Book of Mormon Evidence: Abinadi’s Disguise

Abinadi’s Disguise

When Abinadi first preached repentance unto the people of King Noah, they were “wroth with him, and sought to take away his life” (Mosiah 11:26). After hearing reports of Abinadi’s prophecies, King Noah himself sought to slay Abinadi, but the “Lord delivered him out of their hands” (v. 26). Two years later, Abinadi again preached unto the people, but this time he “came among them in disguise, that they knew him not” (Mosiah 12:1). Angered by Abinadi’s prophecies of impending captivity, afflictions, and destruction, the people bound and carried him before King Noah for judgment (vv.1–9).

Disguises in Biblical Narratives

This story has several parallels with biblical narratives that also deal with prophetic messengers, kings, and disguises. These include (1) King Saul disguising himself in order to receive guidance from the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28), (2) a prophet disguising himself in order to condemn King Ahab for not executing a Syrian King (1 Kings 20), (3) an Israelite king disguising himself to avoid harm in battle, only to be slain by an archer (1 Kings 22), (4) Josiah disguising himself in order to meet with an Egyptian Pharaoh (2 Chronicles 35; 2 Kings 23), and (5) Jeroboam’s wife disguising herself to visit a blind prophet concerning her son’s illness (1 Kings 14).

Biblical scholar Richard Coggins has pointed out that in these narratives, “one of the parties disguises himself (or in one case herself), but the disguise is penetrated, and God’s will is conveyed in a form which is liable to be quite unacceptable to the one seeking it.”¹ Coggins argues that the appearance of prophetic disguises in several Old Testament stories, all from the same historical period, is “surely not simply a matter of coincidence.” Rather, with the use of a prophetic disguise, “a theological point is being made.”² These biblical narratives typically depict a contest or conflict between God and an earthly king, and in each case, they don’t end well for the king. As explained by Alan Goff, “All of the kings or their heirs in the biblical disguise stories meet with brutal deaths, and in each case the dynasty fails.”³

Parallels between Disguise Stories

“In this light,” writes Goff, “it isn’t hard to guess what will happen to the wicked and unrepentant King Noah.”⁴ Typical of the narrative pattern, Noah was burned to death by his own people, and his dynasty ended after the reign of his son (Mosiah 19:20).⁵ Yet the parallels go well beyond the similar fates of the kings involved. For example, Goff has identified a substantial cluster of similarities between King Noah and Jeroboam, which is summarized in the following chart.⁶

Parallels with the other biblical narratives could be cited, but the above sample should be sufficient to demonstrate the point. According to Goff, “The allusive character of these stories is so much a part of the meaning that any reading failing to take the allusions into account can’t be considered adequate.”⁷

Of particular interest is the theme of blindness. Right before commenting on Abinadi’s disguise, the narrator reports that the “eyes of the people were blinded” (Mosiah 11:29), perhaps indicating that Abinadi’s disguise typifies the inability of wicked people to discern between truth and error. Goff concluded that the “disguise theme is particularly apt for the Abinadi-Noah story because the blindness and deception in stories of Israelite and Judahite kings comment on the blindness of the Israelite people and their kings who try to sever their own power from the God who granted that power.”⁸

The theme of spiritual blindness comes to a head when Abinadi delivers his prophetic message to Noah and his court. Just as Noah’s guards were about to take Abinadi and put him to death, his face shone with exceeding luster, even as Moses’ did while in the mount of Sinai, while speaking with the Lord” (Mosiah 13:5). This echoes the account in Exodus when a similar fear and awe came over the Israelites after Moses came off of Mount Sinai: “the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him” (Exodus 34:30). To protect them from his luster, Moses had to “put a veil on his face” (v. 33).

In a way, when Abinadi’s face started to shine in King Noah’s court, it’s as if his disguise—similar to Moses’ veil—had been completely lifted, resolving the themes of spiritual blindness in the narrative by demonstrating to all present that Abinadi was indeed a prophet like unto Moses.⁹

Conclusion

Clearly, there is more to Abinadi’s disguise than meets the eye. Hiding beneath the surface, the text pursues its own thematic purposes by developing a complex network of allusions to biblical disguise stories that also feature kings and prophets. “Whoever wrote the Book of Mormon text,” Goff concluded, “seems to have had a sharp eye for detail and is far beyond any contemporary readers in subtlety and knowledge of the Bible.”¹⁰