Mosiah 19

King Noah’s army searched in vain and returned empty-handed. The kingdom was divided and splintered with dissent. Some even whispered against the king and conflicts broke out everywhere. [145 BC]

Among the dissenters was a strong man named Gideon, who swore in anger that he’d kill King Noah, himself. During a fight between them, Gideon was about to prevail when an army of Lamanites arrived. The king pled with Gideon to spare him so that he could help fight the enemy and save the people. Gideon knew that the king was far more concerned with his own life than with the safety of his people, but let him live, anyhow.

King Noah led the people in a hurried retreat into the wilderness in an effort to escape from the pursuing Lamanites. When the enemy caught up with the king’s people and began slaughtering them, the king ordered the men to abandon their wives and children so that they could retreat more quickly. Some men followed King Noah’s orders and ran away to save their lives, while others preferred to stay and die with their families.

The beautiful daughters of those left behind pled with the Lamanites and charmed them into sparing all of those who hadn’t run away with King Noah. Instead, they were taken as captives and brought back to the land of Nephi, where they were allowed to stay, subject to two conditions. The first condition was that they would hand King Noah over to the Lamanites. The second condition required them to pay tribute to the Lamanites of half of everything they owned and produced, on an annual basis.

One of the captives was Limhi, son of King Noah. He became the new leader. Without Limhi’s knowledge, Gideon made secret plans to organize a search party to find King Noah in the wilderness. He found the refugees who’d fled with King Noath in the forest, but the king and his priests were not with them. These people had sworn to return to the land of Nephi to avenge their dead families. When the king had ordered them not to return, they turned on King Noah and burned him to death. As they prepared the same fate for the king’s priests, the priests had run away.

When Gideon’s search party found them, the refugees were preparing to return to the land of Nephi. When they learned the fate of their families and the conditions of the peace settlement, the men were overjoyed because their families were still alive.

With King Noah dead, the new King Limhi made an oath with the Lamanites to live according to their conditions. To ensure that they honored the treaty and didn’t run away, the Lamanites posted guards and paid them from the taxes. The kingdom recovered and there was peace for two years between the people of King Limhi and the Lamanites.