“Ye Shall Be Hunted”

Brant Gardner

There is a direct cursing of those assembled before Abinadi. Mormon does not give us enough of the background to be able to be certain about the people who are condemned here, but this particular condemnation is probably directed at the entire people of Noah, not just the King and the priests. While the priests do suffer from being hunted for a while, they eventually join with the Lamanites, and their ultimate fate may not be easily seen as a fulfillment of this prophecy.

In the ancient world, executions were typically held in public. We know this from Western history, and we may presume it for Mesoamerica where human sacrifice was publicly performed. The social reasons for public execution include the emphasis on the social sanction against the person and what the person did - with the punishment standing as a clear and present warning to all who might have sympathized with the one being put to death.

In this case, Abinadi was seen as a threat (remember that King Noah came close to rescinding the death order because of the perceived threat) and therefore a public execution would have been scheduled to show the public that the man was considered an enemy to the state. In this public forum, Abinadi would be speaking to those who would become the people of Limhi, and they certainly suffered under their bondage, and fleeing from their homes to Zarahemla would clearly fulfill the idea of the scattering. This prophecy is best seen as directed to the people as a whole.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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