28 And
now it came to pass that after we had thus taken care of our wounded men, and
had buried our dead and also the dead of the Lamanites, who were many, behold,
we did inquire of Gid concerning the prisoners whom they had started to go down
to the land of Zarahemla with.
30 And now,
these are the words which Gid said unto me: Behold, we did start to go down to
the land of Zarahemla with our prisoners. And it came to pass that we did meet
the spies of our armies, who had been sent out to watch the camp of the
Lamanites.
31 And they
cried unto us, saying—Behold, the armies of the Lamanites are marching towards
the city of Cumeni; and behold, they will fall upon them, yea, and will destroy
our people.
32 And it came
to pass that our prisoners did hear their cries, which caused them to take
courage; and they did rise up in rebellion against us.
33 And it came
to pass because of their rebellion we did cause that our swords should come
upon them. And it came to pass that they did in a body run upon our swords, in
the which, the greater number of them were slain; and the remainder of them
broke through and fled from us.
34 And behold,
when they had fled and we could not overtake them, we took our march with speed
towards the city Cumeni; and behold, we did arrive in time that we might assist
our brethren in preserving the city.
35 And behold,
we are again delivered out of the hands of our enemies. And blessed is the name
of our God; for behold, it is he that has delivered us; yea, that has done this
great thing for us. (Alma
57:28-35)
In this block of verses, Gid
explains what happened to the Lamanite prisoners that allowed him and his army
to come to the aid of Helaman at Cumeni—Nephite spies with bad news of the
approaching Lamanite army shot their mouths off where the Lamanite prisoners
could hear, which led to the prisoners revolting, which led to the army killing
those rebelling, which led to the Lamanites trying to escape in a mass, which
led to a general slaughter with a minority of prisoners escaping, which led to
Gid and his army returning just in time to save Cumeni.
Both Gid and Helaman attribute
their victory to the miraculous power of God. Helaman and his men were able to hang on just long enough,
which was a miracle, considering the stripling warriors were so wounded and the
rest of the army seemed about to give way at any moment. Gid’s timely arrival at Cumeni was a
miracle considering he had already been assigned to guard the Lamanite
prisoners to Zerahemla and was in the process of doing that duty. It was almost as if God took all the
prisoners away from him so he could go back to Cumeni.
Of course, the miracle of
Gid’s arrival is easy to understand from a broad view, but I wondered if it
might be possible to see the hand of the Lord working in the smaller events
that contributed to his arrival.
First, it started to seem
odd to me that the Nephite spies had said anything to Gid’s army at all. Gid’s army was occupied with transporting
prisoners to Zerahemla; surely the spies could see that. What did the spies expect Gid to
do? Leave all the prisoners and go
back to Cumeni? (“Here, Mr.
Lamanite, you stay right here until I get back. Don’t go ‘way now, y’hear?”)
Another thing that seems
unusual is that the spies felt so urgently about their news that they spouted
it off without caring who was in earshot, Lamanite or Nephite. Any armchair
strategist can tell you that you shouldn’t let your POWs get any hint of news
that the war is going badly for you.
Naturally, when the Lamanites heard, they took courage and revolted.
At this point, I have to say
that there is something strangely humorous to me about Gid’s story of how the
Lamanites in a body ran upon Nephite swords. Not that I find death amusing, but it just reminds me of a
form that sibling fights sometimes take. You know, something like, "I'm going to stick my fist out, and if you run into it, it's your fault!" Only in Gid's case it might have been, “I’m going to stick my sword out, and if you run into it, it is your faaault!”
But this brings me to
another odd thing--the Lamanites didn’t revolt to take over; they revolted to
escape. Previous in the chapter it
says the Lamanite prisoners would “would break out in great numbers, and
would fight with stones, and with clubs, or whatsoever thing they could get
into their hands” (v14), but you don’t see any
of that here. Instead, they just
want to get away. And there’s
something odd about that too; you’d
think that when the Lamanite prisoners heard a Lamanite army was about to
attack and destroy Cumeni they would want to join their people in that
attack. But no, they run off in a
different direction. They seem to
have had courage enough to escape, but not courage enough to rejoin the
Lamanite fight for Cumeni.
Now let’s look at it from
Gid’s perspective. Here he is,
trying to do his duty, taking an admittedly huge number of Lamanite POWs to
headquarters and suddenly, for reasons completely outside his control, the
situation starts to dissolve into chaos.
Bad news, spreading rumors, prisoner revolt, massacre, escape of the
remainder of the prisoners! Epic
FAIL! No matter what he did to try
to clamp down on it, it just got worse.
How is this going to look when he gives his report? Oy vey!
But what does he do when all
the prisoners are gone? Does he indulge
in a pity party or sulk? Does he
resign his command? Does he
hide? No, he books it with his
army back to Cumeni to help Helaman and succeeds
in checking the attacking Lamanite army that would have overpowered the Nephite
forces. You have to give him
credit for his firmness of mind and resolve to act. And in the end, he was able to look back on the ugly
prisoner incident and see how it fit into the grand design of deliverance and
victory.
So
what does this mean for us today?
There’s a very comforting
message about failure in this story.
Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon you see that failure and loss arises out
of wickedness. The Nephites lose
their lands to invading Lamanites and we are told that it was their wickedness
that brought that about. However,
in this story, it seems like Gid did the
best he could, and he still failed.
This shows that we may fail in the course of our duty when we’re
trying to do the right thing. (It’s
a very painful experience to have and I don’t know anyone who likes
failure.) But because Gid went
right to back to work, anxiously engaging himself in trying to help his people,
ultimately he was blessed with success, snatching victory from the jaws of
defeat. In the same way, if we
refuse to let ourselves be discouraged by failure and anxiously engage
ourselves in good causes, someday we’ll be able to look back and see how the
Lord used our failures to make our greater victories possible.
In what ways have failures
led to greater victories for you?
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