Gideon Hunts Down King Noah
Book of Mormon Notes - Wednesday, July 26, 2023, Mosiah 19
Can you imagine Joe Biden or Kamala Harris reigning as a tributary president under the control of China as the Chinese, and then the Russians, invade the United States of America? On a much smaller scale, this is what happened to Limhi and his people.
When Gideon chased down King Noah and saw that the Lamanites were invading again, he had no choice but to let King Noah go. But Gideon also recognized that all of these afflictions that had come upon the Zenephites were in direct fulfillment of Abinadi’s prophesies. Gideon was one among the small faction that opposed King Noah and drove him away. Like Abinadi and Alma, Gideon plays an important role throughout the Book of Mormon.
Meanwhile, Alma and his band of Christians had escaped into the wilderness. Gideon understood that King Noah’s wickedness was the root cause of the impending destruction of the Zenephite civilization. But Gideon spared his life because the internal rot of their community made it impossible for them to withstand the external threats from the Lamanites. As long as the Nephites or Zenephites or anyone else is internally strong and united in the Lord, the Lord strengthens them and fights their battles for them. The same is true of the United States of America. In his great Lyceum Address, Abraham Lincoln observed:
As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected.
In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.--We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them--they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their's was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. (my emphasis added)
The Zenephites experienced the approach of danger from the outside because they, by their own rebelliousness and wickedness, were the authors of their own downfall. Gideon knew this, and his righteous indignation against King Noah was kindled to such an extent that he would have killed him had the Lamanites not invaded.
The Lamanites pursued King Noah and his people as they fled into the wilderness, and the Lamanites began to slay them. Cowards that they were, King Noah and his wicked priests and others even left their wives and children behind as they attempted to escape. Those who remained with their wives and children caused that their fair daughters should stand forth and plead with the Lamanites that they would not slay them. Fortunately for them, the Lamanites were charmed with the beauty of their women and had compassion upon them. As savage as these Lamanites were, it is interesting to consider the kinds of things that caused them to fight or to refrain from battle.
The Lamanites took the remaining Zenephites captive and constrained them to pay a tribute of half of all of their possessions to the king of the Lamanites. The new king of the Zenephites, King Limhi, the son of King Noah, thus began his reign under very difficult circumstances.
Meanwhile, Gideon hadn’t given up his quest for King Noah. He sent men into the wilderness secretly to hunt him down. These men found the people of King Noah, but they didn’t find King Noah and his wicked priests. Even in the wilderness, King Noah could not relinquish his tyrannical ways. When he ordered the people not to return to their wives and children, they were angry with him, and caused that he should suffer, even unto adeath by fire. Thus the prophecy of Abinadi was fulfilled exactly.
King Noah’s wicked priests, however, escaped, and they continued to cause problems in the wilderness. Then the men of Gideon met up with those whom King Noah and his wicked priests had left behind. They exchanged stories about what had happened, and then returned to the land of Nephi. King Limhi and the king of the Lamanites made oaths with each other, and King Limhi began to reign as a tributary monarch under the control of the king of the Lamanites. Thus peace was reestablished for a couple of years.
Why did Mormon include all of these fascinating details in his abridgment of the large plates of Nephi? What did Mormon wish for his modern audience to understand?