“Therefore Your Iniquity Provoketh Him”

Brant Gardner

Alma punches home his point by making the abstract principle of the atonement pointedly personal. He specifically tells the people of Ammonihah that their hearts are hard and that they will not enter into the rest of the Lord.

Then Alma pronounces their penalties. First, their iniquity “provoketh” Yahweh. In other words, they have incurred his just wrath. Yahweh is not turning against them unjustly. In fact, they have committed two “provocations” which will lead to two destructions.

The first provocation is their current rejection of the gospel as a city and as a people. The Lord has warned them that they will be destroyed if they do not repent. When they do not repent, their city is destroyed according to Yahweh’s word (Alma 25:2).

The second provocation is much more serious. While their nonrepentance will lead to their city’s temporal destruction (including their own deaths), their nonrepentance will also lead to a second destruction—“the everlasting destruction of your souls.”

By specifying “unto the last death, as well as the first,” Alma is reminding them that the “last death” is the spiritual or second death. Alma assures them that both temporal and spiritual death await them. Both come because they refuse to repent.

Rhetoric: Alma has summarized his entire sermon with precision and power. He has described the causes and effects of both the temporal and the spiritual death. Now he makes both inescapably personal by declaring that both await the unrepentant Ammonihahites.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 4

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