In this very long block of chapters and also in the next, we will be covering the whopping total of twenty-one chapters that comprise the last third of the Book of Alma. This section in the Book of Mormon is often called “the war chapters.” And it can be a battle for average readers to get through them. I will save the discussion of warfare for the next installment of these Notes, so that all of these chapters can be analyzed together from the perspective of military science. In this set of Notes, we will look primarily for spiritual and other kinds of lessons that can be learned.
At this outset, pause to notice that the nature of the Book of Alma shifts here quite decisively in two ways: First, Alma leaves. He will soon depart and not return. His son Helaman will emerge as the leading high priest of the Church until he dies, as reported in Alma 62:52. So one might wonder, Why wasn’t this block of text presented as a separate book called “the Book of Helaman, the Son of Alma”? One answer, as we will see, is that this seven-year period of war is the direct aftermath of problems that began in Alma 28–35.
Second, Mormon takes greater charge of the narrative. At this point, Mormon will become much more prominent as historian, abridger and narrator. This makes good sense because four hundred years later Mormon himself was the Nephite military commander. He had studied these records from the perspective of war. He appreciated the practical and spiritual lessons that his predecessors had learned, as well as those that they should have learned, from the high costs and risks of war. He knew that we, as his latter-day readers, would need to learn many of these same lessons, most of which Mormon’s own people failed to learn, which led to their destruction. Thus, even though Mormon does not mention himself by name anywhere in the Book of Mormon until 3 Nephi 5:12, we can tell that these war chapters could only have been produced by someone like Mormon, the prophet and commander in chief. These military chapters are indeed very meticulous, precise, and purposeful.
But pause again, and think about that for a moment. Joseph Smith did not know anything about ancient military science. And, from the records he had translated up to this point, as far as we know, he didn’t yet know the name of the abridger of this record that he was bringing forth! While the names of Mormon and Moroni are on the Title Page of the Book of Mormon, Joseph did not translate that the Title Page until after he had translated the Book of Moroni—since the Title Page was at the back of the plates of Mormon, as Joseph Smith once said. It is possible that the Angel Moroni told Joseph a few things about his father Mormon, or that he may have learned something about Mormon in translating the 116 pages that got lost; but until 3 Nephi 5:12, the name of Mormon had not come up in the translation of the books of Mosiah or Alma. Before 3 Nephi 5, Joseph would not yet have known from the record anything about Mormon’s purposes, his personality, his interests in warfare, let alone his apparent fondness for “the Waters of Mormon” (mentioned 12 times in Mosiah 18). Nor would Joseph have had any hint that Mormon might have named his own son Moroni, after the bold Captain Moroni, who figures prominently throughout these war chapters. Naturally, we think of Mormon’s role in these connections as we read these war chapters, but they make sense to us only because we already know how the story of the Book of Mormon will end. But imagine Joseph Smith’s sense of surprise and discovery as these intertwining details first emerged to his understanding as the text of the Book of Mormon unfolded before his eyes.