"Alma 19: The Queen Waits a Full Day on Ammon's Word"

The queen in Alma 19 reports on how her husband smells. Her husband has been on the bed for two days and two nights and the sepulchre is ready. Some people are saying he's dead and ought to be buried. She tells Ammon in verse 5 that "to me he doth not stink." It's an odd thing to find in scripture, and most of us read straight over it on the way to the part where everyone falls down.

On Wednesday a friend from the ward handed Melissa a jar of sourdough starter that had been in her fridge since August. There was gray liquid on top and a sharp smell. I was the one who opened it on our counter, and I said what the friend had said, that it was finished and we should throw it out. Melissa took the jar from me, fed it flour and water anyway and put it on top of the fridge with a rubber band at the line. Thursday morning I was home working and checked the band twice. It had moved a little, or I wanted it to. By Friday night nobody could say, and she told me to give it until Sunday.

What does the queen actually know in Alma 19?

She knows what the servants told her in verse 4, that Ammon is "a prophet of a holy God," and she hasn't seen anything herself. She has a husband who isn't decaying, a household that wants him buried, and a Nephite stranger who says he can tell her what is happening. After Ammon has been in to see the king, he gives her a promise with a date on it.

And she said unto him: I have had no witness save thy word, and the word of our servants; nevertheless I believe that it shall be according as thou hast said. And Ammon said unto her: Blessed art thou because of thy exceeding faith; I say unto thee, woman, there has not been such great faith among all the people of the Nephites. (Alma 19:9-10)

The date is in verse 8. He says the king "sleepeth in God, and on the morrow he shall rise again; therefore bury him not." Then verse 11 says she "watched over the bed of her husband, from that time even until that time on the morrow which Ammon had appointed."

The wait was from one hour to the same hour the next day.

She doesn't get to believe it for a minute and be done. She sits there a full day with the sepulchre ready, with the people who wanted him buried in the house. The text doesn't say what they said to her in that time. Ammon could be confident, since verse 6 says he knew Lamoni was under the power of God. The queen had no such view of things. Whatever she saw in the servants' account and in her own husband was enough to keep her at that bed, and Ammon's praise in verse 10 is for exactly that. He gives it before anything has happened.

And then the hour comes and it's over almost at once. Lamoni rises in verse 12 "according to the words of Ammon," holds out his hand to her and says he has seen his Redeemer. By the end of verse 13 he has sunk down again, and she has gone down with him.

Why does Abish run for the crowd, and what does it get her?

Verse 16 brings in a woman who is there when the servants go down. Abish is "one of the Lamanitish women," converted "for many years" because of a vision her father had, and verse 17 says she had "never" made it known. Now the servants have all fallen. The king and queen are down along with Ammon, and she is the one person left on her feet who knows what she's looking at. She goes out and runs "from house to house."

The verse gives her reasoning too, which is that "by beholding this scene" the people would believe in the power of God. It's a sensible plan and it goes badly. The crowd comes in verse 18, sees a Nephite lying beside their king, and starts to argue. Verse 19 has some of them saying the evil came on the king's house because he let a Nephite stay in the land. Verse 20 has others saying he brought it on himself by killing his servants at the waters of Sebus. Then the men who scattered the flocks at Sebus turn on Ammon for their dead brethren, and one of them draws a sword. By verse 22 he is dead.

After that the crowd stops pushing and starts working out what Ammon is. Verses 25 through 27 give them a Great Spirit, a messenger of the Great Spirit, a monster sent by the Nephites to torment them, and a Great Spirit punishing the Lamanites for their iniquities. These are the crowd's guesses. The Great Spirit in verse 27, the one that "had always attended the Nephites," is close to what Ammon told Lamoni in Alma 18:28, but here it is said as a threat. None of the guesses names Jesus, and the man who heard Ammon's account is lying on the ground.

If I were Abish, verse 28 is where I'd have wanted to leave. The chapter says she was "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto tears." She had gathered the crowd, and what it was doing was shouting.

All she does in verse 29 is go to the queen and take her by the hand, "that perhaps she might raise her from the ground." The queen stands and cries out, "O blessed Jesus, who has saved me from an awful hell! O blessed God, have mercy on this people!" In verse 30 the queen, still speaking, takes Lamoni by the hand and he gets up too. In verse 31 he goes out into the argument and teaches "the words which he had heard from the mouth of Ammon."

On Tuesday I wrote about how Ammon had to build his teaching on a word the king already had, in Alma 18: Ammon Starts With the Word the King Already Had. Now Lamoni is the one teaching, in front of a crowd that has agreed on nothing.

What happens to the man with the sword in verse 22?

He falls dead as he lifts it, and the narrator steps in at verse 23 to explain: "Now we see that Ammon could not be slain, for the Lord had said unto Mosiah, his father: I will spare him, and it shall be unto him according to thy faith—therefore, Mosiah trusted him unto the Lord."

I went looking for where the Lord said that to Mosiah and didn't find those words. The nearest passage I can lay my hands on is Mosiah 28:7, where the Lord answers Mosiah's question about letting his sons go up among the Lamanites: "I will deliver thy sons out of the hands of the Lamanites." Alma 17:35 points at the same promise from the other side, saying the men at the waters of Sebus did not fear Ammon because "they knew not that the Lord had promised Mosiah that he would deliver his sons out of their hands." Neither says "spare" or "according to thy faith." Alma 19:23 may be giving the Lord's words as the writer summarized them, or there may be a record I don't have.

I'll leave it there.

The protection, as the narrator tells it, ran through Mosiah's faith as well as Ammon's, and Mosiah's share was letting his sons walk into the land of a people who, as Alma 17:14 puts it, "delighted in murdering the Nephites." That is the "trusted him unto the Lord."

The chapter doesn't turn the dead man into a lesson. His brother was one of the men Ammon killed at Sebus (verse 22 says so) and the next thing the text records is that fear came upon the whole multitude.

Did everyone in Alma 19 believe?

No, and verse 32 is plain about it: "there were many among them who would not hear his words; therefore they went their way." Verse 31 has the other half, that "as many as heard his words believed, and were converted unto the Lord."

What the believers report in verse 33 is that "their hearts had been changed" and that "they had no more desire to do evil." Some also say they have seen angels, which verse 34 gives as what "many did declare" and leaves it at that. The baptisms come in verse 35 along with the church, and verse 36 closes with "the work of the Lord did commence among the Lamanites."

Frequently Asked Questions

Was King Lamoni dead in Alma 19?

The chapter says no. Ammon tells the queen in verse 8 that he "is not dead, but he sleepeth in God," and verse 7 says he saw for himself that the king was not dead. Verse 5 has some around him saying otherwise, and verse 1 has them about to lay him in a sepulchre after two days and two nights.

Who is Abish in the Book of Mormon?

She's a Lamanite woman, called a servant in verse 28 and named only in Alma 19:16. The chapter says she had believed for many years because of a vision her father had, and had told no one. Later it has her weeping at the argument and taking the queen by the hand. It gives no more of her history than that, so anything beyond it has been added by people since.

Why did the man who raised his sword fall dead?

Verse 22 says that "as he lifted the sword to smite him, behold, he fell dead," and gives no cause. Verse 23 is the narrator tying it to what the Lord said to Mosiah. I'd stay with those two verses and not invent a mechanism for them.

Did the Lamanites in Alma 19 really call God the Great Spirit?

The crowd uses the phrase in verses 25 through 27, arguing over whether Ammon is it, was sent by it or is being used by it to punish them. It is their word for what they already believed in, the tradition Alma 18:5 describes. The chapter doesn't offer it as the narrator's definition of God.

What I'm doing next

Sunday afternoon I'm going to read Alma 22 with Alma 19 open beside it. Aaron's chapter has Lamoni's father in it, and I want to see what that side of the story says about Ammon being in Ishmael at all.

— D.