Ammon and Limhi;
[A Seer is Defined]
The Record of Zeniff
29 We are on chapter 8 of Mosiah, and it is absolutely staggering what’s in here. I’ve been missing everything all these years. We can’t stop for everything, but nevertheless it’s jammed in here. Remember that Ammon has come to King Limhi and has been invited to speak to the king. He’s in the palace now, and it follows strictly the proper palace procedure as you get it in all the epics, etc. Limhi makes an end of speaking. He tells his story, and then he invites the guest to speak and tell his story. This is a thing that is common in epics, of course.
29,30 Limhi told his story and then Ammon told his story. He stood up before the multitude and delivered a formal discourse. He gave his report by invitation, and remember, he clued them in on the last words of Benjamin and what had been going on in the old hometown. After he had done this, the king dismissed them all. Everybody had been there, and they all went home. Notice, it was small stuff here, but they used exactly the same vocabulary in exactly the same sense with small groups that they did with big groups. I’ve been thinking about the Hopis, and it’s so very true, everything they say here. I make reference to the Hopis because their migrations, their cities, their wars, etc., are so much like this.
30 Mosiah 8:5-8 It happens now that Limhi’s people had kept a record of a minor migration. These people were always migrating—always meeting, joining, separating, fighting, etc. This was the story, and they kept records of it, too. I’ll mention the four Hopi stones later because I’m one of the very few who have ever seen the real one, the big one. They showed it to me on two occasions. Verse 5: “He caused that the plates which contained the record of his people from the time that they left the land of Zarahemla [Hopi stone number four is a very careful record of the migrations up from the ‘great red city of the south.’ They think it may have been Palenque, but the red city is Zarahemla], should be brought before Ammon, that he might read them.” So he read the record, too. As soon as he read the record, the king said, By the way, do you know anything about how to interpret languages? [paraphrased]. The king told him the story about how they got these twenty-four plates that he wanted Ammon to read. Where was this land of many waters? [verse 8].
30 Mosiah 8:7 In verse 7 King Limhi said they were desperate for relief. “And the king said unto him: Being grieved for the afflictions of my people, I caused that forty and three of my people should take a journey into the wilderness”—let’s go back and see if we can get some help from the old country. They were going back to find Zarahemla, but they had been gone for three generations now. Would they be able to find it? He looked to Zarahemla, the mother city, for aid, which colonies always do. Then he said to Ammon, By the way, can you read these things? [paraphrased]. Incidentally, the interesting thing about these people who have kept their records and their legends, etc., is that you can check them because they left their marks everywhere. That’s what these glyphs are. The tribes have their particular marks, and they cover vast distances. They don’t think anything of crossing the country. During the forties and fifties all our Navajo and Hopi students were very primitive and poor. They would walk home and think nothing of walking back to northeast Arizona and New Mexico. They would walk home for vacation and then walk back again. They could get rides, too, but they thought nothing of walking. These people really cover distances, so don’t worry about Book of Mormon geography. I’m not going to worry about that or even talk about it because there are endless points of argument.
31 Well, forty-three people (that’s the size of a company or a troop) took a journey to find the land of Zarahemla. Instead of that, they found where the Jaredites had been, among many waters with the ruins of buildings and the twenty-four plates of pure gold. He asked Ammon if he could translate them. Now we come to the mystery of language. What did he mean by “translate” them? Translate them in general. Some people can; they actually have that gift. Canst thou translate? What do you mean? Which languages? Translate how far? Well, there are people who can do that.
31,32 Mosiah 8:13 They want to know the cause of their [the Jaredites’] destruction. What can this tell us about destruction? Notice, there is always that theme in the Book of Mormon. How do people get destroyed, etc.? Then Ammon explains this business about seers. Verse 13: “I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records ... of ancient date; and it is a gift from God [we know a man back home, Mosiah, who has this gift from God, and he can interpret]. And the things are called interpreters [well, the gift is the urim and thummim], and no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not and he should perish [very dangerous, lots of power]. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer. And behold, the king of the people who are in the land of Zarahemla is the man ... who has this high gift from God.”
32 Mosiah 8 16-18 “And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have.... A seer can know of things which are past [and present, and future], and also of things which are to come.” As Homer said, “. .. of things that are, things that shall be, and things that were.” That’s the gift of the seer; he knows all these things. Notice [in verse 17] that this knowledge is a great blessing: “Hidden things shall come to light, and things which are not known shall be made known by them, and also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known.” This knowledge is by revelation and it comes through faith. Verse 18 is a marvelous verse; it really packs a punch.
33,34 Mosiah 8:18,19 “Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings.” It’s all through faith, and it actually is something that couldn’t be done without faith, which is miraculous. And they [seers] are very beneficial to the human race. That’s a powerful statement. God wants us to ask, and he wants us to know. “And now, when Ammon had made an end of speaking these words the king rejoiced exceedingly, and gave thanks to God, saying: Doubtless a great mystery is contained within these plates, and these interpreters were doubtless prepared for the purpose of unfolding all such mysteries to the children of men. O how marvelous are the works of the Lord.” But are we interested? This is how people react to that. Now this is a remarkable thing. Occasionally, we have breakthroughs in the Book of Mormon of what is known as the “wisdom literature.” Recently, it’s the big thing. More articles and studies are written today about this than anything else in Egyptian and Hebrew, showing that Egyptian and Hebrew wisdom literature are the same. The Hebrew and Egyptian wisdom literature are very close.
34,35 Mosiah 8:21 “Yea, they are as a wild flock which fleeth from the shepherd, and scattereth, and are driven, and are devoured by the beasts of the forest.” Well, here is a parable, but what is “the beast of the forest” in this particular case? There are monsters out. Aristotle [described] it very well at the beginning of the Metaphysics. He said, Why do we study these things? Because we know darn well that if we don’t we are in real trouble. What you don’t know can scare you [paraphrased]. There are monsters out there. In prehistoric times there were monsters, and they live on in fairy tales, etc. in the gnomes and the trolls. Tolkien capitalizes on it. We have the ancient folk tales, etc. [According to Aristotle] seeking for knowledge is like flight from ignorance because you’re scared of it. It’s like ignorance pushes in on you on all sides and is suffocating. Like an airbag or a fog, you have to keep pushing it out all the time because you are in danger if you don’t. So this knowledge is very important for survival. If you don’t pay attention to things, it may be the end of you. This has happened again and again, and, of course, today we are not paying attention to a lot of things. As it says here, they don’t seek wisdom even when she should rule them, and the beasts of the forest are waiting for them there. They flee from the shepherd who could give them good advice and take care of them, but they run away. They know best themselves and they destroy themselves by this AGNOSIA, ignorance.
35 Mosiah 9 In the next chapter we have a flashback. Notice that it has a title: “The Record of Zeniff— An account of his people, from the time they left the land of Zarahemla...” In Omni [28] we read about how they went out and left Zarahemla. [Limhi] is the third generation after they left Zarahemla. They [Zeniff s group] were trying to go back to the land of Lehi-Nephi; now they are in this position. [Limhi] is the son of Noah, they are living in a enclave. Limhi told how they had been completely surrounded by Lamanites. The enclave is very interesting, and we will get to that here. We also learn that Zarahemla was bilingual because he says, “I, Zeniff, having been taught in all the language of the Nephites.” Notice how he starts out with a formal introduction, which is required. We have hundreds of Egyptian autobiographies. The most popular form of writing in Egypt is autobiography, believe it or not. This is a formal beginning: “I, Zeniff, having been taught in all the language of the Nephites.” That’s [very much] like what Nephi says in the beginning: “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father.” Notice that the Nephites had their own language; they kept their dialect. The Zoramites still have theirs in Zarahemla.
35,36 Mosiah 9:1 [Zeniff] was taught in the language of his father, and he knew where they had come from. Now, this is the flashback. He knew the old Nephite country which had been taken over by the Lamanites. Remember, when Mosiah and his group went out of Lehi-Nephi, the Lamanites took over. They left it to them and went out and joined the people in Zarahemla. Then Mosiah became their king. But Zeniff knew about the territory of the Lamanites that they had taken over from the Lehi-Nephites, and they wanted to occupy it again. That’s exactly what they wanted to do, as we find out. This is one of the very few cases where the Nephites were aggressors—Zoramites actually. “And having been sent as a spy among the Lamanites that I might spy out their forces, that our army might come upon them and destroy them.” So he was sent as a spy to spy out the land. After Mosiah’s departure, others were absorbed into the Lamanite people, and they [his group] reinforced the people of Zarahemla. Now the descendants of Mosiah want the land back again; they are expanding.
36 Zeniff is not a Rambo or a John Wayne. Note that it’s wise to adopt the enemy’s good things. After all, what did we adopt from the Indians? Corn, potatoes, tobacco, chocolate, cotton, all sorts of nice things. Of course, we had cotton in the Old World. In armies and in war you always adopt what the enemy has. That’s why armies get to be very much alike. You can’t afford to let him have the advantage of a weapon or anything at all that will give him an advantage for any length of time. You immediately have to copy it. That’s the best thing to do; you steal it and copy it. That’s why spying is so important before anything breaks out to find out what they’ve got that we don’t have because that will give them an edge. In a very short time armies come to look exactly like each other.
36,37 Mosiah 9:2 So Zeniff sees that they have some good things. Why waste it? Let’s make a treaty with them and see if we can make some arrangements, he says [paraphrased]. But we see that the leader was Rambo, and he wanted Zeniff to be executed for treason. Zeniff wanted to give aid and comfort to the enemy, which is a definition of treason. This is rough and tough, so they had a wild melee. The breaking up of these groups is a very common thing, of course. They fight, the leaders fight, and they break up. It’s a long, tragic story among the Indians, but elsewhere, too. This wild melee wrecked them. It failed completely, and they had to return crestfallen to Zarahemla.
37 Mosiah 9:2,3; Mosiah 7:21 There was this bloody melee. “Father fought against father, and brother against brother, until the greater number of our army was destroyed in the wilderness [quite a group]; and we returned, those of us that were spared, to the land of Zarahemla. As I said, they returned crestfallen. But Zeniff was still over-zealous. He was gung-ho and not to be discouraged by that.. This third verse is a nice psychological touch. Zeniff himself wasn’t so idealistic as he was greedy. “And yet, I being over-zealous to inherit the land of our fathers, collected as many as were desirous to go up to possess the land.” So he started again and organized another company to be run by himself. He soon ran into trouble because it was impulsive; they weren’t properly prepared. And they were slow to remember the Lord. They were not up to it. They didn’t have the necessary preparation here. In Mosiah 7:21 we find, “And ye all are witnesses this day that Zeniff, who was made king over this people, he being over-zealous to inherit the land of his fathers.” He just couldn’t wait, you see. We don’t have heroes and villains here. We just have human beings, typical men. He wasn’t as bad as the other leader, but he was bad enough because actually you can see that it was a fight between Zeniff and the other guy. The other guy wanted to eliminate him as his rival, but he immediately took over. He was a direct descendant of Zarahemla and the [father] of King Noah.
37,38 So he wanted to make the takeover on the cheap here, and it didn’t work. Like all prospectors and settlers, setups didn’t stop him. He organized his own migration and soon ran into trouble, impulsive and ill prepared like the first handcart company.
38 Mosiah 9:5-12 Like Arctic explorers, they [Zeniff s group] reached the camp marking their last advance. They got back to the old camp—a sad sight to see only bloody remnants there. It marked their last advance and the defeat. They were in country familiar to Zeniff. It was near a city where Ammon was to arrive later, incidentally. He had no trouble in seeing the king and making a deal. (Remember, Ammon had trouble later on.) So he met the king and made a deal. Zeniff should have been suspicious, but, as he says, he was blinded by a promising real estate deal. He was overeager, so he could be taken in, you see. They say that Utah is a fraud capital; that’s only because people are eager to get a lot of money in a hurry. Verse 6: “And I went in unto the king, and he covenanted with me that I might possess the land of Lehi-Nephi [which is what he wanted], and the land of Shilom. And he also commanded that his people should depart out of the land, and I and my people went into the land that we might possess it.” Now, that’s a funny thing; that should have made him very suspicious. (That was a common procedure in ancient times to move out and make way for other people to occupy. A classic example of that is in Caesar’s Gallic Wars. The Gallic tribes were doing this all the time; they were a big outfit.) Here is an explanation of the king’s behavior in verse 8. Why did they do it? Because the land was run down and needed a lot of rebuilding and repair. The Nephites were industrious, and the Lamanites were not industrious. If you look at verse 12, you see that his own people “were a lazy and an idolatrous people.” They didn’t want to work, and they had allowed the land to get run down. Verse 8: “And we began to build buildings, and to repair the walls of the city.” They had to rebuild and repair things. No wonder the king was eager to let them go in and take it over and fix things up. Then he would just close in on them. See, they were an enclave, completely surrounded by Lamanites.
38 Mosiah 9:11 Then they began to till the soil. Now here’s an interesting touch. King Laman knew what he was doing. Notice that it was the Nephite custom to work in the fields—King Mosiah and King Benjamin did. The Nephites were agricultural right down to the ground, so to speak. He [King Laman] knew he could trust them if he gave them the land. They would make it flourish, and then he could take it over. Verse 11: “Therefore it came to pass, that after we had dwelt in the land for the space of twelve years [things were really flourishing then] that king Laman began to grow uneasy, lest by any means my people should wax strong in the land.” You can see why—they were becoming prosperous, and this is what happened. This was the pattern they followed in ancient times—getting people to work for you. Well, that’s what we have here. So in verse 11 the Nephites began to get too prosperous.
39 Mosiah 9:12 Verse 12 is the classic confrontation between nomad hunters and farmers. Both of them work hard, but they work hard at their own thing. The nomads have a rough time; they wander seeking the grass, etc., but they take cities and farmers. They take serfs and slaves and put them to work and exchange them with each other as gifts. The farming goes on, but it is their serfs that do it. It was the PATRES and the PLEBS in Rome where the same thing happened. They [the Lamanites] wanted this sort of an order. They desired to bring the Nephites into bondage for that very reason, so they would work for them. They had the upper hand and would hold the Nephites in bondage. That’s the feudal system with the lord and his power. Norman laws against the Saxons made it a capital crime for any Saxon to own a weapon—to own a bow as a matter of fact. The punishment was terrible
40,41 Mosiah 9:14 In verse 14 they [the Lamanites] launch a surprise attack, the real blitzkrieg. It was a raid; all ancient wars are raids. They just go in to get stuff. The fresh invaders find everything up for grabs, an exhilarating victory. This [in Zeniff s society] was a surprise attack, and the fresh invaders came in, numerous hosts all at once. They attacked in force and didn’t mess around. They didn’t filter in or anything like that this time. It was a real blitzkrieg that hit them all at once. It caught them in the fields and with their flocks. They ran to the high places. That’s where they would go. If people were in the fields, they ran to the castle. That’s what they did. They fled to the castle, to the city, to the redoubt, the ALTIMOENIA ROMA. They called on [Zeniff] for protection, and there were weapons awaiting them there because Zeniff had arms ready for them. He had foresight here, and he would have more later.
41 Mosiah 9:17 Now this is the Lord’s plan in operation in verse 17. Remember, the Lord told Nephi in 1 Nephi 2:24, I’ll always have the Lamanites breathing down your neck to stir you up to remembrance. They will have no power over you as long as you behave yourselves, but if you don’t then this is what will happen [paraphrased]. And it did stir them up to remembrance. “We were awakened to a remembrance of the deliverance of our fathers.” That’s what the purpose of this was, and it did stir them up to remembrance, as we read in verse 17. So the plan was in operation. What had happened? A major Lamanite horde had been brought to a halt. The commentary on the population is very interesting—3043 against 279 dead. If ten percent of them were killed, that would mean there were only 30,000 male Lamanites that the king was able to put into battle. It may have been three percent, which is considered the minimum. At the very most, the male Lamanite population would have been 300,000, but it was probably 30,000 or even 15,000. They lost, but since they retreated, they could have saved themselves. There are all sorts of calculations here that you can use.
41,42 Mosiah 10:1-3 Now in the next chapter the subject is the quest for coexistence. The first verse is very interesting. It was necessary to make a reassessment of the situation after what had happened. They were geared for peace, and it lasted twenty-two years, but they had to be wary all the time of the Lamanite administration. They couldn’t trust them anymore, not after that sneak attack, as it tells us here. “We again began to possess the land in peace. And I caused that there should be weapons of war made of every kind [they were preparing], ... that the Lamanites might not come upon us again unawares and destroy us.” They kept a guard all the time; the Lamanites were no longer to be trusted. They lost but look out, they’re dangerous! Notice in verse 3: “We did inherit the land of our fathers [that’s what they came for] for many years, yea, for the space of twenty and two years.” Again the question comes up, what do they mean by many? If it said many years without twenty-two, how would you know? Well, fifty years, a hundred years, two hundred years [you wouldn’t]. But it says twenty-two years.
42 Mosiah 10:5,6 Then we get the normal, typical Indian culture carrying on—farming with characteristically Indian division of labor. Notice that the men do specific things, and the women spin.. Verse 5: “And I did cause that the women should spin, and toil, and work, and work all manner of fine linen, yea, and cloth of every kind,” while the men did the tilling of the ground. “Thus we did have continual peace [the culture carried on] in the land for the space of twenty and two years.” Then Laman died and there was a new administration. His son was “gung-ho,” and the people were eager to go [to battle]. After all, that was supposed to be their living, so he had no difficulty in stirring up his people. “And he began to stir his people up in rebellion against my people; therefore they began to prepare for war, and to come up to battle against my people.”
42 Mosiah 10:6 Question: When it says, “stir up the people in rebellion,” the word rebellion sounds like the Nephites might have gained some kind of power.
Answer: Yes, after twenty-two years they resented the success of the [Nephites]. They had no power over them, and it tells us why. Remember their traditions were that they had been offended and that the Lamanites were the true masters, and that Nephi was in a state of rebellion. It tells us a little later on that they always taught their children that the Nephites were rebels and they had rebelled against the true authority that should be theirs [the Lamanites]. So it was always preached to them as rebellion. That’s a good point to bring out. These subtle things hit us all the time in the Book of Mormon.
42 Mosiah 10:12 Laman died, and, given the nature of the society, they were “chomping at the bit.” As we see in verse 12, they were adapted to living by exploitation. A young man took over who was eager to get going. It was an easy matter to stir up his people with the Nephites and Lamanites bordering on each other on all sides. He stirred up his people here to get them to make certain claims. But Zeniff had sent out spies. So this sort of thing goes on. That the Book of Mormon [story] should still be going on and still be relevant, and with the same people that we thought had disappeared into nothing, is strange.