Woes hanging over the Gadianton Robbers

In Helaman 22, the prophet Nephi came back to Zarahemla and found the Gadianton Robbers in political power, doing all kinds of injustice to the people, and when he tells them of their iniquities and warns them of the consequences, he says this:

And for this cause wo shall come unto you except ye shall repent. For if ye will not repent, behold, this great city, and also all those great cities which are round about, which are in the land of our possession, shall be taken away that ye shall have no place in them; for behold, the Lord will not grant unto you strength, as he has hitherto done, to withstand against your enemies. (Helaman 7:22)

From the Gadianton’s perspective, they had all the power. They held the judgment seats, the governor positions, control of the armies, etc. Furthermore, the Lamanites, who had previously been enemies of the Nephites, had converted to the Lord and laid down their weapons, and so were enemies no more. To the Gadiantons, Nephi’s prophecy would look crazy, because at that time there were no enemies with enough power to stop them, either in their cities, or among neighboring peoples.

But. What they didn’t know was that the enemies would come from among themselves. In a mere 15 years, they would be pushed out of the land, and in their resentment, they would form a marauding band that in the last crisis would eventually have to convert to the Lord or be killed by Nephite armies.

The story of how Nephi forces Gadianton judges to detect the murder of the chief judge as coming from one of their own also gives a picture of the injustice among the Gadiantons that would prevent them from ever having the peace they anticipated or flattered themselves they would gain. Because they were founded on robber, murder, corruption, and secrecy, and while they would protect each other from public justice and try to subvert it, that also meant they would have no real justice among themselves. They would do what they wanted to each other (who could stop them?) and the victims could have no recourse in public justice because everything they were guilty of would have to be revealed in the inquiry. And inside the combination, there would be no incentive for justice, only for a show of it. With no peaceful, orderly recourse available, the Gadiantons would have no choice but to fight each other, thus splitting into warring factions.

But they couldn’t see this.

There is also subtle irony in Helaman 8:4-6 that shows their inability to see things.

4 And those judges were angry with him because he spake plainly unto them concerning their secret works of darkness; nevertheless, they durst not lay their own hands upon him, for they feared the people lest they should cry out against them.

5 Therefore they did cry unto the people, saying: Why do you suffer this man to revile against us? For behold he doth condemn all this people, even unto destruction; yea, and also that these our great cities shall be taken from us, that we shall have no place in them.

6 And now we know that this is impossible, for behold, we are powerful, and our cities great, therefore our enemies can have no power over us.

How fascinating that they say they are so powerful and their cities so great, and yet…. They fear the people and fear angering the people if they take Nephi and condemn him. If they can’t handle the healthy corrective of Nephi’s words, and take appropriate action to change, how can they possibly handle a real crisis situation and the difficult truths that would stare them in the face then?

I think it shows the Lord’s great mercy that even when these people were steeped in such awfulness, the Lord still gave the robbers a chance to repent, sending a prophet to preach and sending signs and wonders to warn that they couldn’t hide their deeds and they were going to destroy themselves.

I also think this story shows that even if the wicked are in power, the Lord can shake things up and dislodge them.

Gadianton robbers dyed in blood

Sometimes I find clues about the Book of Mormon in the oddest places.

I found a Nanowrimo forum thread in which the first poster asked if it was possible for things to be dyed in blood.  At first I thought, yes because I remembered there was a verse in the Book of Mormon about how the Gadianton robbers attacking the Nephites in 3 Nephi were dyed in blood.

But, there are some science things to consider-- assuming the blood was left in for long periods of time, the blood would eventually coagulate and get sticky, turn dark brown. 

In order for the Gadianton robbers to retain their alarming appearance, they would have to constantly wash or splash themselves in new blood.

Or it might just look like blood.

So, how did the Gadianton’s acquire their appearance at the beginning of the battle of being dyed in blood?

Here was a comment from a Nanowrimo participant:

“If you are interested in dye from corpuses, your character could have made a dye from pau brasil tree. Its [sic] the plant that named Brasil and its [sic] sap is bright red - if you hack the tree it looks like its bleeding. The sap is such a powerful dye that the tree nearly went extinct because portuguese colonizers would cut it down to make dye for Europe.. Not as powerful as blood dye, but it could work. “  (Flavia Denise, http://nanowrimo.org/forums/reference-desk/threads/193281)

Let's get a visual here. We like pictures..

https://www.flickr.com/photos/visicou/4477155858

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gttexas/3405206553

This suggests that the Gadianto robbers had access to the Pau-Brasil/Brazilwood tree and dyed their garments in it so as to achieve the effect of fearsomeness that made them so intimidating.

A letter from a Gadianton Robber

1 And now it came to pass that in the sixteenth year from the coming of Christ, Lachoneus, the governor of the land, received an epistle from the leader and the governor of this band of robbers; and these were the words which were written, saying:

2 Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.

3 And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word—Go down upon the Nephites and destroy them.

4 And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction.

5 Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle.

6 Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.

7 Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.

8 And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.

9 And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us.

10 And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoneus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi. (3 Nephi 3:1-10)

It is always interesting when Mormon includes full text of letters in the record. It is a tip-off that there is something important to learn from them.  So it is very surprising that he includes the text of a letter from the leader of the Gadianton robbers to the chief judge Lachoneus.  But what is a letter from a robber doing in holy writ?

Mormon could have summarized the letter. He could have said Giddianhi demanded the Nephites surrender their land and all their substance to the robbers or they would be killed and promised to make them partners if they did surrender. 

But that would not fully capture the effrontery of Giddianhi’s letter.  The letter is a letter of lies that are so obvious you wonder Giddianhi didn’t see it himself.  He tries to veil his true feelings and motives, but they come out anyway. 

He pretends to be kind (“feeling for your welfare”) , but his murderous intent sticks out elsewhere (“ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath . . . I will command that my armies shall come down against you . . . and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct”). 

He pretends to an interest in liberty and partnership (“become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance”), but elsewhere betrays that his people want power (“that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government”) and the reader suspects that slavery or death would still be the result of giving in, especially if the robbers really have the everlasting hatred towards the Nephites that Giddianhi claims they have.  Think about it—can you really become partners with someone who has an everlasting hatred for you?

He praises them for their firmness in defending themselves and then asks them to surrender everything without a fight, which implies that his praise is empty or that he just stupidly hopes he can bluff them out of everything without more fighting.

In the previous chapter the Nephites drove them out of their lands and the Nephite wickedness allowed the Gadianton robbers to gain many advantages over them.  Giddianhi says of this that the Nephites stand with firmness (when really they are weak because of wickedness) and he says he has proved his own troops on the field of battle, when they only recently gained advantages, again due to Nephite wickedness.

In another instance, Giddianhi swears in the next month he will come down with his armies and destroy the Nephites, but if we look at what follows, it takes almost 2 years for the robbers to actually sally forth, and it is one year after that when they actually decide to battle.  So while his time countdown sounds scary, it’s very off.

Giddianhi also says the Gadianton robbers have an unconquerable spirit, but when they actually lay siege to the Nephites, the lack of food demoralizes them pretty quickly and they decide to abandon their designs.  (Yeah, sure, you’re unconquerable all right…)

So what do we actually learn from this? 

To put it in perspective, we’ve learned to recognize the arguments of anti-Christs because of the stories of Sherem, Nehor, and Korihor.   I think this letter is a case where Heavenly Father also wants us to learn to recognize the characteristics of a threatening blow-hard so that we know not to be intimidated.  The Lord wants us to see that coming from these types, the threats are empty, the praise is insincere, the promises are meaningless, and the contradictions will be easy to spot.

The Sign in the Questioning of Seantum for His Brother’s Murder, Helaman 9:25-38

In Helaman 9 when the prophet Nephi gives the second sign to the unbelieving judges, there are some very odd features about it that have puzzled me more and more.

25 And now behold, I will show unto you another sign, and see if ye will in this thing seek to destroy me.

26 Behold I say unto you: Go to the house of Seantum, who is the brother of Seezoram, and say unto him—

27 Has Nephi, the pretended prophet, who doth prophesy so much evil concerning this people, agreed with thee, in the which ye have murdered Seezoram, who is your brother?

28 And behold, he shall say unto you, Nay.

29 And ye shall say unto him: Have ye murdered your brother?

30 And he shall stand with fear, and wist not what to say. And behold, he shall deny unto you; and he shall make as if he were astonished; nevertheless, he shall declare unto you that he is innocent.

31 But behold, ye shall examine him, and ye shall find blood upon the skirts of his cloak.

32 And when ye have seen this, ye shall say: From whence cometh this blood? Do we not know that it is the blood of your brother?

33 And then shall he tremble, and shall look pale, even as if death had come upon him.

34 And then shall ye say: Because of this fear and this paleness which has come upon your face, behold, we know that thou art guilty.

35 And then shall greater fear come upon him; and then shall he confess unto you, and deny no more that he has done this murder.

36 And then shall he say unto you, that I, Nephi, know nothing concerning the matter save it were given unto me by the power of God. And then shall ye know that I am an honest man, and that I am sent unto you from God.

37 And it came to pass that they went and did, even according as Nephi had said unto them. And behold, the words which he had said were true; for according to the words he did deny; and also according to the words he did confess.

38 And he was brought to prove that he himself was the very murderer, insomuch that the five were set at liberty, and also was Nephi. (Helaman 9:25-38)

Take that first question, “Has Nephi, the pretended prophet, who doth prophesy so much evil concerning this people, agreed with thee, in the which ye have murdered Seezoram, who is your brother?”  The question is technically a loaded one about on par with “Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?”  The question Nephi tells them to ask presupposes that Seantum has murdered Seezoram, and an innocent man would object to that presupposition, as would a guilty man who wished to conceal his guilt.  Yet it is very strange that with all the other emotional and physical reactions that Nephi prophesies that Seantum will have later, this first question doesn’t seem to raise anything besides a simple “No.”  What is he saying no to?  We can observe that the simple “no” can be taken as a denial of both agreement and murder or an ambiguous denial of one of those.  This doesn’t seem to get anyone anywhere.

I really didn’t understand why Seantum was not worried until the second question, “Have ye murdered your brother?” and not when the first is asked.

What I finally realized was that the judges questioning Seantum were also part of the Gadianton robbers.  This may seem obvious, but as I thought about the true implications of this, I began to realize that this brought into the dialogue a subtext that Seantum would read differently than he would have if the questioning had been done by someone outside the Gadianton robbers.

We have to keep in mind that the Gadianton robbers protected their own from suffering for their crimes or from being exposed to Nephite justice, so the Gadianton judges probably thought that if they did the questioning, they could protect Seantum and that Seantum would easily deny any charge against him.  What they didn’t realize was that the line of questioning that Nephi laid out for them was inspired by God with the purpose of using the Gadianton’s own association and culture of wickedness against them, using questions that would seem almost absurd.  It is likely that if the Gadianton judges suspected any particularly pointed question, they would have altered it or softened it.  That they didn’t alter it meant that they thought there was no way that it would succeed and therefore wasn’t much of a danger to them or Seantum.

What the Lord designed that first question to do was give Seantum the impression that his questioners were speaking to him confidentially about Gadianton business, merely to find out who was involved in a particular caper.  “Has Nephi, the pretended prophet, who doth prophesy so much evil concerning this people, agreed with thee, in the which ye have murdered Seezoram, who is your brother?”  It makes it seem like they were uninformed the murder was supposed to happen and they just want to get the real facts of the matter.  Again, an innocent man would immediately have been worried by this question, but a Gadianton would not, if talking to other Gadiantons.

The second question was, “Have ye murdered your brother?”  The Gadianton judges thought it would be easy for Seantum to make a confident show of denying his involvement and bold-face his way through it.  They fully expected that Seantum would deny it, but they didn’t realize that the question carried subtext to Seantum that they perhaps didn’t mean.  In Seantum’s eyes, that question would reveal that they were not asking in the role of fellow-associates, but as investigators.  Investigation implied they didn’t approve of the murder.  (They may have approved, but the question made him think they didn’t.)  Thinking they didn’t approve might lead Seantum to think that somehow he had run afoul of a particular Gadianton faction that favored Seezoram over him and was angry at what he had done.  He might worry, not about Nephite justice, but Gadianton “justice.”  Or he might begin to wonder if his questioners were going to throw him under the bus and betray him for their own advantage.  It is here that he begins to fear, to not know what to say (since he no longer is sure these questioners on really on his side), and to deny his guilt and declare his innocence.  But his denials are too delayed.. and they are desperate.

Then, they examine Seantum and find blood on the skirts of his cloak.  This puzzled me for a long time because it seemed incredibly stupid that Seantum didn’t get rid of his cloak or have it washed or something.  I mean, really!  You’d think he would be smart enough to notice he had blood on him, right?  It kept bothering me until I noticed it talks about “the skirts of his cloak,” and not “skirt.”  It may have been multiple panels of cloth that made up this cloak, not just one, possibly to indicate status.  The more cloth involved, the more difficult it would be to catch and clean blood spatters.

The next questions the Gadianton judges asked –“From whence cometh this blood? Do we not know that it is the blood of your brother?”—might sound to them like they are making a wild assertion, especially since for all they know Seantum could have killed other people since killing his brother.  But to Seantum it would sound like his questioners had seen his animosity and jealousy against Seezoram building for a long time and had predicted that it was only a matter of time before he struck.  It would make him wonder, “Am I that transparent?”  This would make him worry that other Gadiantons saw it too and disapproved.   This made him tremble and look pale as he worried he would have to deal with the anger of other Gadiantons.

The next thing the Gadianton judges say seems even more strange.  “Because of this fear and this paleness which has come upon your face, behold, we know that thou art guilty.”  It seems odd to tell someone they are guilty just because of the fear they manifest.  It is contrary to all our ideas of justice!  People are supposed to be pronounced guilty because of direct evidence or a collection of circumstantial evidence that strongly supports an inference they committed the crime over other options.  The blood on Seantum’s clothes could be called circumstantial evidence, but they don’t really have a way to say with scientific certainty that it is Seezoram’s blood.   And yet, this wacky line is enough to put the fear of God into Seantum and make him confess everything!  So what is it about that observation that scared Seantum even more?

To the judges making those statements, it would sound like another bold assertion that was full of hot air.  To Seantum, it sounded different—menacing.  Why?  As I pondered  and prayed about this, my mind fastened on the words “thou art guilty,” and I remembered another verse earlier in Helaman:

And whosoever of those who belonged to their band should reveal unto the world of their wickedness and their abominations, should be tried, not according to the laws of their country, but according to the laws of their wickedness, which had been given by Gadianton and Kishkumen. (Helaman 6:24)

Seantum thought he was being pronounced guilty by Gadianton law in an impromptu trial and that he was about to be punished for his crime.  If he had been innocent, being called guilty just because of his fear and paleness would have made him angrily declaim against the injustice of it, but Seantum was too well acquainted with Gadianton trials to see that declaration as meaningless.  It is possible he himself had condemned other Gadiantons under similar groundless causes with flimsy or nonexistent evidence.  Further, he thought he was being condemned for revealing Gadianton doings to the prophet Nephi, thus his fear, his confession, and his violent insistence that Nephi knew nothing about the matter except it were given by the power of God.

So, the miracle of Nephi’s second sign is that even with Gadiantons trying to protect their own in the questioning process, the questions that looked harmless and laughable forced them to condemn one of their own and prove Nephi’s innocence.  It is a prime example of how the Lord takes the wicked in their own craftiness. 

Where is the safest place for your money?

Recently I was reading about the Nephites getting destroyed. (They get destroyed about every two months or so and it never gets any more fun to read about it. :-( ) I read about how their riches became slippery.

And these Gadianton robbers, who were among the Lamanites, did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again.
(Mormon 1:18)

I realized the slipperiness could certainly apply to the stock market right now. People lay up their earnings by investing in the stock market and frequently stocks fluctuate so that the prices go down or up and when the stocks go down, people lose their money; it slips away from them.

Samuel the Lamanite prophesied that only people who laid up their treasures unto the Lord would retain them again. I’ve wondered for a while just what it means to “lay up your treasures unto the Lord”. I’ve wondered whether it means to bury them and then pray over them, or to bury your journals and pray that they come out when they are most needed… But in connection with the slippery stock market, I see now that the only way you can lay up your treasures to the Lord is to give them to the church.

The church is the best treasury ever, because the Lord is the manager. In normal savings banks, you get your money back whenever you call for it. But in the church, your money comes back in whatever form you need it, when you need it, and not until. And it doesn’t necessarily come back from the same entity to whom you gave it. Since the Lord is so powerful, He can disburse it back through any person who has money or means.

I know this is a very unusual idea, but I know it is true, because I’ve tested it.