Textual: This verse is Mormon’s explanation of the events that will follow. Since the point of this addition to his work is to describe the preaching of the gospel among the Lamanites, Mormon interjects his understanding of why Aaron received a very different reception than did Ammon in the land of Ishmael.
There is much of the social relationships of that area that are quickly encapsulated in this verse. First, we understand that there is an antipathy between the Lamanites and Nephites that could be quite strong, witnessed by the reaction of Lamoni’s father to Ammon that we have just seen in the last chapter. However, the reaction of many of the Lamanites appears to have been less volatile as we saw in the story of Ammon in Lamoni’s court. In that story there was nothing that indicated a strong hatred, although the original welcome did fall short of complete embrace. This suggests that one of the reasons for the success of the Lamanite mission was that the old antagonisms may have been diminishing, with the majority of the people understanding that the Nephites were an opposing political entity, but not having extreme hatred as did some others.
On the other hand, Mormon reminds us of the Amalekites and the Amulonites, both of which were peoples living among the Lamanites but with a Nephite heritage that was quite recent. For those peoples, the wounds of separation were still much newer, and their hatred of the people upon whom they had both turned their backs and previously engaged in battle must have been extreme. Mormon understood the general trend of apostates to turn hatred upon the group from which they have apostatized, and thus he suggests that it is these two former Nephite peoples who have escalated whatever natural antipathy the Lamanites had for the Nephites.