While discussing Nephi’s story of the creation of his people, I noted that he paid attention to an ancient Near Eastern pattern for the establishment of a new people. Nephi’s use of the theme led to his paralleling the Lehite exodus with Israel’s exodus from Egypt. While Mormon doesn’t emphasize the ethnogenetic elements, he nevertheless uses some of that basic outline. Alma’s people flee through the wilderness and arrive at a new land, just as the Nephites had traveled over the water to a new land.
When Nephi wrote of his people arriving in the New World, he wrote that they found what they needed in order to live and that they began to prosper. Alma’s people also come to a new land and begin to settle. They till the ground, and began to build buildings. As did the Lehites, the people of Alma began to prosper in their new land.
As Mormon describes them, they are a new and righteous people. Because of the promise of the land, of course they would prosper, and their success becomes evidence of their righteousness.