Alma 9: They Knew His Name Before They Asked Who He Was

Neil asked on Wednesday what I was reading, and I gave him the short version of Alma 8: a man gets run out of a city, an angel tells him to go back, and he goes. Neil thought about it for a forkful of rice and said, "Well, I'd have thrown him out twice."

He wasn't far off, since Alma 9:7 has the people stand up to lay hands on Alma and fail to, and verse 32 has them try again at the end. I want to look at what's said around those two attempts, starting with the first thing they say to him, a question I used to read as plain ignorance and don't any more.

Why do they ask "Who art thou?" when they already know?

Go back one chapter. In Alma 8:11 the people of Ammonihah tell Alma, "we know that thou art Alma," and they name his office, high priest over a church that they add they don't belong to. Verse 12 finishes the thought. Since they aren't of his church he has no power over them, and since he handed the judgment seat to Nephihah he isn't even their chief judge. That detail about the seat is the one I wrote about when Alma was explaining why he was late to Gideon in Alma 7, and here it comes back as a jab.

So when chapter 9 opens with "Who art thou?" in verse 2, nobody in the room needs the answer. It's the question you ask a man to tell him he's nobody. Anyone who's been on the wrong end of "and you are...?" at a meeting knows the tone.

What they say next is more interesting than the tone.

Suppose ye that we shall believe the testimony of one man, although he should preach unto us that the earth should pass away?

That's verse 2, and nobody in it calls Alma a liar. They say one man won't be enough, which makes the objection about a number. By verse 6 they've turned it into a question about God, "Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people." Alma 10:12 shows where the number was coming from. When Amulek stands and speaks, the people "began to be astonished, seeing there was more than one witness." So somebody in that crowd had been counting, and the count mattered to them. The law of Moses asked for exactly this: "at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established" (Deuteronomy 19:15). A city that knew its law could hand Alma that objection and call it fair, and I think that's the uncomfortable part. It was a fair objection from people who had no intention of being persuaded.

Alma 9:1 says he came back with Amulek. Amulek doesn't say a word until verse 34. For thirty-three verses the second witness is standing next to him.

What does Alma say to a man who asks for credentials?

He doesn't offer any. He asks them what they remember.

Verse 8 says "how soon ye have forgotten," and verse 10 says "have ye forgotten so soon." Verses 9 through 11 are Lehi brought out of Jerusalem, the fathers delivered from their enemies, and a people who would have been "cut off from the face of the earth long before this period of time" if it weren't for God's mercy. Then verse 13 reminds them of what the Lord said to Lehi, and he gives both halves, prosper if you keep the commandments, be cut off from the presence of the Lord if you don't. The closest wording I can find in the book is Lehi to his sons in 2 Nephi 1:20, and the Lord says nearly the same thing to Nephi in 1 Nephi 2:20 and 21. Alma isn't claiming a new revelation. He's reading them something their own family already wrote down.

It's the same method he used in Alma 5, which I went through in the questions Alma asks Zarahemla. "Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers?" is Alma 5:6, and Alma 9:9 and 10 are the same question in a worse mood.

One more thing about the word he uses for what they dropped. In verse 8 they've forgotten "the tradition of your fathers." Eight verses later, in verse 16, the Lamanites remain in ignorance "because of the traditions of their fathers," and in verse 17 they'll come "to know of the incorrectness of the traditions of their fathers." The same word points two directions. One people gets faulted for letting go of what its fathers handed down, and the other for holding on to what its fathers handed down.

Does "more tolerable" mean the Lamanites are the better people?

No, and I'd have said so even before I counted the "if" and the "except" in these verses. Here's the second half of verse 15.

it shall be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment than for you, if ye remain in your sins, yea, and even more tolerable for them in this life than for you, except ye repent.

Two conditions in one sentence, and verse 23 puts the same condition a third way, "if they should fall into transgression." Nothing in these verses ranks the two peoples. Alma gives the reason in verse 16, that the Lamanites have "many promises" and remain in "their state of ignorance," and he gives the outcome in verse 17, that "many of them will be saved, for the Lord will be merciful unto all who call on his name." If Alma meant the Lamanites were simply better he'd have no reason to say any of that. He's describing two groups who could do the same thing and be held to different accounts, because one of them was told much more.

What he thinks the Nephites were told is verses 20 through 22, and the list is long. Verse 21 has the Spirit, angels, the voice of the Lord, prophecy, revelation, tongues, preaching, the Holy Ghost and translation. Verse 22 goes back to the deliverances, famine and sickness and bondage and battle, and the last item on the whole list is "they have been prospered until they are rich in all manner of things." Angels, and then the bank balance. When Amulek introduces himself in Alma 10:4 he says he has "acquired much riches by the hand of my industry," and he was standing next to Alma when verse 22 was said.

The hard one is verse 19, where God "would rather suffer that the Lamanites might destroy all his people who are called the people of Nephi" than let a society live in its iniquities "to destroy his people." I read that as a city that spreads its sin being worse than a city that's gone, though there's an "if it were possible" in the middle of the sentence and I don't know how much weight it carries.

Did it happen the way he said?

The chapter gives you two things to check, and Alma 16 checks both.

The people said in verse 4 they wouldn't believe "this great city should be destroyed in one day." Alma 9:18 says the Lamanites will come "in a time when you know not." Alma 16, in the eleventh year, the next year, opens with "a cry of war" and the Lamanite armies "into the city of Ammonihah," and by verse 3 they'd "destroyed the people who were in the city" before the Nephites could raise a sufficient army. Verse 9 calls it "their great city, which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness," and verse 10 says "in one day it was left desolate."

The word "great" is in both places, in the claim they made in Alma 9:4 and again in Alma 16:9. A lot happens in chapters 10 through 15 that I'm skipping, and most of the hard part of the story is in those chapters.

What actually set them off

Verses 31 and 32 give the reason in the narrator's own words. They were wroth "because I said unto them that they were a hard-hearted and a stiffnecked people," and angry "because I said unto them that they were a lost and a fallen people." The prediction of destruction in verses 12, 18 and 24 isn't named as the cause. The two charges are.

Just before them is verse 30, where Alma says "ye are my brethren, and ye ought to be beloved." It's the gentlest verse in the chapter and it's placed right in front of the two names that set them off.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Alma saying the Lamanites will be treated more kindly than the Nephites no matter what?

Both comparisons in the chapter are conditional (verses 15 and 23), and verse 17 says the Lord "will be merciful unto all who call on his name." It's an argument about how much light each people had been given, and not a ranking.

Who is the angel in verses 25 through 29?

The chapter doesn't say. Verse 25 says the Lord "has sent his angel to visit many of his people," and verse 29 closes the section with "this is the voice of the angel, crying unto the people," so Alma is passing along a message and not describing a vision. Alma met an angel back in Alma 8:15, but "many of his people" suggests more than one visit.

Verse 26 says "not many days hence." How soon was that?

The tenth year of the judges is decades away from the birth in Bethlehem, and I don't know how to square that with "not many days."

What happens to Amulek's preaching?

Verse 34 says he "went and stood forth, and began to preach unto them also," and then Mormon adds that "the words of Amulek are not all written." Alma 10 opens with "these are the words which Amulek preached" and gives a part. So we get his testimony in the middle of a conversation we only have half of, and the line in verse 34 is the narrator saying so.

— D.