I have suggested that one fulfillment of this prophecy occurred with the burning of the faithful that Alma and Amulek witnessed. (See commentary accompanying Alma 14:8.) Perhaps Mormon was focusing on verses 17–18. He could see the burning of the wicked as part of the events of the Messiah’s death (3 Ne. 8:8, 14), but that event occurred around four hundred years earlier. If he were thinking of verses 17 and 18, the emphasis would be on scattering and being hunted. Those prophecies certainly describe the events of his own time (assuming that he wrote this book later in life when many of the events had already passed).
History: The concept of “slippery” treasures in the earth (v. 18) appears to reflect nineteenth-century folk beliefs. Several treasure hunters in New York of Joseph Smith’s day complained that the treasures they sought would slip away from them. That vocabulary in the Book of Mormon would therefore resemble other instances of language from Joseph Smith’s milieu already noted. (See commentary accompanying Alma 5:26.) However, a Nahuatl proverb (hence, after the Book of Mormon period), links “earth,” “slipperiness,” and impermanent things: “Tlaalahui, tlapetzcahui in tlalticpac. It is slippery, it is slick on the earth.”
Slipperiness also appears as an effect of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca. The Florentine Codex describes a worshipper speaking before the idol of Tezcatlipoca: “And things slip, things slide, no one escapeth thy presence.” (See commentary accompanying Helaman 13:30–31.)
Furthermore, these native occurrences of slipperiness differ significantly from their nineteenth-century counterpart where slipperiness foiled attempts of the treasure’s would-be possessors. In the Book of Mormon context, the earth is so far removed from Yahweh’s protection that the laws of nature are violated; items will not stay put. This reversal of expectations presaged the people’s destruction. Book of Mormon slipperiness doesn’t lose wealth; it loses a nation.
Text: There is no chapter break at this point in the 1830 edition.
1. See commentary accompanying 4 Nephi 1:47 for a possible missing generation between Amos1 and Amos2
2. Susan D. Gillespie, The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), 11, 102, and Michael E. Smith, The Aztecs (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 205.
3. Norman Hammond, “Inside the Black Box: Defining Maya Polity,” in Classic Maya Political History, edited by T. Patrick Culbert (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 264, and William L. Fash, Scribes, Warriors, and Kings (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991), 136.
4. Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 327, sees this passage as an example of Joseph’s autobiography appearing in the Book of Mormon:
While Smith was a different age than Mormon when he retrieved the record (Mormon was “about” twenty-four, Smith twenty-one), the similarity in storyline is apparent.
Meanwhile, “I, being eleven years old,” Mormon reports, “was carried by my father into the land southward, even to the land of Zarahemla” (1:6). Although Smith’s father was not the one who conveyed him southward, Joseph Jr. was ten or eleven when his family moved south from Norwich, Vermont, to Palmyra, New York. Considering the pain Joseph Jr. suffered during the trip due to being forced to walk on an injured leg, he may have wished that his father had been there to help carry him.
While there is an obvious parallel between Mormon’s excavating the records from the hill and Joseph’s digging the plates from the Hill Cumorah, the parallel between Mormon at eleven and Joseph Smith’s journey to Palmyra from Vermont is strained. The only actual parallel is their travel south. Furthermore, the Smith family actually went more toward the west than south, and conceptually they were going to the western frontier. Even this detail (direction), the strongest parallel, is an artifact of the way Vogel describes it.
5. John L. Sorenson, The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990), 312, 317.
6. Alma1 and Alma2, Helaman1 and Helaman2, Nephi2 and Nephi3, Amos1 and Amos2, and Mormon1 and Mormon2
7. John S. Henderson, The World of the Ancient Maya, 2d ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), 111–14 (intervening photographs).
8. Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 299, suggests this reading.
9. George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, edited and arranged by Philip C. Reynolds, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1955–61), 7:256.
10. D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987), 154.
11. Louise M. Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Monologue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), frontispiece.
12. Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain: Florentine Codex, translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 13 vols. bound in 12 (Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1975), 6:10.
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