Gary Sturgess notes that in the writings of Alma, the miraculous deliverance of his people is attributed to the Lord:
For behold, I will show unto you that they were brought into bondage, and none could deliver them but the Lord their God, yea, even the God of Abraham and Isaac and of Jacob.
And it came to pass that he did deliver them, and he did show forth his mighty power unto them, and great were their rejoicings. (Mosiah 23-24)
It is clear that this was written to fulfill the prophecy of Abinadi in Mosiah 11:23-25: “And it shall come to pass that except this people repent and turn unto the Lord their God, they shall be brought into bondage; and none shall deliver them, except it be the Lord the Almighty God” (Mosiah 11;23). [Gary L. Sturgess, “The Book of Mosiah: Thoughts about Its Structure, Purposes, Themes, and Authorship,” in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Fall 1995, p. 125]
[Mosiah 23:25]: Tilling the Land Round About:
Alma’s people were “tilling the land round about” (Mosiah 23:25) when the Lamanites appeared. This statement explains the layout of the Nephite lands. Apparently, the city was a place of refuge, and farming was done outside the city.
According to John Sorenson, the Mesoamerican settlement unit that logically fits what the Book of Mormon calls a “land” (centered on a single city) consisted of that area inhabited by all the people who gathered to a central temple center for worship, trade, and civil administration. In lowland Maya country we know that a journey of one day to or from the center was the usual radius of a local land, and the scale was probably much the same elsewhere. (That single-day radius agrees with what we saw in the case of Benjamin’s assembly at Zarahemla.) [John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, F.A.R.M.S., p. 159]