Text: This verse is a continuation of the paragraph from our current chapter 12. The recombined paragraph would be:
And now, my brethren, seeing we know these things, and they are true, let us repent, and harden not our hearts, that we provoke not the Lord our God to pull down his wrath upon us in these his second commandments which he has given unto us; but let us enter into the rest of God, which is prepared according to his word. [1] And again, my brethren, I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children; and I would that ye should remember that the Lord God ordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of his Son, to teach these things unto the people.
The transition is admittedly rather rough and quite probably is best rendered with a second paragraph. No new insights come from seeing it as an entire paragraph. The paragraphs were added by the printer and cannot be considered to derive from the plate text. However, the chapter breaks do, and it is still essential to understand chapter 13 as a continuation of chapter 12.
Rhetoric: In Alma 12:37 Alma called for repentance. He calls for repentance again in Alma 13:13–14 and Alma 13:27–30. Very clearly the call for repentance is his major theme, interwoven with three subthemes.
The first is the concept of temporal death. Second is spiritual death, which Alma discusses in the first part of his sermon to explain by repentance is necessary. The people must repent so that this second death will not fall upon them. The third subtheme deals with the priesthood associated with Melchizedek. Why this concentration on priesthood in the middle of a discourse that calls for repentance?
Alma is in direct conflict with the established “priesthood” of the Ammonihahites. They have their own priests, and I hypothesize that these priests may very well be lawyers. The lawyers of the New Testament are the scribes, specializing in religious law. In the New World, they would even more logically be specialists in religious law because there was less distinction between secular and religious law as there was in New Testament times when Jerusalem was under Roman law, which was necessarily different from biblical law.
Speaking to an audience who needs to repent, it is important for Alma to declare his authority. He is not simply discussing theology; he is discussing a priest’s ability to effect the penitent’s cleansing. Thus, it is appropriate for Alma to discuss priesthood and to do so by declaring his connection to a priesthood claimed in ancient documents. After all, the ability to refer to documents apparently allowed Mosiah to have political dominance in Zarahemla. (See commentary accompanying Omni 1:17 and Mosiah 1:16 and footnote on commentary accompanying Alma 3:12).
The ancient world uses the recognized cultural foundations as context for rights that are claimed. In Mesoamerica, political legitimacy was typically demonstrated by an appeal to the well-known source of legitimacy, the city of Tula. The Cakchiquel trace their lineage directly to Tula. The Popol Vuh has a similar origin for the Quiché.
It is therefore reasonable to see Alma’s appeal to Melchizedek in this context. Alma is claiming authority through sources that, because of their antiquity, give him priority over the lawyers of Ammonihah. He is unable to claim his legitimacy solely through Zarahemla, for Ammonihah’s allegiance to Zarahemla is currently shaky. He must therefore claim a context that is older and much more religiously powerful. Even though Ammonihah had affiliated with the order of the Nehors, its people were still Nephite and would have had access to the stories from the brass plates and, therefore, reverence for the name of Melchizedek. In Alma’s appeal to authority, he provides a stronger context for his appeal for repentance.
Translation: We have a slightly unusual construction for modern English in this verse: “I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments.… ” This phrase appears to combine elements of a future (“forward”) with elements of the past (“gave”). In this case, the citing forward has the meaning of “earlier,” which suggests that it should have been “fore-ward,” which we are familiar with from constructions like “aforesaid” and “forefathers.” It is unclear where Joseph came up with this particular construction. It may have been part of the plate language, as that particular usage for “forward” is not clear from the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, which appears to place “forward” in the future rather than the implied “fore-ward” of this verse (with “fore” indicating that which has gone before).
Reference: Part of Alma 12 and much of 13 echo language from Hebrews 7.