Alma 14: The Charge in Verse 5 Matches Zeezrom's Summary

Alma 14:5 reads like a charge sheet, and most of us skim a charge sheet the way we skim terms of service. The people of Ammonihah testify before the chief judge that the two men reviled the law, the lawyers and the judges. Then comes a charge that doesn't fit the list: that Alma and Amulek said there was one God, and "that he should send his Son among the people, but he should not save them." You'd expect a crowd to hold something nastier against a pair of preachers than that, and the wording kept nagging at me until I went looking for it in Alma 11, where it turned out to be sitting in the wrong order from how I'd have guessed.

Verse 35 comes before verse 36

The scene is Zeezrom questioning Amulek, a few verses at a time. In 11:34 he asks whether the Son of God "shall save his people in their sins," and Amulek answers, "I say unto you he shall not, for it is impossible for him to deny his word." Then Zeezrom turns to the people and sums it up for them: "he said there is but one God; yet he saith that the Son of God shall come, but he shall not save his people" (11:35).

Compare that with 14:5. One God, a Son who will be sent, and the Son won't save them. The three words "in their sins" are gone from Zeezrom's summary, and they're gone from the crowd's testimony three chapters later.

Amulek caught it right away, and his very next words are "Behold thou hast lied," and he goes on to say that "he cannot save them in their sins," because "no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven" (11:36-37). So the correction is on the record, in the same scene, right after the summary. What the crowd repeats in Alma 14 is the version Amulek had just called a lie and not the version he put in its place. The chapter never says where the crowd picked it up. Zeezrom is the obvious candidate, since he said it to the people, but that's a guess, and the text doesn't make the connection for us.

I wrote about the start of that scene in Alma 11, where Zeezrom opens by offering six onties of silver. The anger in 14:2 is "because of the plainness of his words unto Zeezrom," which are in Alma 12.

Zeezrom's reaction comes one verse after the charge. He is "astonished at the words which had been spoken," and he knows "concerning the blindness of the minds, which he had caused among the people by his lying words" (14:6). He gets very little time to sit with it.

And it came to pass that he began to cry unto the people, saying: Behold, I am guilty, and these men are spotless before God.

Alma 14:7

The people ask him, "Art thou also possessed with the devil?" and spit on him and cast him out. The same verse says they cast out "all those who believed in the words which had been spoken by Alma and Amulek" and sent men to throw stones at them. He isn't having a good chapter.

Alma says no to Amulek

People brace for verse 8, where they brought wives and children together, and "whosoever believed or had been taught to believe in the word of God" went into the fire, and so did "their records which contained the holy scriptures." Alma and Amulek are taken out to the place of martyrdom to watch, still tied up.

Amulek is "pained" by it, and he asks the question most of us would ask: "How can we witness this awful scene?" Then he proposes the fix. "Let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames" (14:10).

Alma's answer is the longest speech in the scene. Here it is whole.

The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.

Alma 14:11

Three reasons are in there, and they come in this order: the Lord receives them in glory, the Lord permits it because of the hardness of the people's hearts so that his judgments will be just, and their blood will stand as a witness at the last day. Alma gives no fourth reason.

Alma 8:31 says these two "had power given unto them" and "nevertheless they did not exercise their power until they were bound in bands and cast into prison." In verse 10 Amulek is bound but not yet in prison, and the power does turn up in prison on the twelfth day of the tenth month (14:23-25). Alma's reasons in verse 11 never mention any of this, so 8:31 doesn't explain him. It's still a curious bit of timing.

Then Amulek says, "perhaps they will burn us also," and Alma answers, "Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not" (14:12-13). Amulek is the one who worries out loud. Alma seems to have worked out the answer before anyone asked.

Four times they are told to prove it

After the bodies and the records are consumed, the chief judge comes and stands in front of the two men, strikes them and tells them they "had not power to save those who had been cast into the fire," and that God didn't save them either "because they were of thy faith." Then he asks, "What say ye for yourselves?" (14:14-15) and gets no answer (14:17). That one is a verdict with a question mark on the end, and the demands that follow are plainer. Three days into prison, many lawyers, judges, priests and teachers come to question them and get nothing (14:18). The judge asks why they don't answer and says he has the power to deliver them "unto the flames" (14:19). The next morning the judge hits them again and a crowd joins in with the question that has been hanging around the whole chapter: "If ye have such great power why do ye not deliver yourselves?" (14:20). The cords stay on, and food, water and clothes are withheld "for many days" (14:22). They are tied up, hungry and without clothes and the instruction is still to free themselves.

By verse 24 the chief judge has attached a condition to the demand and says, "If ye have the power of God deliver yourselves from these bands, and then we will believe that the Lord will destroy this people according to your words." Verse 25 says they "all went forth and smote them, saying the same words, even until the last," and "when the last had spoken unto them the power of God was upon Alma and Amulek, and they rose and stood upon their feet."

In verse 26 Alma prays, and the prayer is short: "How long shall we suffer these great afflictions, O Lord? O Lord, give us strength according to our faith which is in Christ, even unto deliverance." The cords break. The people start to flee, but they are so afraid that they fall down before they reach the outer door. The earth shakes, the walls are "rent in twain," and the chief judge and the lawyers, priests and teachers who had been hitting the two men are killed when the walls come down (14:26-27). Alma and Amulek walk out of it unhurt, "for the Lord had granted unto them power, according to their faith which was in Christ" (14:28).

Set verse 15 beside verse 28 and the judge's own phrase turns up again, since he said the believers burned because they were "of thy faith," while the chapter says the power came "according to their faith which was in Christ." That doesn't make faith a fire door, since the people in the fire were believers too and verse 8 says so.

The judge's deal in verse 24 was that he'd believe the Lord would destroy the people if the two men freed themselves. Alma 16:1-2 has the Lamanite armies coming into Ammonihah about four months later, and 16:9 says "every living soul of the Ammonihahites was destroyed." The judge was not among them, having died when the prison fell.

Nehor's order, and a feverish Zeezrom in Sidom

Verse 16 slips in a line about the judge: he "was after the order and faith of Nehor, who slew Gideon." The chapter doesn't stop to explain who Nehor was. Alma 1:9 does, and it says Nehor drew his sword and killed old Gideon because "Gideon withstood him with the words of God." That is the order the judge belonged to, and it says plenty about the cheek-slapping.

The people who were thrown out in verse 7 didn't all die. Alma 15:1 finds them in Sidom, where they had been "cast out and stoned." Zeezrom is there too, lying "sick at Sidom, with a burning fever," because "he supposed that Alma and Amulek were no more" and "that they had been slain because of his iniquity" (15:3). He had been carrying the deaths of two men who were alive and walking toward him. When they arrive he asks to be healed, and Alma asks whether he believes in the power of Christ unto salvation. Zeezrom says yes (15:6-9).

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the chief judge in Alma 14?

He isn't named. The only thing verse 16 says about him is that he was "after the order and faith of Nehor," so he was a follower and not the man himself. Nehor was put to death back in Alma 1:15.

Which scriptures were burned?

Verse 8 says "their records which contained the holy scriptures," and that's the extent of it. If somebody tells you which books they were, ask them which verse they got it from.

How long were Alma and Amulek in prison?

There are three markers and no total. Three days passed before the lawyers and priests came (14:18), then "many days" of mockery and hunger (14:22), then the twelfth day of the tenth month, when the chief judge and the teachers and lawyers came to the prison (14:23). Add them up if you like and you'll still be guessing.

Is Alma 14:11 saying God wanted the women and children to die?

Look at the order in the verse. Alma says first that the Lord "receiveth them up unto himself, in glory," and then that "he doth suffer that they may do this thing," meaning he allows it, and then that their blood will "cry mightily against them at the last day." He said all of that with the fire still burning, to a man who wanted to put it out.

Read Alma 11:34-37 with Alma 14:5 open next to it, and read the two as a pair. Then keep going past verse 29, because Zeezrom's story isn't finished and Alma 15 has more of it.

— D.