GOSPEL WIKI

Gospel Wiki Connections morm-wicked-punish-wicked

Mormon 4:5 · Alma 14:11

⚖️ Interpretive Thematic

This connection's citations are checked against the source text.

The badges and the mark are separate signals: Textual and Interpretive name the kind of claim a connection makes, while the mark reports that the connection's citations were checked.

Book of Mormon Mormon 4:5
"it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished; for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed"
Book of Mormon Alma 14:11
"he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just"

Interpretive theodicy parallel: Mormon 4:5 states as an editorial aphorism that 'it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished' -- divine judgment operating THROUGH wicked human agency rather than by direct intervention. Alma 14:11 supplies the doctrine's earlier articulation at the Ammonihah martyrdom: Alma is constrained not to save the burning women and children because the Lord 'doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just' -- God permits (suffers) the wicked's free agency so that the resulting judgment is just, 'the blood of the innocent' standing 'as a witness against them'. The two passages share NO distinctive phrasing and the text never marks Mormon 4:5 as dependent on Alma 14:11; they are two independent statements the wiki reads as one theodicy. Ties to opposition-and-agency because the doctrine preserves human agency -- God suffers/permits the wicked to act, even as an instrument of judgment (the 'acted upon' pole of Lehi's fork inverted: the wicked are left free to act). The distinctive clause 'it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished' is the sole corpus hit at Mormon 4:5.

Discussed on

Opposition & Agency