46 And they were doing that which
they felt was the duty which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto
them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the
first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain
by the hands of your enemies. (Alma 43:46)
This quotation is not in any
extant is scripture. Presumably, it was a revelation to Lehi, since the
question of how to relate to potential enemies would have been extremely
important to him. Yahweh’s principle was that lethal force is justifiable in
self-defense but that offensive actions are not acceptable. (Brant A. Gardner, Second
Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6
vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 4:582)
Lehi would have been concerned about this issue
in the Old World as he prepared for his family’s journey into the unknown. If this is an unrecorded revelation to Leh, it confirms that the New World was
occupied with potential enemies. Only in that case is this revelation appropriate.
An empty land would render it irrelevant. (Ibid., 582 n. 23, emphasis in bold added)
