Mosiah 24: Alma's People and the Burdens They Couldn't Feel

There's a clause in Mosiah 24:14 that I read past for years. The Lord promises to ease the burdens on their shoulders so that they can't feel them, and then he adds "even while you are in bondage." I always heard the first half and treated the second as scenery.

It's the second half that holds the chapter up. While they're in bondage, nobody in Mosiah 24 gets their work taken away, and the Lord goes after something else first.

Why did Amulon go after Alma in particular?

Verse 9 says Amulon "knew Alma, that he had been one of the king's priests, and that it was he that believed the words of Abinadi and was driven out before the king." So this is a grudge, and a fairly old one. The Lamanite king had made him a ruler over Alma's people with "no power to do anything contrary to the will of the king" (Mosiah 23:39), and Amulon found a good deal of room inside that. He put tasks on them and task-masters over them, and in verse 8 he sets his children to persecuting their children.

That last bit I only caught on the fourth or fifth read. A grudge that gets handed down like a hunting rifle.

I covered how these people ended up under him in Mosiah 23: Why Alma Refused to Be King in Helam. They had walked out to meet the Lamanite army and handed themselves over (Mosiah 23:29 says the Lord softened the Lamanite hearts first), and I'd have guessed that a surrender made in faith buys you a quieter life than Amulon gave them. It didn't, and the chapter never apologizes for that.

What does it mean that the burdens were eased but not removed?

Here's what I keep coming back to:

"And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions." (Mosiah 24:14)

The burdens are still on their backs. Verse 15 says the burdens "were made light" and that the Lord "did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease," so the task-masters kept standing there and the people kept hauling, and the only thing that changed was what the hauling cost them.

The reason the Lord gives is so they can "stand as witnesses." Witnesses to the fact that he visits his people while they're still in it, since they weren't out yet. I would have asked for the door to open. He gave them the other thing first, and the door came a few verses later.

Whether that was a feeling or a physical change, the verse doesn't say. Both readings have people I respect behind them, and I lean toward something they could actually perceive in their shoulders, because the words are "cannot feel them upon your backs" and I'd take them at face value. The promise could have been that they'd feel better about the load, and it wasn't. Mormon had every chance to trim that line when he abridged the record, and he wasn't a man who wasted plates.

Praying when you aren't allowed to make a sound

Amulon forbade prayer outright, with guards posted so that, as verse 11 says, "whosoever should be found calling upon God should be put to death." That's a rule with a penalty attached, and it was enforced.

"And Alma and his people did not raise their voices to the Lord their God, but did pour out their hearts to him; and he did know the thoughts of their hearts." (Mosiah 24:12)

Most of my own prayers are silent already. I pray at the desk before the day starts, in the truck, at two in the morning with a laptop open, and nobody has ever had to threaten me into it.

On my mission, in a small apartment in Santo André, I shared a room with a companion who slept like a stone and a wall thin enough to carry the neighbors' television. You knelt by the bed and said it all inside, in Portuguese because that was what my head ran on in those years, and nothing came back that I could write down, but I got up more settled than I'd knelt down. Every time.

So verse 12 reads to me as the same prayer, delivered. Alma's people lost their voices and nothing else about the prayer was damaged, which I'd have bet against. I'd have said a prayer needs a certain amount of sound to feel like one.

The night they spent packing, and what they did when they were free

I want to look at the order of events, which I'd never lined up before. In verse 16 the Lord says "on the morrow I will deliver you." Verse 18 says Alma's people "in the night-time gathered their flocks together, and also of their grain" and that they did it all night. Then verse 19: "in the morning the Lord caused a deep sleep to come upon the Lamanites." So they were loading up in the dark before anything had happened, with the promise as all they had.

I know a very small version of that from Bear Lake. We head up to the cabin at the end of the month and the van gets loaded the night before, because the one year I tried it at 5:30 in the morning I lost twenty minutes to a cooler that had been sitting on the porch the whole time. Melissa still brings it up. That's a cooler and a lake, though, and I knew the cabin would be there. Alma's people spent a whole night rounding up animals and bagging grain on the strength of one sentence they'd heard the day before, with the guards still awake.

The second thing is smaller, and it sits in verse 22, which says that in the valley of Alma, "all their men and all their women and all their children that could speak lifted their voices in the praises of their God."

Lifted their voices. These were people who couldn't make a sound to God without risking death, and the first thing they do once they're out of range is sing or weep (the text doesn't say which).

And it doesn't last, because verse 23 has the Lord telling Alma to hurry, the Lamanites having woken up and started after them. Twelve days later they reached Zarahemla, where King Mosiah received them with joy.

Paul asked for something to be taken away and was told no, with a different answer in its place. I wrote about it in 2 Corinthians 12, and I keep setting that chapter next to this one. Alma's people got a door in the end and Paul didn't. I haven't worked out what to do with that difference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Amulon persecute Alma's people?

It looks personal. Amulon had been one of King Noah's priests and he remembered that Alma believed Abinadi and was driven out for it (Mosiah 24:9). The Lamanite king gave him authority, but the specific cruelty reads like Amulon's own idea.

Did the Lord remove the burdens or just make them easier to carry?

Easier. They were still "in bondage" and still working, but the Lord strengthened them so they bore the load "with ease" (Mosiah 24:14-15). The removal came later, with the escape.

Why couldn't Alma's people pray out loud?

Amulon commanded them to stop their cries and set guards over them, with death for anyone caught calling on God (Mosiah 24:11). So they prayed silently, and the Lord knew their hearts anyway.

How long did it take them to reach Zarahemla?

Twelve days in the wilderness after they left the valley of Alma (Mosiah 24:25). Before that they had a night of gathering flocks and grain and then a stop in the valley to give thanks, cut short because the Lamanites had awakened.

Family home evening is tonight and I've got the lesson, which means Mosiah 24 gets a second pass out loud. Caleb will ask how a whole camp of Lamanites slept through a night of flocks being rounded up, and I'll tell him I wonder the same thing.

— D.