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18 Chapters
S. Kent Brown
Marriage seemingly receives little attention in the Book of Mormon. The earliest notice, that of the marriage of the sons of Lehi and Sariah to the daughters of Ishmael, rates no more than a single verse (see 1 Nephi 16:7). In the following generation, the prophet Jacob condemns certain men in his society for seeking to introduce the practice of plural marriage (see Jacob 2:22—35), a practice that seems not to have continued.1 The regent Lamanite king, Lamoni, in a much later scene, proposes to marry his daughter to Ammon, a Nephite prince, a proposal that Ammon respectfully declines (see Alma 17:22—25). In a celebrated case, the traitorous Nephite Amalickiah deceitfully “obtain[s] the kingdom” of the Lamanites and takes the queen “unto him to wife” (Alma 47:35).2 Oddly, perhaps, the most interesting, complex, and complete account of marriage in the Book of Mormon is that of the fugitive priests of King Noah to Lamanite “daughters” whom they abducted (see Mosiah 20:3—5), rupturing a treaty in the process.
These priests of Noah, part of a Nephite colony in the midst of Lamanites, had abandoned their homes and families in an effort to avoid death at the hands of an invading Lamanite army (see Mosiah 19:9—23). Two years later (see Mosiah 19:29), the priests crept back to the outskirts of their former colony and, presumably in order to stay alive, “carried off [fellow colonists’] grain and many of their precious things,” coming “by night,” which made their thievery potentially a capital crime (Mosiah 21:21).3 It was while they were in the neighboring wilderness that they stumbled upon “a place in Shemlon where the daughters of the Lamanites did gather themselves” (Mosiah 20:1). After discovering “the daughters of the Lamanites, they laid and watched them; And when there were but few of them gathered together to dance, they came forth out of their secret places and took them and carried them into the wilderness” (Mosiah 20:4—5).
The sudden disappearance of the young women led to an immediate rupture in the treaty—a suzerain-vassal relationship between Lamanite overlords and the subject Nephite colony, then under the leadership of Limhi—a rupture that brought military reprisal against the Nephites (see Mosiah 20:6—11).4 The Lamanite king and his people suspected that the Nephites were responsible for the wrong.5 When both parties grasped that it was the renegade priests who had kidnapped these young women (see Mosiah 20:17—19, 23—24), they set out to discover the whereabouts of the priests and their captives in order to punish the priests, without success.6 When a disoriented Lamanite army accidentally located them many months later, the priests craftily escaped punishment by obliging their “wives” to intercede on their behalf, thereafter easing themselves into Lamanite society, even taking positions of responsibility (see Mosiah 23:30—24:1, 4).7
A number of legal and social issues stem from the narrative. The most important is the fact that, at the end of this series of events, the women are called “wives” and the priests “husbands” (Mosiah 23:33—34). The terms are most significant, for they establish the legal framework for the outcome of the story. Perhaps just as important is the observation that the editor of the account, Mormon, has accepted the terminology of his source. Plainly, by so doing he demonstrates that in his culture—although he lived much later—the women were thought of as legally married. One of the complicating issues that does not arise in the narrative has to do with the legal status of the priests’ previous wives whom they had abandoned, although clear evidence exists for laws dealing with children in such a circumstance.8
The terminology not only interprets the outcome of the situation but also invites us to enter the world of the Old Testament where laws deal rather extensively with marriage, including that of a master to a captive woman. As we shall soon see, a number of elements in the account can be understood best in light of either the Mosaic code or Old Testament events that established legal norms.9
In the situation at hand, the text stands with verbs that point to the captive status of the Lamanite women: the priests “took them and carried them” away (Mosiah 20:5; cf. Mosiah 20:15, 23).10 But the captivity was illegal, for those who subsequently accused the priests said that they had “stolen” the young women—a term with severe legal implications (Mosiah 20:18; 21:20—21).11
Two issues come immediately to the fore: (1) making the daughters captives—an illegal act in both Lamanite and Nephite societies, as the responses illustrate (see Mosiah 20:6, 16)—and (2) on a social level, the consequent depriving of each woman of a marriage performed with the “consent” of her parents, particularly of her father—”there is a complete break with her family.”12
In this latter instance, such marriages were allowed between Israelite males and foreign women whose city, lying at a distance “very far off,” had been sacked by an Israelite army (Deuteronomy 20:15; see Deuteronomy 20:10—15). But, of course, the Lamanite daughters were not foreigners in the sense that they were non-Israelites—hence, the enormity of the priests’ actions: abducting the young women, forcibly separating them from their families while intending to take them as wives, forcing their will on Israelite women, and carrying out marriages that were inappropriate under the Mosaic code because they did not result from war. But in the end, astonishingly, the marriages were honored, at least by Lamanite society.
The decree of death to the priests, issued by both the Lamanite king and the Nephite ruler Limhi (see Mosiah 20:7, 16), strongly suggests that some of the young women were already betrothed to be married—and therefore were considered to be under a marriage obligation—and that their kidnappers were thought of as rapists. In such a situation, the men would be sentenced to die.13 In contrast, in the case of an unmarried virgin, biblical law holds that the rapist must pay a fine, marry the woman, and never divorce her (see Deuteronomy 22:28—29). Hence, had none of the young women been engaged—that is, if none were under a marriage contract—the severity of the reprisal sought by the Lamanite king might be thought of as excessive,14 unless one could demonstrate that he acted solely on emotion and not according to law.15
Another possible legal component is at play here, that of “humiliating” a woman.16 In the Bible, this issue is closely associated with that of a woman forced to marry without the consent of her father. The meaning of the humiliation remains an open question. Daube believes that the matter is identical to taking a woman “without the correct formalities” and arises when a woman is treated as if she comes from a class that does not deserve a wedding with all the trimmings, so to speak.17 But the humiliation may rather have to do with treating a woman as a harlot, as was done when Shechem forced Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah. It was this defiling of Dinah that led to the murderous response of her two brothers against Shechem and his fellow townsmen (see Genesis 34).18 According to this view, even though the Lamanite women were later reckoned as wives of the renegade priests, the route to their marriages was through defiled beds, thus humbling the women.19 In fact, it is the story of Dinah that provides some of the most striking parallels with the experience of the Lamanite daughters, except that Dinah did not marry the man who “took her, and lay with her, and defiled her” (Genesis 34:2).20
The broken treaty, at least as it was perceived by the Lamanite king, next draws our attention, not only because much space is granted to it—underscoring its value to both sides, including mention of the treaty ceremony itself21 —but also because its apparent rupture lay at the heart of the king’s decision to send his armies “to destroy the people of Limhi” (Mosiah 20:7). It also is important to the story to note that “even the king himself went before his people” into battle (Mosiah 20:7). Quite obviously the king felt that he had invested a good deal of effort in bringing the treaty about22 and, as a result, was hurt and angered that the agreement had apparently been broken by Limhi—his negotiating partner—and the Nephite colonists.23
The making of the treaty is to be understood as a very serious and sacred matter.24 On the human side, it was the basis for an era of peace, even though the peace chiefly benefited the Lamanites (see Mosiah 19:25—27, 29).25 According to Old Testament law, the breaking of an agreement between two parties led to whatever consequences were spelled out in the “curses” of the oaths—the classic example being the one between the Israelites, who were about to possess the promised land, and the Lord.26 As is plain from his response, the Lamanite king’s promise that “his people should not slay” the people of Limhi (Mosiah 19:25) was reversed as one of the penalties for breaking the treaty.
In the end, the king’s decision “to destroy” the Nephite colony must have rested on a combination of considerations, one of which was his feelings of anger. In general, when a treaty has evidently been broken, the question is, “How flagrant must a violation be before the sovereign could legitimately muster his military forces and attack the recalcitrant vassal?”27 The Lamanite king must have seen a series of misdeeds in the abduction of the young women. First, an act of stealing was a clear breach of law; the people were not in a state of war or national tension. Second, any marriages that might result would consequently be illegal or, at the very least, extremely odious. Third, the kidnapping was evidence, as he perceived the matter, of broken solemn pledges made only two years earlier.28 It would appear that he had no choice except to bring down the weight of the Lamanite army on the Nephite colonists.
Now we come to a key question. Why were these marriages between the priests and the abducted women recognized? Clearly the priests broke the law and thus distanced themselves from custom as understood in both the Nephite and Lamanite societies. Yet in the end the marriages not only were more or less legitimized according to the terminology in a Nephite record—wives and husbands—but were also allowed to stand in Lamanite society, where the couples came to live and raise families.
The answer has to be that an array of factors brought about a favorable resolution of the issue for the priests. First, on the legal side, we have already seen that under Mosaic law a man can marry a captive woman if certain procedures are followed, particularly because the marriage takes place without the consent of her father and without the normal wedding celebrations (see Deuteronomy 21:10—14). The law stipulates that the woman must be a prize of war and a citizen of a city “very far off” (see Deuteronomy 20:15), but for the renegade priests, such stipulations—even if honored in the larger society29—would have made little difference. Moreover, it was evidently possible in Book of Mormon society, as in societies in the ancient Near East,30 to make a woman a wife by intercourse—an action particularly repugnant to the woman’s family. Hence, the priests may have been partially, if weakly, justified—in their own eyes, at least—in holding onto the Lamanite daughters as wives.
One cannot prove directly that the particular stipulations of the Deuteronomic code, noted above, were known and observed among Book of Mormon peoples. But the account does exhibit clues of a serious legal difficulty in resolving the status of the marriages, clues that invite one to examine the only legal texts that were available to Book of Mormon societies early on.31
The second set of circumstances has to do with what happened when the wandering Lamanite army came upon the new settlement founded by the priests and their wives. Essentially the priests made a deal. We note before anything else that typical soldiers in antiquity would not be literate and therefore acquainted with legal niceties.32 But the army that discovered the settlement was well aware that these priests—known kidnappers—were deserving of death.33 As a result, the priests did everything to escape being killed. The leader of the group, a man named Amulon,34 adopted a two-pronged approach. First, he himself “did plead with the Lamanites” that they not destroy the members of the settlement. Then “he also sent forth their wives, who were the daughters of the Lamanites, to plead with their brethren, that they should not destroy their husbands” (Mosiah 23:33). His own efforts seem to have failed. But the efforts of the women paid off: “And the Lamanites had compassion on Amulon and his brethren, and did not destroy them, because of their wives” (Mosiah 23:34).35 Simply stated, Amulon’s tactic to throw himself and his fellow priests on the mercy of the Lamanite army worked because it spared their lives. But there is more. To all appearances, the wives were willing to intercede for their husbands. There was no visibly abusive compulsion on the part of the former priests, forcing the women to come forward and beg on their behalf in a demeaning way, an action that would surely have given the Lamanite soldiers an excuse to execute the husbands.
However, negotiations also meant that the priests evidently were required to abandon their new settlement, to return to the homeland of the Lamanites, and to “join the Lamanites,” although the text does not specify what this latter means (Mosiah 23:35).36 The results for the priests were that they would keep both their lives and their wives—a decision not subsequently overturned by the Lamanite king because, afterward, he appointed Amulon to serve as a regent king over the colony of Alma, “his people” (Mosiah 23:39).
In a sad aftermath, we learn of the terrible fate of the former priests and their sons.37 A generation after the priests were allowed to keep their wives, and following a series of remarkable successes by Nephite missionaries preaching among the Lamanites, which led to a split in the society along religious lines, a Lamanite army—chiefly out of frustration—attacked the Nephite frontier city Ammonihah and destroyed all life in it (see Alma 16:1—3).38 Of events that followed, we possess two accounts. One is that of the Nephite army which tracked the Lamanite force “into the wilderness” because this latter group had taken captives from neighboring settlements whom the Nephites sought to rescue. Rescue them they did. The commanding general consulted with Alma, the prophet in the church, who gave inspired instructions as to where the Nephite army could intercept the Lamanites with their captives, which they did without loss of life to any of the prisoners. The first account ends with the notation that the former prisoners “were brought by their brethren to possess their own lands” (Alma 16:4—8).
It is the second account that fills in the picture about the fate of the priests and their sons who, as it happened, were part of the invading Lamanite army that destroyed the city of Ammonihah. This record originated with the sons of King Mosiah, whose success as missionaries had raised anger and fear in certain Lamanite circles, an anger that spilled over into a civil conflict between nonbelievers and newly won believers in the message of Mosiah’s sons. Because believers, who were called the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi (see Alma 23:17), refused to take up arms in self-defense and because their attackers became frustrated and angry with themselves for slaughtering fellow citizens who were believers, the nonbelievers “swore vengeance upon the Nephites” and subsequently attacked the city of Ammonihah. It was this force that the Nephite army intercepted, freeing the prisoners. But there was more. When the Nephite force ambushed the Lamanite army, it both killed “almost all the seed of Amulon and his brethren, who were the priests of Noah,” and drove the remainder deeper into the wilderness where a rift occurred among the Lamanite soldiers. Some had begun to doubt the worthwhile prospects of making war, having seen the pacifistic stance of their fellow countrymen, the Anti-Nephi-Lehis. At this point, the remaining priests and “the children of Amulon” executed those who had begun “to disbelieve the traditions of their fathers, and to believe in the Lord” (Alma 25:6). After an ensuing mutiny, termed a “contention in the wilderness,” “the Lamanites” began “to hunt” and kill “the seed of Amulon and his brethren” (Alma 25:8).39 In a mournful ending to this episode, the record sadly observes that “they are hunted at this day by the Lamanites” (Alma 25:9).
In a postscript, other “descendants of the priests of Noah” (Alma 43:13)—presumably not only children of the priests who were too young to participate in the attack on Ammonihah but also grandchildren of the former priests40—participated in the protracted wars between the Lamanites and Nephites (see Alma 43—44 and 49—62). From this point on, we lose sight of them in the record. But we last view them as they rejoin those whose hatred for the Nephites was almost insatiable and dealt in death.
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