The People of Zarahemla

The Book of Mormon contains the history of three groups who crossed the ocean to come to the Americas. The most well-known of course is Lehi and his family whose voyage is described in detail by Nephi in the book of 1 Nephi. The first chronologically, though, were the Jaredites as recorded in the book of Ether. The existence of the Jaredites was discovered first by the third group mentioned in the Book of Mormon who crossed the ocean. I was about to label that people the “Mulekites” until I realized just now that this term is never used in the Book of Mormon. We use it sometimes to describe them (such as in this timeline), but the Book of Mormon never uses that name. We are first introduced to them in Omni 1:14 where they are called “the people of Zarahemla.” The chapter heading includes this statement, “The descendants of Mulek at Zarahemla had discovered Coriantumr, the last of the Jaredites.” But this chapter actually does not mention Mulek. Mulek was first mentioned in the Book of Mormon in this verse: “Now there were not so many of the children of Nephi, or so many of those who were descendants of Nephi, as there were of the people of Zarahemla, who was a descendant of Mulek, and those who came with him into the wilderness” (Mosiah 25:2). Mulek was not introduced in this passage, and so Mormon presumably assumed his readers already knew who he was. This would suggest that he had already spoken of Mulek in the lost 116 pages that were his abridgement of the large plates. We do not actually learn who Mulek was until this passage in Helaman: “Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south” (Helaman 6:10). We get the most detail, though, from this final verse that mentions him, a statement by Nephi the son of Helaman: “And now will you dispute that Jerusalem was destroyed? Will ye say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Mulek? Yea, and do ye not behold that the seed of Zedekiah are with us, and they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem?” (Helaman 8:21) Thus piecing all of these together we learn that the people of Zarahemla were descendants of Mulek who was a son of King Zedekiah.

            The sons of Zedekiah were mentioned in two passages in the Bible. We read, “And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:7). The second gives us similar information: “And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: he slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah. Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah” (Jeremiah 52:10-11). The passage seems to suggest that all of the sons of Zedekiah were slain, but that is not explicitly stated. There are two interesting theories from Latter-day Saint scholars about Mulek. The first was proposed by Robert F. Smith who suggested that Jeremiah 38:6 might actually be referring to Mulek. It reads, “Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison.” One author summarized the idea this way: “The last five words should be rendered, ‘Malkiyahu, the son of the king.’ This personal name could have been abbreviated to something like Mulek. Thus Jeremiah might have been put into ‘the [very] dungeon of Mulek[?], the son of the king [Zedekiah]’ referred to in the Hebrew text of Jeremiah 38:6. If Mulek was Zedekiah’s eldest son, he could have been as old as fifteen at the time Jerusalem fell and as a prince may have had his own house, wherein there could have been a dungeon.” In a separate article, another Latter-day Saint scholar described the finding of a small stamp seal “belonging to Malkiyahu, son of the king,” and this could potentially be the seal of the Mulek of the Book of Mormon. A second idea about Mulek was described this way in the first article: “On the other hand, we do not know that Mulek was more than an infant. The younger he was, the greater the likelihood that he could have escaped the notice of the Babylonians and subsequent slaughter at their hands.” He may have been an infant who was protected and not known to the Babylonians or thought important enough to be slain with his brothers. Zedekiah was only 32 when Jerusalem was destroyed, so he could have certainly had an infant at that time.

            Certainly the story of Mulek and his group gives rises to more questions than answers. But what mattered most to Amaleki who documented Mosiah’s union with the people of Zarahemla was this: “And at the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them” (Omni 1:17). Their degradation and loss of both language and faith was evidence of the importance of the plates of brass for the Nephites and, consequently, the scriptures in general for us. Over and over again in the Book of Mormon we see the crucial role that the scriptures played in Nephite society, reminding us even in our day that we cannot survive spiritually without them: “I say unto you, my sons, were it not for these things, which have been kept and preserved by the hand of God, that we might read and understand of his mysteries, and have his commandments always before our eyes, that even our fathers would have dwindled in unbelief, and we should have been like unto our brethren, the Lamanites, who know nothing concerning these things” (Mosiah 1:5). We must, as King Benjamin said (who witnessed firsthand what had happened to the people of Zarahemla), strive to keep them always before our eyes.