Alma 32:6-10
From Feast upon the Word (http://feastupontheword.org). Copyright, Feast upon the Word.
The Book of Mormon > Alma > Chapter 32
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Questions
Verse 6
- Did Alma actually listen to everything the chiefest member of the multitude of the poor said to him? "And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him." It almost seems like he wasn't really paying attention until perhaps some key phrase (that perhaps verse 8 and 9 hint at) was mentioned, and then he decided to engage the multitude seriously. How can this response to the multitude help us understand Alma's discourse?
- "Turned him about" and "face." In Hebrew, the word for face, paniym comes from a root meaning "to turn." Might there be a sort of underlying word play at work here? What is the significance of Alma facing the multitude before he rejoices in their humility? In 2 Ne 13:15 and 2 Ne 26:20, the phrase "faces of the poor" is used. Is there something significant about looking into someone's face (cf. the phrase "face to face" used in these scriptures), esp. the face of the poor, that is at work here?
Verse 7
- "Stretched forth his hand." Why is it that Alma "stretched forth his hand"? Why is this an important detail to note? Note that Christ does this when blessing the multitude in 3 Ne 12:1. See also the note at Ex 6:6 for more cross-references.
Verse 8
- "Behold." The use of the word "behold" in the beginning of this verse is followed in verses 8-10 with the use of the word "behold" (the word "beheld" is also used in verse 7). What is the significance of the repetition of this word? Is this related to the discussion of sign-seekers who want to see before they will believe? Is this related to the turning and facing that Alma is said to do in verse 7? Might this word mark the beginning of a genuine discourse, where Alma is attentively taking in the particular state of the multitude, and asking (in v. 9) for the multitude to carefully pay attention to, or give place to, his words?
Lexical notes
Verse 6
- "They were in preparation to hear the word." Compare Alma 16:14-16 where "no inequality" and not having "any respect of persons" is linked to the people being prepared to receive God's word (although there, curiously, the word there refers to "the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming").
- "In a preparation." This phrasing seems somewhat awkward. Saying "they were prepared" would seem more natural in English than "in a preparation." One way to understand this wording might be to consider "preparation" in somewhat scientific terms. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary (try clicking here) lists definition II.8.b. as, "A specimen that has been prepared for medical or other scientific examination, display, etc." This way of reading this curious wording seems to highlight (1) the "experiment" wording that Alma will use later in the chapter, and (2) the way in which the poor were compelled to be humble by outside circumstances (cf. definition II.8.a., "A specimen prepared or made up of substance, as a medicine, cosmetic foodstuff, etc."). This second point seems to suggest that the people were in a situation of external circumstances such that they would react positively to hearing the word, not that there was anything particularly internal that was ready to hear the word.
Verse 8
- "Behold." The word "behold" is used several times in this sermon, esp. here in verses 8-10. In Alma 26, Ammon also uses the word "behold" very frequently. The use of the word in this chapter and in this part of the chapter seems significant because of the theme of being cast out vs. hearing, giving place, and receiving the word of God. Also, in the following chapter, Alma will refer to the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness who did not perform the easy task of casting their eyes on Moses's staff in order to be healed. Thus, "behold" might be taken here as an important and emphatic plea on Alma's part to ultimately look toward Christ and genuinely receive the word of God that Alma is preaching.
Exegesis
Verse 6
Alma is happy that the people are in teachable circumstances. He is not rejoicing because of their temporal trials, but that their trials have made them receptive to learning that they can worship the Lord in all aspects of their lives.
The phrase "in a preparation to hear the word of God" seems a bit unusual, if not awkward. However, an interesting use of the word prepare in the KJV of Ex 15:2 might help open up an interesting reading of this phrase. In Ex 15:2, the Hebrew word navah is translated (effectively) as "prepare a habitation" in a hymn of praise. This lexical relationship in Hebrew between praising and dwelling highlights a kind of reversal that is going on here between the Zoramites who do not give place to the Zoramite poor to worship, and the Zoramite poor who give a place for Alma and Amulek to preach.
Verse 7
The first word of this verse, "therefore," is curious. It seems to be a continuation of, and yet abrupt end to, the relationship between the poor and non-poor Zoramites which has formed such an important theme in these first few verses of the chapter. The very mention of the fact that Alma "say[s] no more to the other multitude" seems a bit superfluous. That is, why doesn't the narrator just move on with the narrative and let the course of the narrative demonstrate the fact that Alma says no more to the other multitude? It seems there is a kind of scarcity or economics that is being emphasized here: Alma turns away from the non-poor because the other multitude was humble—metaphorically, Alma is taking his seed and casting to the most fertile ground he can find. This first phrase of the verse might be profitably considered in light of Alma 12:10ff where Alma talks explicitly about those who will receive the "lesser portion" of the word. Although it seems there are many similarities between Alma's discussion there and here, such a comparison seems to make the "therefore" here all the more striking. That is, it seems here that the extent to which the non-poor receive the word is not just contingent on their own reception or hard-heartedness toward the word, but also on the next best alternative that Alma faces.
Verse 8
Alma first addresses the mental/spiritual state of the Zoramite poor. The point is rather clear, and certainly rather common in scripture: if they are humble, and Alma judges them so to be, then they are blessed, because they are able to be taught. There is no mystery in his claim. But what is ultimately very interesting about this verse is that it is so isolated. It marks the first word of a chapters-long discourse, the first word of a widely celebrated speech by Alma, the first word of the event that will result in the all-out years-long war that consumes the remainder of the Book of Alma. And yet it seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the verses that immediately follow it. Either Alma is a very inconsistent speaker, changing gears a dozen words into his discourse (something the editor of the text had the duty to rearrange or fix somehow), or Alma is doing something rather surprising (something the editor of the text was well aware of, and which that editor would have wanted the reader to pick up on). If verse 9 marks a major departure from the content of this first word, Alma nonetheless returns to the subject in verse 12 to form an inclusio, that is, to section off verses 8-12 as a sort of textual unit worth discussing in and of itself. The role these five verses play in the discourse Alma is here giving is enormous: interpretation of the whole of the seed/word analogy depends on how one reads these first verses.
Verse 9
Following the critical language of verse 8 (critical in the technical sense, not the pejorative), which draws very much on the face-to-face situation in which the Zoramites and Alma find themselves (simply put: Alma engages the Zoramites quite personally in verse 8), verse 9 is marked by an appeal to the realm of absolute reason, an appeal that is to come to fruition (albeit ironically) in verse 10. That is, if in verse 8 Alma engages the Zoramites personally in his critical assessment of their mental/spiritual state, in verse 9 he simply notes a fact--a particular statement by the proffered Zoramite--apparently leaving the relational (Alma and the Zoramites) to speak in more universal terms, in more absolute terms, in more rational or even philosophical terms. However, even in the appeal to reason, Alma relativizes it: this is not a question of a universal proposition ("one might say"), but of something the Zoramites have specifically said ("thy brother hath said"). In the end, then, this verse is marked by a sort of tension between the situational reality of Alma's facing the Zoramites and an appeal to reason (taken, as it always must be, in absolute terms). This tension, however, can be explored more carefully in the next verse, where it comes to fruition.
Verse 10
This verse presents an obviously rhetorical question. But categorization is not enough here: the nature of rhetorical questions greatly affects the meaning of this verse. A rhetorical question is curious precisely because it is not to be answered. That is, a rhetorical question purposefully stops up conversation, encounter, engagement, and situation. In effect, a rhetorical question calls for an abolition of the existential reality of the face-to-face encounter, and it makes this call in the name of reason, of absolute reason. In other words, Alma's question, precisely because it does not call for an answer, is presupposed to have an answer logically bound up within itself anyway. The question, that is, is understood from the very start to call on a sort of universal or absolute reason in order to provide the answer, without the necessity of the situational realization of that answer. In short, a rhetorical question is always, in and of itself, an appeal to non-passional, non-situational, non-personal reason.
But even as Alma's rhetorical question makes its obvious appeal, it calls that very appeal into question. In fact, it does so doubly, and it does so from the very start, questioning the absolution of reason through and through. Doubly: "Behold I say unto you" on the one hand, and "do ye suppose" on the other. In a sense, these two phrases cancel the nature of the rhetorical question. Or rather, they reveal more precisely the essence of a rhetorical question: a rhetorical question is precisely rhetorical because it is bound up with rhetoric, the situational reality, the face-to-face encounter that calls for rhetoric in the first place. In that Alma specifically mentions his own speaking, and because he specifically mentions the audience's supposing, he recognizes explicitly--and twice--that his appeal to absolute reason is situational, is relative. In short, just as verse 9, this verse is characterized by a fundamental tension: Alma at once makes an appeal to absolute reason and cancels the same in a return to the situational, the relative. The tension opens here, and it continues to build over the next two verses.
Perhaps ironically, this textual insight into the tension between the situational and the absolute parallels wonderfully the actual content of Alma's rhetorical question (and in this way it prepares for the major discussion of the seed/word still to come). In suggesting, according to the unspoken answer to the question, that worship outstrips place (and in the next verse, time), Alma makes an appeal to a sort of absolute form of worship, perhaps a way of being that might saturate every place (and, for that matter, every time). At the same time, however, it is quite clear that worship must take place somewhere, at some time: worship--which most often means in the scriptures quite simply to bow before someone/something--is undeniably a situational reality, something performed in space and time. In other words, the same tension seems to be at work in the actual content of Alma's rhetorical question that appears in its structure: worship--what the Zoramite poor are being denied--is at once a question of situational reality and a question of absolute being. Alma confirms this point with his reference to the time of worship in the next verse, but then the subject is left off until Alma 33:2. In other words, if Alma makes an appeal here to the tension bound up in the very question the Zoramites have raised, he seems to think it worth discussing the nature of the tension--though not the tension itself--as some length before returning to the precise tension of the issue raised by the Zoramite question. It is the textual tension, then, more than the tension of the content, that must guide intepretation of the remainder of the present chapter, and the tension of the content can be returned to subsequently in discussion of chapter 33.
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