Now with verse 12 we suddenly come upon a whole new epoch of the Book of Mormon annals. The writer is Amaleki, son of Abinadom. To appreciate what he is about to relate, we need to remind ourselves that for approximately 350 years the Nephites had been pinned against a dangerous and forbidding mountain wilderness stretching from the sea east to the sea west. As we shall discover later in this record, this wilderness was so treacherous that whole armies could get lost in it after merely a day or two of travel.
It would appear that around 225 B.C. conditions among the Nephites had become so apostate that the Lord decided to lead the righteous out from among them and abandon the rest of the Nephites to their predatory enemies, the Lamanites. This event had been predicted by Jacob some 300 years earlier.1 To lead the righteous through this terrible mountain wilderness, the Lord raised up a prophet named Mosiah. Those who went with him were those who would hearken to the word of warning. As we will discover later, Amaleki was one of them. We learn from Mosiah 11:13 that there was a prominent foothill near the wilderness where the righteous Nephites gathered together prior to their flight into the wilderness.