“I Command You in the Name of That All-Powerful God”

Alan C. Miner

Moroni is attempting to have Zerahemnah declare a peace and to swear to leave the Nephites alone. If Moroni can convince the Lamanites that God has been behind their victory, then they might assume that any future attacks would have the same result. Moroni is very formal in that declaration, and lists a number of things that become "witnesses" to his promise of safe conduct for Zerahemnah's men should they surrender. Moroni begins by commanding "in the name of that all powerful God" (Alma 44:5). The use of his Lord's name in an oath points to a direct covenant relationship with the God who has won the battle. After this covenant declaration, Moroni lists the other witnesses: "by our faith, by our religion, and by our rites of worship, and by our church . . ." While it would appear that Moroni is swearing by different things, these are all intended to be the same, with slight differences.

This is a well known literary technique among Mesoamerican peoples, where the same thing would be repeated with slight alterations. We need not attempt to find a difference between their faith and religion, because Mormon intends these to be parallel equivalencies, but with sight differences for a cumulative effect.

The reason Moroni had invoked God was to indicate that the outcome would be the same in any future engagement, so the Lamanites might as well swear not to fight. [Brant Gardner, Book of Mormon Commentary, [http://www.highfiber.com/~nahualli/LDStopics/Alma/Alma44.htm], pp. 2-3]

“I Command You by All That is Most Dear to Us”

In his words to Zerahemna to avert further bloodshed, Moroni declares:

And now Zerahemnah, I command you, in the name of that all-powerful God . . . by the sacred support which we owe to our wives and our children, by that liberty which binds us to our lands and our country; yea, and also by the maintenance of the sacred word of God, to which we owe all our happiness; and by all that is most dear unto us . . . by all the desires which ye have for life, that ye deliver up your weapons of war unto us, and we will seek not your blood. (Alma 44:5-6)

Dean Garret notes that a modern-day general, Omar N. Bradley, once warned: "We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. . . . Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed: "Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocked fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." [H. Dean Garrett, "Inspired by a Better Cause," in Studies in Scripture: Book of Mormon, Part 2, p. 78]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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