The Gadianton Robbers

There appears to be three different periods of Gadianton robbers in the Book of Mormon, and each is somewhat different.  The first is from Helaman 2 through Helaman 11:10, covering from about 50 B.C. to about 15 B.C.  During this period the Gadianton robbers were a part of the regular Nephite society but kept their identity secret.  They started with the attempted murder of Helaman, and though shortly thereafter they “took their flight out of the land, by a secret way, into the wilderness,” the next we hear of them they were “established in the more settled parts of the land” (Helaman 2:11, 3:23).  So they seem to have infiltrated the society for they “were not known unto those who were at the head of government.”  They caused many problems among the Nephites, killing the chief judge Cezoram and his son and committing “secret murders” and robbing and plundering in order to get gain (Helaman 6:17-18).  They were hunted down and cast out from the Lamanites, but the Nephites “did unite with those bands of robbers” and the robbers flourished among them with their “secret signs, and their secret words” (Helaman 6:22).  The Nephites remained in their terrible state of wickedness during the next few chapters in which the robbers “did carry on [the] work of destruction and wickedness” (Helaman 11:2).  There were “wars throughout all the land” and finally Nephi pled with the Lord to bring a famine to call the people to repentance (Helaman 11:1).  The Lord answered his prayer and the Nephites “did perish by thousands in the more wicked parts of the land” until finally the people repented.  Nephi prayed to God to end the famine with these words, “O Lord, behold this people repenteth; and they have swept away the band of Gadianton from amongst them insomuch that they have become extinct” (Helaman 11:10).  So the Gadianton robbers were temporarily destroyed, and that ended what I would call the first period of the robbers. 

                Unfortunately the next period began right after this.  Shortly after Nephi declared them extinct, they popped up again starting with some dissenters of the Nephites.  We read, “They did commit murder and plunder; and then they would retreat back into the mountains, and into the wilderness and secret places, hiding themselves that they could not be discovered” (Helaman 11:25).  In this period they had their own society and were located largely in the mountains instead of being amongst the Nephites, and it lasted from about 12 B.C. to about 19 A.D.  They did “infest the land” and lived in the mountains (3 Nephi 1:27).  We don’t hear much about them between Helaman 11 and 3 Nephi 1, and likely they were just continuing to grow and strengthen their armies in the mountains.  It was this group that then caused so much havoc that the Nephites and Lamanites had to band together, leave all of their possessions, and wage a terrible war with the robbers.  Ultimately the robbers were defeated and by 3 Nephi 5 they were, it appears, completely gone and “there was not a living soul among all the people of the Nephites who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets” (3 Nephi 5:1).   The Nephites had again destroyed the Gadianton robbers from among them, but many years later they came again to wreak misery among the Nephites. 

                In the final chapters of the Book of Mormon the robbers “began again to build up the secret oaths and combinations of Gadianton” and they “did spread over all the face of the land” (4 Nephi 1:42, 46). They did “infest the land” according to Mormon and seemed to have been a major group who was no longer hidden.  Ultimately they proved instrumental in the complete downfall of the Nephite society as Mormon had predicted.  Perhaps the lesson for us is simply that evil can come in all different forms, and we need the power of the Spirit to discern and protect ourselves from that evil.  We have to watch out for Gadianton robbers whether they are among us in secret, threatening us from their groups in the wilderness, or simply all over society in the open.  And our protection will always come in the same way that the Nephites defeated them: through repentance and righteousness.