In this chapter, Captain Moroni and his army had just
cornered the Zoramite-Lamanite armies around the river Sidon. Captain Moroni
commands the Zoramite-Lamanite army to surrender, commanding in the name of
God, by all the Nephites hold dear, and by the Lamanites’ self-preservation
that they surrender and take an oath that they will never fight again. Then
Zerahemnah, the Zoramite captain, says he will surrender, but refuses to take
an oath he knows his army will break, so the battle resumes until they are
willing to take the oath.
One of the features of this story that puzzled me was why
Zerahemnah tries to kill Captain Moroni when Captain Moroni refuses to let the
Zoramite-Lamanite army go without the oath of peace. It seems like a childish
tantrum taken way too far. It makes one wonder why the Zoramites and Lamanites
put this guy in charge at all if he couldn’t take it when anyone got in his way
and stopped him.
However, I noticed that before Zerahemnah went berserk, Captain
Moroni made an oath—“as the Lord liveth”—that the only way the Nephites would
let them leave was by taking the peace oath. It is possible that Zerahemnah
thought that if he killed Captain Moroni, then the Nephite army would be
released from having to carry out the terms of Moroni’s oath and would let the
enemy go without requiring a peace oath.
Of course, Zerahemnah failed to kill Captain Moroni, and
then many of the Zoramite-Lamanite army made the peace oath when Zerahemnah’s
fallen scalp was used as an object lesson to illustrate their imminent danger
of death. So, Zerahemnah had to try to avoid the oath by fighting more.
As another case, a Zoramite Lamanite army attacked the city
Noah because the Zoramite leaders all made an oath that they would conquer it.
The battle continued with great loss to the Lamanites until all the leaders who
had made the oath were dead. Then the Lamanite army could withdraw its purpose.
(It is also shown as a case study of the problem of making bad oaths.)
Thus, I think one of the lessons of the post battle
interchange of Alma 44 is to show us how powerful oaths are, when people are
determined to do what they promise.
There is a bit of difficult irony for us to notice here. At
the beginning of the chapter, Captain Moroni says the Nephites do not desire to
be men of blood or to kill their enemy. The oath of peace becomes their best
weapon to disarm their enemy, to prevent them from ever fighting again. (It is
possible Zerahemnah feared the Nephites would begin future wars and making a
peace oath would preclude Lamanite self-defense.) However, because Zerahemnah
refused to make the peace oath, Captain Moroni is forced by his own oath to restart the killing of the
Zoramite-Lamanite army. His oath that they will only depart with a peace
covenant requires him to do what he was trying so hard to avoid in the first
place—kill the enemy. That is the
difficult irony.
But the irony also extends to Zerahemnah as well. The man
who didn’t want his hands tied by a peace oath is eventually forced to make one
anyway or die. To his mind, he probably felt he would die if he didn’t and
eventually be killed by Nephite aggressors if he did. However, knowing their future history as we do, we see they
had nothing to fear from the Nephites except from Nephite dissenters stirring
them up to anger.
So I think we need to be aware that in keeping our
covenants, we will be put in difficult situations that test our resolve.
But if it is difficult for us, we can always consider God’s
position, which might remind us a lot of Captain Moroni in this story. God wants us to stop fighting Him, and
if we enter saving covenants with Him, He won’t destroy us (for our sin) and we
can have peace. The only way out
of our predicament is the covenant. If we don’t take it, we face spiritual
death. He doesn’t want any of us
to be lost, damned, or destroyed. He doesn’t want the fight. But if we persist in avoiding or
breaking those covenants, He will be forced to destroy us.
Personally, I’d rather keep the covenants so I can be saved
and have peace.
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