This chapter shows that while Alma may have won the skirmish against the Zoramites, thereby destroying their “craft” (35:3), they may have lost the larger battle. The Ammonites take in the Zoramite refugees (35:9), but then the Ammonites are forced to leave their land in Jershon to go to Melek (35:13). Meanwhile, the Nephites prepared the land of Jershon as a battleground, arming the poor Zoramites to be able to defend the lands there that had now been given to them “for their in heritance” (35:14), as the Lamanites and the Zoramites entered into an alliance (35:11). This was a high price to pay, and at home the Nephites became “offended because of the strictness” of the word and the law (35:15) that had to be enforced as the Nephites braced themselves for what would become seven years of prolonged military conflict. The realities of real politik are always stifling.