The River Sidon

As far as I’m aware, the river Sidon is the only named river in the Book of Mormon that is in the Americas.  On Lehi’s journey we do read about the “river Laman” in the wilderness, and Nephi spoke about the “river Jordan” in conjunction with telling the history of the Israelites  (1 Nephi 16:12, 1 Nephi 17:32).  In the Book of Mormon lands we read that at a certain spot there were “large bodies of water and many rivers,” but the river Sidon near Zarahemla appears to be the only one that is named.  It played an important role especially in stories of war in Alma.  I thought I would look at what we actually know about the river from the text. 

               Here’s what I gather about the river Sidon from the various references that we have to it.  First, it appears that the river (or at least a major part of it) went from north to south.  We read phrases such as “east of the river Sidon,” “east of Sidon,” and “west of the river Sidon,” all of which suggest that the river itself runs north and south (Alma 2:15, 17; 2:34; 6:7; 8:3; 49:16).  Alma 22:27 is perhaps a little confusing when it speaks of “a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west… by the head of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west,” but I believe this is saying that the narrow strip of wilderness ran east to west and not that the river Sidon ran east to west.  No references to the river Sidon speak of “north” or “south” of Sidon, and so at least the part of interest to Mormon in describing the Nephite events appears to have been a river that ran north and south (and thus had a west and east side).  Here is what we know about its reference to other items in Nephite geography.  It “ran by the land of Zarahemla” and it appears that the land of Melek was to the west of the river and the valley of Gideon was to the east of the river (Alma 2:15, 6:7, 8:3).  Alma 6:7 makes it seem like Zarahemla was to the west of the river; Alma 8:3 makes is seem like Zarahmela was to the east of the river.  It’s possible that both are correct (i.e. the river crossed through the city somewhere), but either way it’s likely that Zarahemla was in fact built very near the river.  We know that Manti was also on the east of the river and that the “head of the river Sidon” was near Manti (Alma 16:7, 22:27).  It appears that Manti was between where the Lamanites were (the land of Nephi) and where the Nephites were (the land of Zarahemla); from other references we know that Zarahemla was north of the land of Nephi, and so the river must have flowed south to north.  That makes sense because we know that the land of Nephi was above all of the surrounding land (they always went “up to the land of Nephi” as in Alma 24:20), Manti must have been just below that and the river started there and went down (and north) to Zarahemla.  This geography is confirmed in another verse: “…fortifying the line between the Nephites and the Lamanites, between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi, from the west sea, running by the head of the river Sidon” (Alma 50:11). 

               The river was witness to the brightest and the darkest days of the Nephites.  If it could speak it would tell us of the terrible fighting it was a part of and how the dead “were cast into the waters of Sidon; and behold their bones are in the depths of the sea” (Alma 3:3).  But it would also speak of the new life that it helped give there as “many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the church of God” (Alma 4:4).  Those two types of scenes were surely repeated often throughout the Nephite history, making the river Sidon a pivotal point indeed in Nephite and Lamanite society.