You know how sometimes you
take something for granted in the scriptures and then all of a sudden you see
it with new eyes and it astounds you?
One of the things that I recently was struck by in the book of Ether is
that Coriantumr survived so many years of battle when his enemies seemed to
keep dying. Coriantumr seems to be
unkillable, although he gets really close to death in several instances.
Now, I know you are probably
thinking, “Duh! Ether prophesied that every living soul would
be destroyed except Coriantumr if he didn’t repent!” Well, just humor me for a while on this, ‘kay?
I started looking for all
the times Coriantumr could have been killed, but wasn’t:
1.
Shared brought
him into captivity instead of killing him (Ether 13:23)
2.
Shared wounded
Coriantumr in the thigh before Coriantumr killed him. (Ether 13:30-31)
3.
When Gilead
broke through the siege on his men and killed part of Coriantumr’s army, it
seems it wasn’t the part where Coriantumr was camped. (Ether 14:5)
4.
Lib wounded
Coriantumr in the arm, but didn’t kill him, and Coriantumr’s army pushed Lib’s
army back. (Ether 14:12)
5.
Shiz gave
Coriantumr many deep wounds, which caused Coriantumr to faint with the loss of
blood and be carried away as though he were dead, but he didn’t kill him.
(Ether 14:30)
6.
There was
another battle in which Coriantumr was wounded again and fainted with the loss
of blood (Ether 15:9), but Coriantumr’s army pushed back Shiz’s army.
7.
When it gets
right down to Shiz versus Coriantumr, the only reason Coriantumr could kill
Shiz was that Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. (Ether 15:29-30)
He has more arch-enemies
than anyone has any right to have—Shared, Gilead, Lib, and Shiz. And more people wanted him dead even before the prophecy was given.
Coriantumr’s seeming
invulnerability does not come from righteousness, but rather it is directly
because the Lord spares his life.
And we know it is the Lord sparing his life because of the prophecy that
Ether made to Coriantumr as recorded in Ether 13:20-21.
20 And in the second year the word of the Lord came to Ether, that he
should go and prophesy unto Coriantumr that, if he would repent, and all his
household, the Lord would give unto him his kingdom and spare the people—
21 Otherwise they should be destroyed, and all his
household save it were himself. And he should only live to see the fulfilling
of the prophecies which had been spoken concerning another people receiving the
land for their inheritance; and Coriantumr should receive a burial by them; and
every soul should be destroyed save it were Coriantumr.
Now, here’s the interesting
question--why was this promise given to Coriantumr if he was wicked? Having one’s life spared is a blessing
we usually think of as reserved for the righteous. Why was he
privileged to escape and the others perish?
After thinking about it
some, I realized that it had to do with how difficult it was for him and his
people to believe in things they could not see. “And it came to pass that Ether did prophesy great and
marvelous things unto the people, which they did not believe, because they saw
them not.” (Ether 12:5)
It’s as if the Lord finally
said, “FINE! You don’t believe you
must repent or the people will be destroyed? You don’t believe that your great society can be displaced
by another people? If you do not
repent, Coriantumr, I will keep you alive to see the people destroyed.
You can’t believe without seeing?
Okay, you are going to see
it.”
I think this is why such
emphasis is put on faith and believing in the few chapters leading up to the
Jaredite demise. We are given many
positive examples of the marvelous acts done by faith and then come the end
battles of the Jaredites so we see the consequences of disbelief. The Lord wants us to hold onto faith,
repent, and avoid that ugly end.
The prophecy that Coriantumr
would live until the Jaredites were destroyed was something that would
perfectly appeal to a society of fighters. It was something that could be tested again and again and no
doubt word got around about it. It
would also ensure Coriantumr would never have any peace. He was like the gunfighter of the Old
West with the fastest draw who is has to watch his back all the time because
every other aspiring gunfighter is eager to test themselves against him. For instance, Coriantumr’s last
arch-enemy had two goals—one was to avenge his brother Lib whom Coriantumr
killed in battle, and the other was to disprove the word of the Lord from Ether
that Coriantumr would not be slain by the sword (see Ether 14:24).
It is notable that
Coriantumr didn’t have to see all his people killed before he came to himself. Unfortunately, two million people had
to die before he started to see that
so far all the prophecies were being fulfilled. But even though he tried to end the killing, by then it was
too late. The wars had taken on
their own momentum and he couldn’t stop it. There’s an important lesson here that there is a window of
time provided for repentance, and if we don’t repent while we can, we may pass
the point of no return when the consequences pull us down further into the
abyss in spite of ourselves. That is truly sobering.
It is interesting that when
Coriantumr offered the kingdom to Shiz to spare the people that Shiz insisted
on no deal unless Coriantumr would let Shiz personally lop off his head. From the perspective of the gospel, it
is the ultimate test of a ruler—are they selfless enough to give themselves up
to save their people? If
Coriantumr had accepted Shiz’s terms, he would have become a type of
Christ. There is no telling what
would have happened then. Perhaps
his life would have been miraculously saved. Or maybe he would have died after all and the Jaredite
civilization would have survived longer.
Or maybe Shiz would still have destroyed the people anyway. Again, no way of knowing.
Coriantumr’s situation was
quite tragic in that when he had finally decided he wanted to repent, his
efforts to seek peace for his people put him in a double bind—if he took Shiz’s
terms it seemed he would lose his life and if he rejected them, his people
would continue to be killed according to prophecy. This would have been a difficult choice for a
righteous king, but for a person as spiritually unprepared as Coriantumr, who
probably had lived a life as far from sacrifice as you can get, the choice
would be virtually impossible.
Looking at it from the perspective of calculated risk, it is not
surprising that he chose to reject Shiz’s terms, preferring to continue
fighting rather than sacrifice his life on the promise of mercy from a hitherto
rarely merciful Shiz, a man who had destroyed many cities and killed women and
children without compunction.
***
Here’s another part of
Ether’s prophecy to Coriantumr that intrigued me—the part that promised him the
kingdom if he and his household repented.
It might seem like the promise was meaningless since Coriantumr already
had the kingdom and he remained in command of significant numbers of people to
the end of the war. However, if we
look closer, we can see certain events that indicate that Coriantumr lost the
kingdom fairly early on and never regained it even though he persisted in
acting as though he had full possession of it.
Coriantumr lost the kingdom
to Shared within three years of the time Ether was kicked out. Yes, Coriantumr’s sons got him the
kingdom back, but by then Coriantumr had lost the power to enforce peace among
the people, as it says that “he did not go to battle again for the space of two
years, in which time all the people upon the face of the land were shedding
blood, and there was none to restrain them” (Ether 13:31). This also suggests that he had lost
monarchical power to execute justice.
The next indication we see
is of the brother of Shared (named Gilead) outmaneuvering Coriantumr and
placing himself on Coriantumr’s throne.
Yet, this is a hollow victory and as time goes on, the constant chasing
back and forth and around of armies makes the holding of a throne (or any kind
of stable capital location) impossible and even meaningless.
Next, Coriantumr loses
friendly territory as Shiz overthrows and burns many cities, and with the
murder of the women and children that keep the home front together, he loses
the productive capacity to support his army’s perpetual campaigning. And finally, he loses control and
loyalty of people; many of them file off to join his enemy Shiz, since it seems
that Coriantumr can’t protect them from Shiz’s depredations. By the time Coriantumr starts to repent
of the evil he’d done, for all practical purposes he is no longer a king but a
warlord-general. Yet he parleys
with Shiz offering the kingdom, as if he had anything besides people to
give. By all means, appearances of
monarchy must be kept up.
Coriantumr’s loss of the
kingdom has an important lesson—the Lord is in charge, and power is held at His
sufferance and can be taken away when the Lord pleases.
All in all, we should in no
way count Coriantumr fortunate or blessed to have his life spared through the
Jaredite destruction. It was a
curse to him instead of a blessing.
From him we learn it is much better to believe the Lord’s warnings and
repent than to be stubborn just because we don’t see the bad consequences
coming yet. We also learn that
there is a window of time given for repentance beyond which the consequences
drag us down further.
What lessons do you derive from Coriantumr’s life?
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