Alma’s soliloquy is a moving expression, and its elegance makes the assignment to a separate chapter understandable. However, it also cuts it off from its context. Why does Alma wish that he were an angel? Verse 2 tells us that it is so “that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.” Why was that his concern?
That is the context that is lost in the modern chapter division. These are the verses that provide the background:
“And from the first year to the fifteenth has brought to pass the destruction of many thousand lives; yea, it has brought to pass an awful scene of bloodshed. And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth; yea, and many thousands are mourning for the loss of their kindred, because they have reason to fear, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are consigned to a state of endless wo” (Alma 28:10–11).
In the previous chapter, which was originally all part of the same 1830 chapter, both Mormon and Alma spoke of the terrible costs of that particular war. Both Mormon and Alma lamented the great loss of lives. The slight difference between what Mormon said and what Alma said was that Alma was concerned not only for those who mourned, but that “they have reason to fear, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are consigned to a state of endless wo.” That is the reason that Alma wishes that he could preach with the power of an angel, to save the souls that might have reason to mourn even above the awful loss of life.