Amulek uses this opportunity to repeat the message from the Lord. The city of Ammonihah faces destruction. Amulek lays the cause for this destruction at the feet of the lawyers, and the system that they represent.
Alma 10:19
19 Yea, well did Mosiah say, who was our last king, when he was about to deliver up the kingdom, having no one to confer it upon, causing that this people should be governed by their own voices—yea, well did he say that if the time should come that the voice of this people should choose iniquity, that is, if the time should come that this people should fall into transgression, they would be ripe for destruction.
Alma cites Mosiah. The reference is clear, but it is also clear that he is giving a paraphrase rather than a precise quotation: Mosiah 29:27 “And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.”
Amulek has now strengthened his accusation against the lawyers. He correctly assumes that the lawyers represent the “voice of the people.” Once again, we must remember that the functioning of the “voice of the people” was quite different from a “one man, one vote” type of democracy. It was most likely an opinion rendered by clan heads, and in the case of Ammonihah, the elite would have had a greater voice than the commoners. The lawyers, as representatives of the elite range of society would be directly responsible for the way the voice of the people dictated law. In Ammonihah, it was the order of Nehor, and the lawyers were certainly beneficiaries as well as proponents. Amulek is quite correct in laying the blame for Ammonihah’s destruction at the feet of the lawyers, and by extension the other elite who had supported the order of Nehor.