The Consequences of King Noah’s Wicked Rule: Contention, Self-Destruction and Bondage - Book of Mosiah, Chapter Nineteen (Mosiah 19)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/19?lang=eng

At the end of the previous chapter, we learn that Alma and the people who follow him away from King Noah’s civilization and into a covenant of rebirth and renewal through baptism are able to detect an effort by the king’s armies to find their place of refuge, and to flee into the wilderness.

When the king’s army returns to the city, it is not long until a division develops among the people. Verse 2 tells us that the forces of the king had been reduced. Is it because a number of them had been among those who followed Alma into the wilderness? Mormon doesn’t tell us why, but we’re left to wonder. A smaller army means that the king is less able to force people to submit to his will.

Mormon also doesn’t say why the people become divided. Do the episodes with Abinadi and Alma become public knowledge and open some people’s eyes to Noah’s injustices? Does the courage Abinadi and Alma showed embolden the people to follow their examples? Or is it more of a typical situation where the ruled chafe against their ruler for more mundane or selfish reasons? We don’t know for sure.

In any event, a minority of the people start threatening the king. And this isn’t some gradual or nebulous threat. Before we know it, a man named Gideon, described as a strong man who is the king’s enemy, is pursuing King Noah with his sword (verses 3-4).

As the king flees from Gideon, he tries to take refuge in the tower that overlooks the city. When he does so, he sees that an army of Lamanites happens to be moving in for an attack at that very moment. Sensing an opportunity to at least momentarily deflect the threat to his life and personal power, Noah pleads with Gideon to spare him so that their people can evade death and destruction at the Lamanites’ hands. Mormon, in his abridgment, advises us not to be fooled—it’s the same old selfish Noah peddling false claims of caring about his people (verses 5-8).

We get a taste of this from King Noah’s command to his people: Run! And he is in the front of the pack as they flee into the wilderness. But they can’t outrun the invading Lamanites. So then we see just how heartless Noah really is. As the Lamanites start overtaking his people, he calls out to the men to run faster and leave their women and children behind (verse 11). Clearly, he’s not letting anything get in the way of his own personal survival. Presumably, while he abandons his own people, he wants to ensure that he has enough men to come with him to be his protectors. Little does Noah know that in thinking only of himself by playing on these men’s fear, he is actually planting the seeds of his destruction—not his protection.

Noah’s transparent cowardliness repels some of the men who are among his people. They will not leave their wives and children, but decide to take their chances with the Lamanites. In the moment, they ask their “fair daughters” to approach the Lamanites and plead with them for their families’ lives. Mormon tells us that the Lamanites are charmed by the daughters’ beauty and have compassion on the people. That compassion, however, is aided by the fact that the Lamanites will now be able to exact a hefty tribute from these people (one-half of all their possessions). And another Lamanite demand is that the Nephites hand over King Noah, perhaps because the Lamanites want to eliminate the notion that the Nephites can rule themselves independently.

Gideon sends a group of men into the wilderness to search for the king, and they come upon the men who had fled with the king earlier. These men regretted that they had initially followed Noah’s command to abandon their families, but when they tried to go back, Noah insisted they stay with him. The king had gone too far this time, and in anger the men turned on Noah. Although Mormon doesn’t use too many words to describe what happened, we know enough—the king who’d had the prophet Abinadi burned alive so that he could continue to oppress his people for gain and pleasure was now himself burned alive, just as Abinadi had predicted multiple times (in Mosiah 12, 13 and 17). The people “caused that he should suffer.”

Noah’s priests, who were actually nothing more than clever henchmen who used empty ritual and other forms of deception to legitimize Noah’s oppressive rule over the people, fled farther into the wilderness. Thus, they eluded Noah’s fate at the hands of the men who killed him in the rage of their guilty consciences. As we will see, these priests will continue to plague the Nephites for years to come.

When the men who killed Noah meet the group sent by Gideon, they rejoice at hearing that their families had been preserved, and return to the city. With everyone accounted for, the Nephites confer their kingdom on Limhi, the son of Noah. Limhi is described as a just man who is aware of his father’s iniquity (verse 17). Limhi makes an oath to the Lamanite king that the Nephites will pay tribute of half their possessions, and the Lamanite king makes an oath not to slay the Nephites. The Lamanites enforce this new order with guards posted around the Nephites’ land.