Textual: The last verse of chapter 45 is included here because it more properly belongs with the information that begins chapter 46 in our current edition. Of course we remember that there was no such chapter break in the 1830 edition. This information was intended to be conceptually adjacent to the material we are considering at the beginning of chapter 46.
Social: Mormon introduces this “problem” from the general to the specific. In general, the people grew proud because of their riches, they turn from God, and then there were a lot of people “gathered together against their brethren.” The specific deals with the leader Amalickiah. When we get the information on the specific person, we also get the information that is going to allow us a better picture of what is happening, and why.
We see in verse 4 that Amalickiah was “desirous to be a king.” It is no mistake at all that this desire to be a king, and the desire of others to have a king, should come as a result of “their exceedingly great riches” (Alma 45:24). This is the same theme we have seen before in the Book of Mormon. Once again the combination of riches, turning from God, and turning to kings all occur as a set. These are the conditions we have seen that were precisely the major cultural pressure from the non-Nephite cultures in Mesoamerica. The only piece of the typical puzzle that is not explicitly mentioned here is the costly apparel. That, however, is the display location for wealth in Mesoamerica, so it is part and parcel of this complex of issues.
What we see in these verses is a continuation of the types of problems we have already been seeing in the Nephite lands. First we had the apostasy of Ammonihah, which began to turn away from pure Nephite religion and toward the almost half and half religion of Nehor (and Nephite, half Lamanite). Within too short a period of time we have the apostasy of the Zoramites at Antionum which is followed by their complete defection to the Lamanites. In both of those cases, entire cities fell form the Nephite religious/political alliance. What we are beginning to see now is that the same seeds that bred the apostasy in those more distant cities is beginning to effect the Nephite heartland. The Nephites are no longer simply fighting a Lamanite army from without, there are “Lamanite-sympathizers” who want to have a Lamanite-style government, complete with the king and the social hierarchies that go along with that style of government. This is completely opposed to the Nephite concept of egalitarian rule. The people who are pushing for a change to a kingship are therefore also looking for a complete overthrow of Nephite society – a destruction of that way of life that the prophets had always feared would come.
That this movement is heading inexorably to a hierarchical society is evidenced by the nature of the support that Amalickiah is receiving from judges. Note his power base: “they were the greater part of them the lower judges of the land, and they were seeking for power.” These are “the lower judges” which tells us little except perhaps that they were not the highest ranking judge in each of the cities. The reason that these “lower” judges would want power rather than the “higher” judges is that the “higher” judges would already enjoy a form of power because of their position in the current political system. Thus they had little to desire, having already the pinnacle of their current political power structure’s capabilities. For the “lower judges” however, there could be an improvement in power and particularly in conceptual rank if the egalitarian ideal were replaced with a more hierarchical system. These judges would be able to move into an elite status that would still provide greater personal power and position.
The last issue that we should briefly address is the reason that the lower judges might assume that they would be given some power in the new kingdom. Once again we must use our analogy to Mesoamerican society to give us hints as to how this would have worked. First, we have noted that Nephite society was kin based, and the kin based society maintained its kin groups even within the larger political system. This is very much the same social structure as we see in virtually all Mesoamerican cultures.
The ruling elite tend to come from the leadership of clans. In the cases of the judges, the men assigned to the first judgeships would have been the prominent men of the clans. Thus these men and their attendant families form a ready-made interest group. In our analysis of the mechanism of the voice of the people we noted that judgeships could be hereditary. Thus the position of a lower judge was likely still tightly tied to a clan, and the respect and social position of that particular clan could be tied to the position held by a prominent member who was a judge. When the lower judges championed the idea of the king, it was with the understanding that while a king might be at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, the judges would become the elite status functionaries of the king, and the entire clan would rise in status and wealth. Thus these lower judges had both the reason to want the power, and the clan connections to supply the large numbers of people that we begin to see associated with this new “king” movement.
The timing of these conflicts is also important in connection with the Mesoamerican backdrop. At the time of Christ the Mesoamerican cultures are in the final couple of hundred years of what is termed the Preclassic. When this period ends, the cultures emerging from the other side are full blown kingships with all of the stonework and glory we see in the most magnificent of the Maya ruins. Those Classic Maya cultures did not develop overnight, and the political stresses that were developing those full blown kingships are well underway in precisely the time period we see such difficulties among the Nephites. Amalickiah is not pulling the idea of a king from thin air, but from an air thick with the idea.