War Chapters - The Word of a Lamanite

A few days ago, I made a reference to a battle that took place near the river Sidon in Alma 43. That was the battle where the Lamanites were fighting like dragons, and the Nephites still won. It was my personal scriture study of that chapter that prompted that blog post. Recently, I was reading in the chapter after that, Alma 44, and something stood out to me that I thought I might share here, but in order to share the highlight, I first need to set the stage.

As noted earlier, the Nephites won that battle. By the end of Alma 43, Captain Moroni had the Lamanites surrounded with his army of Nehpites, and he told their leader, Zerahemnah to surrender.

Yea, and this is not all; I command you 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, but we will spare your lives, if ye will go your way and come not again to war against us.
- Captain Moroni, Alma 44: 6

This was Zerahemnah's response:

And now it came to pass that when Zerahemnah had heard these sayings he came forth and delivered up his sword and his cimeter, and his bow into the hands of Moroni, and said unto him: Behold, here are our weapons of war; we will deliver them up unto you, but we will not suffer ourselves to take an oath unto you, which we know that we shall break, and also our children; but take our weapons of war, and suffer that we may depart into the wilderness; otherwise we will retain our swords, and we will perish or conquer.
Alma 44: 8

My thinking, when I read that verse, was that it would have been so easy for Zerahemnah to lie. He could easily have sworn an oath not to return, gone home, forged swords to replace the ones he gave up, and come back again later. If a person were already willing to go to war and kill people to gain power, you'd think they'd be okay with breaking their word. But Zerahemnah wasn't. He may have been the villain here, but he had his honor, and when he did finally make the oath to Captain Moroni, he kept it, and never went to war against the Nephites again.

There are many other examples in the Book of Mormon and other scripture and other literature of people making oaths and keeping them, no matter what. Several wicked, or at least foolish, kings made promises that they likely later regretted, but kept anyway. The Anti-Nephi-Lehis almost broke a covenant they made (for a very noble cause), but nonetheless kept their word. And if you want a more modern example, Superman was a man of his word as well, and a good example to all of us.

To many people throughout history, their word was their bond. That is a noble and good trait - a virtue that seems to be lacking in modern society. These days, a "verbal contract" means very little, and a written contract only matters if you can prove its validity in court. Advertisers are expected to exaggerate and even lie, making false promises to their potential customers. And politicians - I've already covered that point on this blog more than I should have.

Oath-breaking is such a common practice these days that truly honest people are rather rare, and I'm now surprised to see one among the warring Lamanites. Yet, as Latter-Day Saints, we make many covenants - at Baptism and in the Temple. Do we keep them? Are we men and women of our word like Zerahemnah was? Do we have at least as much honor as he did? I'm sure we all try to. Some of the oaths we've made are hard to keep all the time, but we try. Do we treat our covenants as seriously as Zerahemnah did? Again, probably not always, but we can try.

It's not often that you can find a role-model among the ranks of the Lamanites, but Zerahemnah certainly fits. He may have been fighting for the wrong reasons, but he had a lot of honor and courage, and those are traits that we all need to try to develop, especially in times like these.