Alma 20: The King Agrees in Verse 19 and Swings in Verse 20

The part of Tuesday that stuck with me was how completely the woman on the phone agreed. I was calling about a $9.95 monthly equipment fee for a modem I handed back in August. She pulled up the account and said "you're right, that shouldn't be there," and said it again a minute later in case I'd missed it. Then she credited one month and told me the rest would sort itself out. It's still on the account. I thanked her, which I think about more than I should, because being agreed with felt so much like being helped that I was off the line before I noticed nothing else had changed.

Alma 20 has a man who does the same thing, except he has a sword.

What Ammon walks into on the road to Middoni

The chapter opens with a church already established in Lamoni's land and Lamoni wanting to take Ammon up to the land of Nephi to show him to his father (verse 1). The Lord tells Ammon not to go, because "the king will seek thy life," and sends him to Middoni, where Aaron, Muloki and Ammah are in prison (verse 2).

Lamoni's answer in verse 4 is the part of the setup I like best. He says "I know, in the strength of the Lord thou canst do all things." Then, in the very same verse, he explains his own plan, which is to go to Middoni and flatter the king there, Antiomno, who is a friend of his. When Lamoni asks who told him about the prison, Ammon answers in verse 5, "No one hath told me, save it be God." A man can mean the first sentence of verse 4 and have the plan too.

On the road they meet Lamoni's father, "king over all the land" (verse 8). He wants to know why Lamoni missed the feast, and what he's doing with "this Nephite, who is one of the children of a liar" (verse 10). Lamoni tells him where he is going, and verse 11 gives the reason: "he feared to offend him." So when the father orders him in verse 14 to kill Ammon and come home to Ishmael, we already know this is a son who has been careful with him. Then verse 15 has Lamoni say no to both orders before Ammon has said a word. "I will not slay Ammon, neither will I return."

Verse 19 is where the father gives Ammon the point

The father draws his sword to strike Lamoni down (verse 16). Ammon steps in. The son "has repented of his sins," Ammon says, and if the father falls "at this time, in thine anger, thy soul could not be saved" (verse 17). In verse 18 he adds that if the father kills an innocent son, "his blood would cry from the ground to the Lord his God."

That last phrase is close to the Lord's words to Cain in Genesis 4:10: "the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground." Ammon doesn't cite it, and the father's answer in the next verse doesn't either.

I know that if I should slay my son, that I should shed innocent blood; for it is thou that hast sought to destroy him.

Alma 20:19

Read the second half slowly, because it's easy to hear the father confessing. The "thou" is Ammon. He grants that killing his son would shed innocent blood, which is the whole of Ammon's case, and in the same sentence he says the one who sought to destroy the boy is the Nephite standing in front of him. Verse 20 comes right behind it: "he stretched forth his hand to slay Ammon."

So the argument worked in one sense. The father had no answer to it. In the other sense it did nothing, because he conceded the principle and kept swinging. The text says Ammon "withstood his blows, and also smote his arm that he could not use it." It says nothing more about that arm, here or in the verses that follow.

What actually moves him in verses 21 through 26

Once the father sees "that Ammon could slay him" (verse 21), he pleads for his life. Ammon raises his sword and names the price: his brethren out of prison (verse 22). And the old king says the line that sounds so generous in the retelling, "whatsoever thou wilt ask, even to half of the kingdom" (verse 23).

The chapter is plain about why he says it. He is "fearing he should lose his life." In Esther 5 a king says nearly the same words to a queen, twice, first from his throne after she has walked into his court and found favor (verse 3), then again at her banquet (verse 6). Lamoni's father says them with a sword raised over him. Same sentence, and a very different sentence.

What Ammon does with the offer is why I wanted to write about this chapter at all. He doesn't take half the kingdom, or any of it. His terms in verse 24 are the brethren out of prison, Lamoni keeping his own kingdom, the king not holding it against him, and Lamoni free to "do according to his own desires." Not one term is for Ammon. Even so, the narrator says in the same verse that Ammon "had wrought upon the old king according to his desire." He was working him, and the chapter says so. I wouldn't tidy that into something nicer. A man asking for nothing for himself is holding a raised sword in the same verses.

Then verse 26 gives a reason for the change that is not the sword. The king "saw that Ammon had no desire to destroy him," and he saw "the great love he had for his son Lamoni," and he was "astonished exceedingly." His answer goes past what Ammon asked. Lamoni keeps his kingdom "from this time and forever," the father will "govern him no more," and in verse 27 he invites Ammon and the brethren to come to him in his own kingdom, which was not among the terms in verse 24.

The fear got Ammon the bargain. What the king saw is what the verses give for the rest, and I can't find anything in the chapter that says which counted more.

I wrote about how Ammon starts with the word the king already had in the Alma 18 post. Here there's no time to find a word. He starts from the man's son. And nothing in Alma 20 says the father is converted. That comes later, and Alma 22 is where Aaron stands before him. In verse 2 of that chapter Aaron calls himself and his brethren "the brethren of Ammon, whom thou hast delivered out of prison." So the father is credited with the release, at least by the men who were released.

The brethren in verses 29 and 30

Ammon meets them and is "exceedingly sorrowful." They are naked and their skins "worn exceedingly because of being bound with strong cords." They had suffered "hunger, thirst, and all kinds of afflictions," and "nevertheless they were patient in all their sufferings."

Verse 30 explains how they got there. They had fallen into the hands of "a more hardened and a more stiffnecked people" who "would not hearken unto their words," and who cast them out and smote them and drove them "from house to house, and from place to place" until Middoni.

The father at least heard Ammon well enough to agree with him. These people never did.

Saturday's post on Alma 19 and the queen who waited a full day on Ammon's word is the chapter before this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Lamoni's father in Alma 20?

The chapter never names him. He is "king over all the land" (verse 8), while Lamoni rules in the land of Ishmael (verse 14). Antiomno is someone else, the king of Middoni and a friend of Lamoni's, and he never says a word in the chapter.

Did Ammon kill Lamoni's father or heal his arm?

Neither. Ammon disables the arm in verse 20 and raises his sword in verse 22 with a threat, but nobody dies in this chapter. The arm is not called withered, and it isn't described as healed. The chapter just stops talking about it.

Who got Ammon's brethren out of prison?

In stages. The father grants it in verse 27, Lamoni "found favor in the eyes of the king of the land" in verse 28 and the brethren come out, and verse 30 says they were "delivered by Lamoni and Ammon." The verse doesn't name the king of the land, but the place they're headed is Middoni, so I'd look for Antiomno there.

How did Ammon know where they were?

The voice of the Lord told him in verse 2. When Lamoni asks in verse 5 who told him, he says no one did "save it be God."

One question

Ammon's whole list in verse 24 was for other people, and the old king noticed in verse 26. I'd like to know if that has ever held up for you. When you've gone to the table asking for something on someone else's behalf and nothing for yourself, did it change how the person across from you treated you?

— D.