Alma 47

After Amalickiah escaped into the Lamanite lands from the ambush that Moroni had set for them, he began encouraging the Lamanite king to go fight the Nephites again.

When the Lamanite king issued a proclamation throughout his lands for his warriors to gather and prepare for battle, many of the Lamanite fighters were disturbed. They didn’t want to anger the king, but they didn’t want to go fight the Nephites and get killed either. When the majority of his fighters refused his orders to fight, the king grew angry and placed the army’s command in the hands of Amalickiah. He was told to take the loyal fighters with him, and force the rest of his warriors to join the fight.

Amalickiah had a secret plan to gain the loyalty of the dissenting Lamanites, dethrone the Lamanite king, and take power for himself. The warriors who refused to fight the Nephites were led by a man named Lehonti, and were gathered at Mount Antipas to fight the king’s warriors. Amalickiah had a treacherous plan, and asked Lehonti to meet and talk with him. He proposed to make the king’s warriors vulnerable to the dissenters if they came down at night and surrounded them. Amalickiah offered to deliver the entire king’s army to Lehonti if he were made second in command of their combined forces.

The next morning, the king’s army found themselves surrounded. The king’s warriors pled with Amalickiah to join the dissenters rather than fight against their brothers. This is exactly what Amalickiah had planned and hoped for. So, contrary to the king’s commands, Amalickiah surrendered his army to Lehonti in order to gain greater power for himself.

The Lamanites had a tradition of naming a second in command who would become their leader if the first man in command died. So Amalickiah had one of his servants gradually introduce poison into Lehonti’s food until he died. With Lehonti out of the way, Amalickiah was appointed as chief commander of all the combined Lamanite army.

Amalickiah marched the army to the Lamanite king’s city, and the king came out to greet him. He assumed that Amalickiah had fulfilled his orders and gathered up the army to go fight the Nephites. When the king arrived Amalickiah had arranged for his servants to precede him. They bowed down on the ground to him, as was their custom, in presumed reverence. When the king stretched out his hand to raise them up he was attacked and stabbed to death in his heart. The king’s servants fled from this stealthy murder, and Amalickiah turned to his army behind him crying out, “The kings servants have killed him and fled. Come and see.”

The army arrived on the scene and found the king lying in pool of his own blood. Amalickiah pretended anger saying, “Whoever among you loved the king, go chase down his servants and kill them.” When the servants saw this turn of events, they fled into the wilderness and escaped to join the Ammonites among the Nephites.

The army returned empty handed and found that Amalickiah had gained the hearts of the people through his hidden treachery. Upon entering the city he sent messengers to the queen telling her that her husband had been brutally murdered by his servants who had then escaped. Hearing this, the queen asked that Amalickiah spare the people of the city and also bring forward a witness to testify regarding her husband’s death.

Amalickiah brought the servant who had killed the king, along with his other servants who’d been a party to the murder, before the queen. Everyone testified that the king was killed by his own servants, who afterwards had run away. This satisfied the queen who trusted Amalickiah, and married him. Through this fraud the former Nephite, Amalickiah, became the ruler of all the Lamanite people. In the course of this conversion he and his followers entirely forgot about God. They became more wild, vicious, immoral, and sinful than even the Lamanites that they now ruled. [72 BC]