Amalickiah's Cunning
Book of Mormon Notes - Monday, October 23, 2023, Alma 47 - 48
Let’s pause in chapter 47 for a moment to consider the story of Lehonti. Lehonti was appointed king of the Lamanites who resisted Amalickiah and the orders of the main Lamanite king. Lehonti and his people did not want to go to battle against the Nephites. But Amalickiah lured Lehonti into a trap and secretly poisoned him to death in order to gain control over Lehonti’s army. Amalickiah then went on to command his treacherous servants to murder the main Lamanite king. Amalickiah’s goal was to conquer the entire land and to gain power and dominion over it all. Amalickiah was a kind of precursor to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other totalitarian tyrants and dictators:
Now behold, this was the desire of Amalickiah; for he being a very asubtle man to do evil therefore he laid the plan in his heart to bdethrone the king of the Lamanites. (Alma 47:4)
The Lamanites under the rule of Lehonti had gathered in Onidah on the hill Antipas, prepared to do battle against the Lamanites who were obedient to the main Lamanite king.
Who could have possibly come up with such a story? Who could have come up with place names like “Onidah” and “Antipus”, let alone a name like “Lehonti”. Joseph Smith didn’t invent any of this. These were real people, and real events.
Elder Hales drew lessons from Lehonti that he shared in his BYU speech “Seek and Attain the Spiritual High Ground in Life”:
The Importance of High Ground
Lehonti, in the Book of Mormon, teaches us an important lesson about seeking and maintaining the high ground (see Alma 47). Lehonti took his followers to a high place atop a mountain and built a fortress for safety, security, and protection. The Lamanite king sent his army, led by the Nephite dissenter Amalickiah, to conquer Lehonti and his people. But Amalickiah was “a very subtle man to do evil” (Alma 47:4), and he wanted to “gain favor with the armies of the Lamanites” so that he could overthrow the king “and take possession of the kingdom” (Alma 47:8).
Three times Amalickiah sent a message to Lehonti, asking him to come down to the valley to meet with him. Three times Lehonti refused to leave his safety on high ground. But Amalickiah was persistent. The fourth time, Amalickiah came near Lehonti’s camp and said to Lehonti, in effect, “Just step outside of your fortress—and bring your guards with you. I will meet you there” (see Alma 47:12).
This time Lehonti accepted Amalickiah’s invitation and left the security of the mountaintop. Now Amalickiah presented his devious plan, tempting Lehonti with victory and power. Lehonti was invited to bring his men down from the mountain in the middle of the night and surround the Lamanite army as they slept. Amalickiah promised that he would surrender to Lehonti, giving Lehonti command of the entire Lamanite army—as long as Lehonti made Amalickiah second in command.
The plan was executed as Amalickiah had outlined. The Lamanite army surrendered, and Lehonti became their chief. But then Amalickiah had his servants slowly poison Lehonti. With Lehonti dead, Amalickiah took command of both armies, gained control of Lehonti’s people, and returned victorious to the king of the Lamanites, whereupon Amalickiah completed his evil plan by killing the king and becoming ruler of the Lamanites.
Amalickiah’s deception shows just how Satan works in our lives. His temptations are incessant invitations to leave our high ground and spiritual safety. And he will—with great patience—wait for us to give in to his enticements. Lehonti did not respond the first time a messenger came from Amalickiah, nor the second, nor even the third time. But on the fourth visit, Lehonti stepped just below the safety of the high ground, succumbing to the false promises of power and glory. Of course Lehonti’s demise was not immediate. Perhaps for a few days he gloried in his status as commander in chief of the Lamanite army, and he probably thought that leaving the mountaintop fortress was worth it. But like Amalickiah’s treachery, the enticements of the adversary are always short-lived—and poisonous. Whenever we leave the high ground, we succumb to spiritual illness.
Rather than be too hard on Lehonti, maybe we can learn more from him. After all, he resisted Amalickiah’s enticements three times. But Amalickiah was devious, deceptive, and determined. He was relentless. Even though Lehonti also ended up seeking for power, Lehonti’s initial efforts remind me of C.S. Lewis’ keen observation:
No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist. Very well, then. The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues is that we fail. If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain—any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side—that has to be wiped out.
Lehonti remained on the higher ground, he resisted Amalickiah’s allurements three times. But Lehonti finally relented when Amalickiah came closer and beckoned him to descend with his guards. Amalickiah’s treacherous plan worked, and Lehonti fell for it. Once Lehonti’s armies surrounded the armies of Amalickiah, and once Lehonti made Amalickiah second in command, Amalickiah carried out the next step in his treacherous plan:
And it came to pass that Amalickiah caused that one of his servants should administer apoison by degrees to Lehonti, that he died.
Now, when Lehonti was dead, the Lamanites appointed Amalickiah to be their leader and their chief commander. (Alma 47:18-19)
Elder Hales’ counsel is poignant and timely. Just like Amalickiah, the adversary attempts to deceive us, lure us away from the Lord, from higher ground, the tree of life, the sacrament, the Temple, and from everything good. And as C.S. Lewis also noted, the adversary’s temptations are not always blatant and immediate. In Lewis’ classic book The Screwtape Letters The senior devil Uncle Screwtape instructed his student Wormwood:
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Nephi prophesied about the very same principle and tactic of the devil in the last days:
And the Gentiles are lifted up in the apride of their eyes, and have bstumbled, because of the greatness of their cstumbling block, that they have built up many dchurches; nevertheless, they eput down the power and miracles of God, and preach up unto themselves their own wisdom and their own flearning, that they may get gain and ggrind upon the face of the poor.
And there are many churches built up which cause aenvyings, and bstrifes, and cmalice.
And there are also secret acombinations, even as in times of old, according to the combinations of the bdevil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and cworks of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever. (2 Nephi 26:20-22)
And,
For the kingdom of the devil must ashake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance, or the bdevil will grasp them with his everlasting cchains, and they be stirred up to anger, and perish;
For behold, at that day shall he arage in the bhearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.
And others will he apacify, and lull them away into carnal bsecurity, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the cdevil dcheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.
And behold, others he aflattereth away, and telleth them there is no bhell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful cchains, from whence there is no deliverance.
Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be ajudged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a blake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.
Therefore, wo be unto him that is at aease in Zion!
Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well! (2 Nephi 28:19-25)
Of course, we could even speak of Amalickiah’s methods for disposing of Lehonti in terms of what our modern food, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies are doing to us, that is, gradually poisoning us.
How did Helaman receive news of Amalickiah’s treachery? Was it not from the guards of the king of the Lamanites who fled when Amalickiah’s servants murdered the king? But the rest of the story… with Lehonti and the armies of the Lamanites in Onidah… how did the Nephites obtain a record of those events? Somehow Mormon had a record of the history of the Nephites that included a history of the Lamanites as well.
Mormon sums up Amalickiah’s cunning thus:
And it came to pass that Amalickiah sought the afavor of the queen, and took her unto him to wife; and thus by his bfraud, and by the assistance of his cunning servants, he cobtained the kingdom; yea, he was acknowledged king throughout all the land, among all the people of the Lamanites, who were dcomposed of the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites, and all the dissenters of the Nephites, from the reign of Nephi down to the present time. (Alma 47:35)