mosiah 28, and in verse 40 the people love Mosiah "beyond measure" for not acting like a tyrant. He used that standing to argue himself out of the job.

Is "the voice of the people" a safe bet?

The verse people underline is 26.

Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people. (Mosiah 29:26)

I'd point at the first half, where Mosiah says it is not common for the people to want something wrong, and that's a claim about usually. Verse 27 then gives the failure case outright: "if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity", the judgments of God come. He built the system to run on an assumption and wrote down what happens when it fails.

It didn't take long to fail, because Alma 2 opens in the fifth year of the judges with a cunning man named Amlici working to be made king. The vote goes against him (Alma 2:7). His followers gather and "consecrate Amlici to be their king" anyway (Alma 2:9), and the first day's fighting leaves more than six thousand Nephites dead (Alma 2:19). So the voice of the people did what Mosiah said it would, and the trouble came from the people who lost and wouldn't accept it. Chapter 29 has nothing to say about them.

I don't think it pretends to.

Alma, and what his father handed him

Verse 42 is the one I'd slow down on.

"Alma was appointed to be the first chief judge, he being also the high priest, his father having conferred the office upon him." Two offices are in that sentence, and they came by different roads. The people appointed judges by casting in their voices (verses 39 and 41). What the father conferred was the church office, along with the charge over its affairs.

This Alma is the one from Mosiah 27, who as a young man "did speak much flattery to the people" and led many of them "to do after the manner of his iniquities" (Mosiah 27:8). He is also the one who, after the angel, "began from this time forward to teach the people" (Mosiah 27:32), and who told them he had been "born of God" (27:28). Verse 43 of our chapter says he walked in the Lord's ways, "and there was continual peace through the land." The people were picking a man who had already been through the worst of it.

The last verses leave the new system alone and record two deaths, Alma's father dies at eighty-two, Mosiah at sixty-three after thirty-three years as king, and verse 47 closes on "the days of Alma, who was the founder of their church." That Alma is the elder, and I find it a little moving that the chapter about replacing a king ends on a funeral.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a democracy?

No, or at least I wouldn't use the word, since the chapter doesn't. What it has is a voice of the people, a ladder of judges and a way for the lower ones to judge the higher. People like to map it onto whatever government they know, and I'd leave that alone and read what Mosiah wrote.

Did Alma stay both chief judge and high priest?

For a few years. In Alma 4:4 he's still baptizing as the high priest, and by Alma 4:16 he has picked Nephihah, "a wise man who was among the elders of the church", and given him power "according to the voice of the people." Nephihah is appointed chief judge in verse 17, so the man who started the judgment seat is also the one who hands it on.

What were the sons of Mosiah doing instead?

Mosiah 27:35 has them traveling the land of Zarahemla to repair the injuries they'd done to the church. Mosiah 28 is where they leave for the Lamanites, and I'd read it for their side, since the chapter we're on never says why they refused.

What I'd like to hear

Mosiah gives the lower judges a job nobody likes, which is telling someone above them they got it wrong. Who plays that part where you are, in a ward or an office or a house? Have you ever watched them do it well, and if so, what did it look like?

— D.