Helaman 4:9-10

Brant Gardner

When Mormon wrote of the war in which Chief Captain Moroni and Helaman fought to regain lost territory, Mormon listed the cities taken, and the strategies used to retake them. Whatever interest he had in that type of detail, it was confined to the time that those two men were fighting for the Nephite nation.

Even with the more devastating loss in this new war, we get virtually no details. In what was certainly fierce fighting to regain “even the half of all their possessions,” we get no such details. The previous war focuses on the traits of leaders and appeared to emphasize times when victory could be accomplished with little loss of blood.

Mormon seems to have included all he cared to of that lesson. This new war had to have been more devastating, but Mormon gives us virtually no details.

Book of Mormon Minute

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