“Different Pieces of Their Gold, and of Their Silver”

To understand the bribe that Zeezrom offers Amulek, Mormon takes a rather long detour to describe the Nephites’ system, which he assumes is unique to the Nephites and which his reader may not understand. While Mormon may have had some understanding (through revelation) of modern Western readers, he definitely assumed he was writing to future Lamanites and that they did not use the same system as the Nephites.

Authors do not explain the obvious. For example, when Mormon speaks of travel, he never indicates its mode, assuming that his readers will know Nephites traveled on foot. In the case of the mode of exchange, however, Mormon goes into remarkably explicit detail. One reason is that his readers will need to understand the size of Zeezrom’s bribe. A second reason is that names of monetary units will appear as elements of protagonists’ names. (See commentary accompanying Alma 10:31–32 and 12:20–21.)

John W. Welch notes several parallels between this system and those of the Old World:

Similarities appear almost effortlessly in the law code of Eshnunna, which was compiled about 1800 B.C. in a Babylonian city by that name that lay approximately 50 miles northeast of Baghdad in modern Iraq. In fact the similarities are rather striking. First of all, the opening lines in the law code of Eshnunna set out an important equivalency that becomes the basis for commerce: “one kor of barley is equal to one shekel of silver.” A similar conversion between silver and barley was also used among the Hittites. Perhaps it is coincidental, but the law of Mosiah begins with a comparable ratio of value stated in similar phraseology: “a senum of silver, which is equal to a senine of gold,… and either for a measure of barley” (Alma 11:3, 7).

A second parallel has to do with the basic reason for establishing values for various goods. At Eshnunna, this valuation was designed to allow merchants to deal in a variety of commodities, each one being convertible into either silver or barley, sesame oil, wool, and other things. Thus precious metal and grain measures were interchangeable. Correspondingly, the Nephite system allowed traders to convert from silver or gold into many other goods: “also for a measure of every kind of grain” (Alma 11:7).

Third, one of the motives behind the laws of Eshnunna was apparently to create a kind of standard rate of compensation for drivers of wagons or for boatmen, as well as to set the penalties for damages or the daily rates for renting different means of transport, such as boats and wagons. In the case of the Nephites, the system was likewise linked to a standard daily wage, in this instance for judges. Both systems are consistent with the ordinary workings of ancient economies.

Culture: Mormon’s introduction to these measures explains that the Nephites “altered their reckoning and their measure, according to the minds and the circumstances of the people, in every generation, until the reign of the judges.” In other words, this system has already changed forms several times “according to the minds and the circumstances of the people.” I hypothesize that this system developed out of market pressures that dictated the accepted equivalencies; it was not a royal fiat. “They having been established by king Mosiah” refers to Mosiah₂’s establishment of the judges, not the system of weights and measures.