“Destruction Should Come Upon You”

Brant Gardner

Again Giddianhi feigns concern for Lachoneus and his people. This choice between submission or destruction, as noted above, has Aztec parallels—and possibly in earlier times as well; but direct evidence is not available for other cultures or periods. The Aztecs made this demand by a personal ambassador, since they did not have a writing system that could encode words. According to Hassig, “The Aztecs often sent an ambassador to a foreign group to ask that it submit to Tenochtitlán and become a tributary of the Aztec state. If it refused, the area was a candidate for conquest, and the killing of an ambassador definitively meant war.” While the mode of delivering the message is different, the purpose is the same: a formal invitation to submit, which, if refused, results in war.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 5

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