“The fray began when Gideon ‘admonish[ed Nehor] with the words of God’ (Alma 1:7). Gideon’s words may or may not have had any legal significance at the time they were spoken. On the one hand, the sharp words between Nehor and Gideon may have simply been a heated theological debate. On the other hand, these words may have served a legal function. The law of Jehoshaphat, for example, required ‘judges in all the land’ to warn ‘your brethren that dwell in their cities … that they trespass not against the Lord’ (2 Chronicles 19:5, 10). This principle, that potential offenders should be warned, … certainly could have found its way into Nephite law as well” (Welch, Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon, 221).