Alma had taken Shiblon with him to Antionum, but Mormon did not give us any details about Shiblon’s experiences there. Clearly, Shiblon was separated from his father, perhaps preaching in a different location, and Shiblon’s experience differed from the one Mormon selected for Alma and Amulek’s teachings on faith and the conversion of those who later went to Jershon. Shiblon’s experience had stones thrown at him.
We should not read this as the same as stoning in the New Testament, as that was a form of execution, and Shiblon was clearly still alive. Therefore, we are seeing the word used in translation and, therefore, with the meaning of having stones thrown as a sign of rejection rather than as a method of capital punishment.
Alma will use this experience as an object lesson. When Alma taught Helaman, Alma invoked the bondage of the fathers as background to his own spiritual bondage. Here, Alma uses Shiblon’s personal physical bondage as the backdrop to the same story of Alma’s deliverance from spiritual bondage.