Mormon 4

#Mormon Chapter 4

1 And now it came to pass that in the three hundred and sixty and third year the Nephites did go up with their armies to battle against the Lamanites, out of the land Desolation.

verse 1 The Nephite armies, as the aggressor, traveled through the narrow pass and entered the Lamanites’ lands to do battle against them “out of,” or south of the land Desolation.

2 And it came to pass that the armies of the Nephites were driven back again to the land of Desolation. And while they were yet weary, a fresh army of the Lamanites did come upon them; and they had a sore battle, insomuch that the Lamanites did take possession of the city Desolation, and did slay many of the Nephites, and did take many prisoners.

3 And the remainder did flee and join the inhabitants of the city Teancum. Now the city Teancum lay in the borders by the seashore; and it was also near the city Desolation.

verse 3 “Now the city Teancum lay in the borders by the seashore” Again, This phrase suggests that the city of Teancum was located in the mountains (“in the borders”) by the seashore, likely the eastern seashore.

4 And it was because the armies of the Nephites went up unto the Lamanites that they began to be smitten; for were it not for that, the Lamanites could have had no power over them.

verse 4 The Nephites had been taught “never to give an offense” (Alma 48:14; 43:46). This teaching had moral and spiritual value as well as tactical value. From a strategic point of view, if the Nephites had maintained a purely defensive strategy they would have been more difficult to defeat. When an army is defending its own land, families, and social structure, the soldiers are more highly motivated. If two opposing armies are evenly matched, the “economy of force” factor favors the defensive strategy. It requires fewer soldiers to man a defensive fortification than attack that same fortification (Warfare in the Book of Mormon, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and William J. Hamblin, 276-77).

5 But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished; for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed.

verse 5 “it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished” A wicked man is his own worst enemy. Not only does he bring upon himself the judgments of God, but by his wicked deeds he often brings upon himself the wrath of his fellow man and other punitive natural consequences. C. S. Lewis observed:

The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet. When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts for four-fifths of the suffering of men. It is men, not God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns, bayonets, and bombs; it is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork (The Problem of Pain, 89).

6 And it came to pass that the Lamanites did make preparations to come against the city Teancum.

7 And it came to pass in the three hundred and sixty and fourth year the Lamanites did come against the city Teancum, that they might take possession of the city Teancum also.

verse 7 One interesting Mesoamerican archaeological note is perhaps pertinent here. During this period in Mesoamerica there was great activity in trade beginning to develop. A major trade route was developing between what is now Mexico and the country of Guatemala. The Nephites were literally in the way of the only major trade route between these two trade centers, as the Nephites lived strategically near the isthmus of Tehuantepec. “Before an adequate trade relationship could be established with Mexico, the Lamanites in Guatemala [land of Nephi] needed to get rid of the tenacious Nephites” (Joseph L. Allen, Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon, 396).

8 And it came to pass that they were repulsed and driven back by the Nephites. And when the Nephites saw that they had driven the Lamanites they did again boast of their own strength; and they went forth in their own might, and took possession again of the city Desolation.

9 And now all these things had been done, and there had been thousands slain on both sides, both the Nephites and the Lamanites.

10 And it came to pass that the three hundred and sixty and sixth year had passed away, and the Lamanites came again upon the Nephites to battle; and yet the Nephites repented not of the evil they had done, but persisted in their wickedness continually.

11 And it is impossible for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a perfect description of the horrible scene of the blood and carnage which was among the people, both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites; and every heart was hardened, so that they delighted in the shedding of blood continually.

verse 11 Taking pleasure in the shedding of another’s blood, is probably the ultimate depth of spiritual depravity. Certainly, these Nephites and Lamanites were “past feeling” (1 Nephi 17:45) and hopelessly, spiritually lost.

12 And there never had been so great wickedness among all the children of Lehi, nor even among all the house of Israel, according to the words of the Lord, as was among this people.

13 And it came to pass that the Lamanites did take possession of the city Desolation, and this because their number did exceed the number of the Nephites.

14 And they did also march forward against the city Teancum, and did drive the inhabitants forth out of her, and did take many prisoners both women and children, and did offer them up as sacrifices unto their idol gods.

verse 14 This is the first-time human sacrifice is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols., Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007, 81–82). This heinous practice continued for the next 1,200 years. When the Spaniards arrived in the Mexico City Valley in AD 1519, they observed this diabolical practice being performed by the Aztecs. Bernal Diaz, a soldier in Cortez’s army wrote: “When they sacrifice a wretched Indian they saw open the chest with stone knives and hasten to tear out the palpitating heart and blood, and offer it to their idols, in whose name the sacrifice is made. Then they cut off the thighs, arms, and head and eat the former at feasts and banquets, and the head they hang up on some beams, and the body of the man sacrificed is not eaten but given to these fierce animals” (Bernal Diaz, The

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Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517-1521. Translated by A.P. Maudslay, [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: The Noonday Press, 1972]; see also Mormon 4:15, 21 and Moroni 9:10).

In addition, evidence for these heinous practices at about the same period of time have been revealed by archaeological excavations (see, for example, Sergio Gomez Chavez, “La funcion social del sacrificio humano en Teotihuacan: Un intento para formalizar su estudio e interpretation,” in La epoca clasica: Nuevos Hallazgos, nuevas ideas, ed. Amalia Cardos de Mendez [Mexico: Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1990], 147-62; see also Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 346).

In spite of the Lamanites’ horrific practice of human sacrifice, Mormon will later admit, in a letter to his son Moroni, that the Lamanites were no more wicked than his own people (Moroni 9:7-10).

Child sacrifice also has a long tradition in ancient Mesoamerica, the earliest evidence stretching back into early Olmec times (1600–1000 BC), where bone fragments from several newborn infants were discovered in a pond at Cerro el Manatí in Veracruz, Mexico that showed clear signs of being sacrificed and dismembered (Ortiz C. Ponciano and María del Carmen Rodríguez, “Olmec Ritual Behavior at El Manatí: A

Sacred Space,” in Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, ed. by David C. Grove and Rosemary A. Joyce, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1999, 248–249). Similarly, at the Maya site of Colha, Belize, thirty decapitated skulls were deposited in a pit dating to AD 800 to 850. The composition of the remains showed them to be ten women, ten men, ten children (from ages six months to seven years) (Virginia Massey, The Human Skeletal Remains from a Terminal Classic Skull Pit at Colha, Belize.Papers of the Colha Project. Vol. 3. Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1989). In addition, recent research in Belize’s Midnight Terror Cave has produced 9,566 human bones, bone fragments, and teeth that were deposited over the last 1,500 years. A large portion of those bones were found to be from 4 to 10-year-old children, showing the growing trend of child sacrifice from the Classic (AD 200–1000) into the Post-classic period (AD 1000–1697).

In Mesoamerica, children were sometimes sacrificed to honor a new king (Gardner, Second Witness, 6:81; 4:249–250). And human sacrifice was not unique to Mesoamerica. In a place called Carthage, in North Africa, it was sometimes done as an assurance that business ventures would succeed (This seems to have been done during the time-period of the Book of Mormon. See Lawrence Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child sacrifice in Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” Biblical Archeological Review 10, no. 1, January/February 1984: 31–51. See also Joseph A. Green and Lawrence Stager, “Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? Yes,” Archaeology Odyssey 3, no. 6, November / December 2000: 29, 31). It also appears to have been common during times of apostasy in ancient Israel for people to cause their children to “pass through the fire to Molech” (2 Kings 23:10) (See, for example, Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 18:10; 2 Kings 16:3, among others.). This appears to have been a form of human sacrifice (Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002, 171). However, in the case of Mormon 4, the Lamanites may have done this as (1) part of a burial ceremony for a high-status soldier or (2) as a way to ensure their victory in the war.

Also, people were sacrificed as part of the burial ceremonies of rulers so they might serve their leader in the afterlife (Ellen F. Morris, “Sacrifice for the State: First Dynasty Royal Funerals and the Rites at Macramallah’s Rectangle,” in Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, ed. Nicola Laneri, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago, 2007, 17). In the ancient Egyptian town of Abydos, for example, the body of a ruler named Djer was discovered, surrounded by the bodies of women who were likely his wives, concubines, or maids (A. Jeffrey Spencer, Death in Ancient Egypt, 1st edition, Westminster, UK: Penguin Books, 1982, 68, 139). A similar situation was found at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, where large numbers of attendants, both male and female, had been sacrificed and were buried with the Sumerian queen Puabi to accompany her into the afterlife (Harriet Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, 2nd edition, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 154).

Similar practices are found in pre-Columbian America (Lawrence Conrad, “The Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Central Illinois Valley,” in Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest, ed. Thomas E. Emerson and R. Barry Lewis, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2000, 130. See also John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book, Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2013, 487). At a place called Cahokia, near St. Louis, the body of a ruler was found surrounded by 53 women who had been sacrificed (The most notable example of this dates to around AD 1000, but may have been practiced well before this period in this area. See Timothy R. Pauketat, Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 88–93). In Mayan, Toltec, and Teotihuacan culture, one also sees women and children offered as sacrifices in a similar way. In some of these cases, it appears that the people being sacrificed had little connection to the dead leader (Carlos Serrano Sanchez, “Funerary Practices and Human Sacrifice in Teotihuacan Burials,” inTeotihuacan, Art from the City of the Gods, ed. Kathleen Berrin, San Fransisco, CA: Thames and Hudson, 1993, 113–114. See also Vera Tiesler, New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society, New York, NY: Springer, 2007, 506).

Thus, one possible reason why the Lamanites might have sacrificed the women and children of the city of Teancum was because a high-status Lamanite (or many highstatus Lamanites) had died taking the city. This might have prompted the companions of these high-status individuals to kill the women and children of the city to serve as wives and servants in the afterlife.

Child sacrifice in ancient Mesoamerica was also seen as a means of increasing the status of the surviving ruler (Traci Ardren, “Empowered Children in Classic Maya Sacrificial Rites,” Childhood in the Past: An International Journal 4, no. 1, 2011: 133– 145). Also, the Lamanites may have felt that such a sacrifice would help win the war by persuading an idol to fight for them. In the Old Testament, the “the king of Moab . . . took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall.” The king offered his child to the Moabite god Chemosh in the middle of battle in order to ensure that he would win the war he was fighting (2 Kings 3:26–27) (Judges 11:24 notes that this God was named Chemosh). This implies that he thought the god would fight for him. The Lamanites may also have felt that sacrificing children would help them win.

Another possibility is that the individuals were sacrificed to obtain war trophies from their body parts, a prevalent practice in pre-columbian North, Central, and South America that often coincided with cannibalism (Richard J. Chacon and David H. Dye, eds., The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians, New York, NT: Springer, 2007. See also the commentary for Alma 17:39.).

One final possibility is that the Lamanite warriors thought the sacrifices would help their crops grow. During a time of war, like Mormon 4, crops were often destroyed, causing famine (Alma 62:35 notes that war and famine were connected in the Book of Mormon.). This meant that the productivity of the surviving crops became even more important. In Mesoamerica, children were sacrificed during times of famine because people felt that this would increase crop yield (In ancient Mesoamerica children were seen to be “magically effective in drawing rain”. See Ardren, “Empowered Children,” 133–145. See also A. G. Anda, V. Tielser, V. and P. Zabala, “Cenotes, espacios sagrados y la practica del sacrificio humano en Yucatan.” Los Investigadores de la Cultura Maya 12, Toma 2, Campeche: Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, 2004, 228. In the Maya area, excavations show large numbers of children being sacrificed to the Maya rain god, presumably to increase crop yield by petitioning the rains. See Bruce Bower, “Belize Cave Was Maya Child Sacrifice Site,” Science News, April 19, 2016. For similar traditions among the Aztecs see Philip. P. Arnold, “Eating Landscape: Human Sacrifice and Sustenance in Aztec Mexico,” in Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, ed. David Carrasco, Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1991, 228. This seems to have been done during the time of the Book of Mormon. See Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians and Their Shared History, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 13).

One might wonder at first how human sacrifice and idolatry could have been practiced by the children of Lehi after the glorious period of peace described in 4 Nephi. However, it is likely that when Mormon wrote about peace in “all the land” (4 Nephi 1:13), he likely meant all the land of the Nephites and Lamanites (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness, 6:17). If this is the case, then many wicked and idolatrous practices, including human sacrifice, could have been preserved by the Lehites’ neighbors, and then later reintroduced into their society (For a thorough review of the topic see the article by Matthew Roper, “Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations,” FARMS Review 15, no. 2, 2003: 91–128).

From the Lamanites, similar practices seem to have spread to the Nephites. It is possible that this chapter of Mormon was written at around the same time as Moroni 9, a letter from Mormon to his son. The Nephites would eventually commit heinous crimes, similar to, yet even worse than that of the Lamanites (Moroni 9:10). This suggests that both the Lamanites and Nephites allowed negative influences from neighboring cultures to influence them.

This can serve as a reminder to modern readers of the Book of Mormon that negative influences from the surrounding cultures can have a harmful impact on those who believe in Christ. It cautions readers to separate themselves from the negative influences that surround them, something the children of Lehi failed to do.

The Book of Mormon teaches that the shedding of innocent blood is among the most abominable of all sins (Alma 39:5). A people once so blessed and chosen of God descended to the depths of the worst depravity to kill innocent women and children in the name of false gods. While such acts seem deplorable and unthinkable to many, the descent to such actions begins with a single step. Once one loses the companionship of the Holy Ghost, it is a slippery slope to becoming “past feeling” (Moroni 9:20).

The Adversary works hard to push the children of men past feeling so that they willfully break the commandments of God. Not only was the sacrifice of women and children breaking the commandments of God, but it made a mockery of the ultimate sacrifice made by the Son of God. Jesus Christ sacrificed himself so that we would not have to suffer the same fate. The sacrifice of the Son of God was an infinite and eternal sacrifice to break the bands of death and bring salvation to the children of men.

15 And it came to pass that in the three hundred and sixty and seventh year, the Nephites being angry because the Lamanites had sacrificed their women and their children, that they did go against the Lamanites with exceedingly great anger, insomuch that they did beat again the Lamanites, and drive them out of their lands.

Verse 15 This would be the last victory the Nephites ever gained over the Lamanites.

16 And the Lamanites did not come again against the Nephites until the three hundred and seventy and fifth year.

17 And in this year they did come down against the Nephites with all their powers; and they were not numbered because of the greatness of their number.

verse 17 “they did come down against the Nephites” You likely have been noticing that the Nephites “go up” to attack the Lamanites, and the Lamanites “go down” or “come down” to attack the Nephites. It is obvious that the Lamanites, generally lived at a higher altitude than the Nephites.

18 And from this time forth did the Nephites gain no power over the Lamanites, but began to be swept off by them even as a dew before the sun.

19 And it came to pass that the Lamanites did come down against the city Desolation; and there was an exceedingly sore battle fought in the land Desolation, in the which they did beat the Nephites.

20 And they fled again from before them, and they came to the city Boaz; and there they did stand against the Lamanites with exceeding boldness, insomuch that the Lamanites did not beat them until they had come again the second time.

21 And when they had come the second time, the Nephites were driven and slaughtered with an exceedingly great slaughter; their women and their children were again sacrificed unto idols.

22 And it came to pass that the Nephites did again flee from before them, taking all the inhabitants with them, both in towns and villages.

23 And now I, Mormon, seeing that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land, therefore I did go to the hill Shim, and did take up all the records which Ammaron had hid up unto the Lord.