According to Hugh Nibley, there is a very interesting thing which went on with king Noah during the trial of Abinadi. King Noah was worried, and he wanted to do the right thing here. He was afraid because he knew darn well that Abinadi was right, and "was about to release him, for he feared his word" (Mosiah 17:11). But notice what happened. The "priests lifted up their voices against [Abinadi]" (Mosiah 17:12), they wouldn't let him out of their trap. The very same thing happened with Pilate. Remember? Pilate wanted to put the responsibility of Jesus onto the Jewish officials, and they got their revenge. Notice that Pilate had this dialogue with the Jews, and they were each trying to outwit the other. Who had the last word? Each one tried to stick the other with the responsibility for the crucifixion, the death of Christ. And so Pilate said, "He is the king of the Jews." And they said, "He said he was King of the Jews." "No," said Pilate, "he is the King of the Jews." Well, the Jews have their revenge on Pilate. They said, "All right, we have no other king but Caesar." Well, what a thing for the Jews to say because after all, they were speaking to Pilate, and Pilate was serving Caesar. In other words, they were making a traitor out of Pilate. See, if Jesus was recognized as King of the Jews, then he would be a Rex amicalis [a friendly king without threat or aspiration to the Roman throne]. He would not be in rebellion against Caesar. But the Jews said, "We are loyal only to Caesar. We do not acknowledge him as king. We acknowledge only Caesar as our king." Where did that leave Pontius Pilate? He was Caesar's representative there, and this ruined his career. He ended up in disgrace. It left him [a Roman magistrate over the Jews] to say he recognized Jesus as king of the Jews, but they [the Jews] recognized only Caesar. Here we [the Jews] are wanting to support Caesar, and you [Pilate] want us to support Jesus? What are you doing? Taking us away from Caesar and having us support Jesus? We think this guy Jesus is a fraud. And notice, it was only the high priests and the elders who insisted on it; they kept shouting that. So that put Pilate on the spot. He had to give in, and they went ahead and did the deed. And the same thing happened here with the priests of Noah. Notice, the king wanted to give up. He recognized Abinadi, but the priests wouldn't let him do it: "the priests lifted up their voices against him . . . saying: He has reviled the king" (Mosiah 17:12). They were putting it on the king to make him responsible. They were forcing him to put Abinadi to death, to defend the kingly office and keep his royal dignity. [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 2, pp. 107-108]