Mosiah 12

So Abinadi went on the lam for two years, a fugitive for bluntness. Then he came back into town wearing a disguise but saying the same things as before, though he added some more specific curses: you’ll be cold-cocked on the cheeks, wild dogs and vultures will eat your flesh, you’ll be whipped like a pack-mule, insects will devour your crops, etc. Noah got his own special curse: he’d be burned up like a shirt in an oven. Then Abinadi ratcheted up his broad curses on the general populace: famine, plagues, tribal extinction, then, finally, total annihilation and mass publicity about your crimes.

So a few people overpowered Abinadi, tied him up and brought him to the king, griping about his rhetoric. T hey quoted him, adding a few noxious lines of their own, then, in their best lawyerese, asked what evil they’d done to deserve this flagrant display of free speech. His forecasts were demonstrably wrong, they said: they’d never be slaves or be captured by an invading force. “We leave the matter in your hands, O king. It’s totally your call.”

Noah threw Abinadi in prison and called a meeting of his chief priests to decide the prophet’s fate. First decision: bring him in for a hearing.

But Abinadi was a crafty defendant—sarcastic, gutsy, turning their words around or inside out as if he were a pro. Or even an ace lawyer.

One of them asked him, “What does it mean when it says ‘Lovely are the feet of the person who publishes peace and redemption. Watchmen will warn, using songs that will unify the people. Everyone will agree, finally, on the most important matters. So start singing now, what’s left of you Jerusalemites’”?

Abinadi said, “Oh, you don’t understand Isaiah? What kind of teachers are you?” He seemed oblivious to the fact that no one understood Isaiah. He then complained about their ineptitude, digging his own hole deeper. A teacher is supposed to know more than his students, he said. You’re not even close. “What’s your curriculum?”

“Moses’ law.”

“Ha!” he said. “I don’t remember where Moses says, ‘Thou shalt covet thy neighbor’s gold’ or ‘Thou shalt hire prostitutes.’ Don’t even try to suggest that I haven’t told the truth about your deeds and their consequences. What do you even say about Moses?”

“We say that keeping his law saves people from hell.”

Abinadi replied, “Great, because you don’t even know his law,” and he began quoting the Ten Commandments. He then said, “Have you told people they should do and not do the things I’ve outlined? Not bloody likely.”