Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Mosiah, Chapter 9

THE RECORD OF ZENIFF

1) I, Zeniff, having yet another unique name in this book that starts with the letter Z, having been taught in all the one language that I born into, and having been sent as a spy among the Lamanites, that our army might come upon them and destroy them - but when I saw that this sentence was incomplete I was desirous that it should end prematurely.

2) Therefore, I contended with my brethren in the wilderness, for they would that I should use proper grammar, but I had already etched it onto plates and it could not be erased; and they also would that I should kill the Lamanites, but I had seen some good in them, therefore I decided to kill my own brethren instead; therefore, father fought against father, and brother against brother, until the greater number of us had been slain in the wilderness.

3) And yet I brushed it off and decided to try again, and I collected many who were not bloodthirsty and militant, to go up to possess the land; but we were smitten with famine and sore afflictions; for we were slow to remember the Lord our God; yea, I did personally see a rainbow one time, and it took me three whole hours before I realized, oh yeah, that's a God thing.

4) Nevertheless, I did remember, albeit slowly, and thus I was not divinely murdered by flood, or by forest fire, or by spontaneous mountainous dislocation.

5) And it came to pass that I went again into the city, but under forthright pretenses this time, in unto the king, that I might know if I might go in with my people and possess the land in peace, or if we were going to start killing each other, or what.

6) And I went in unto the king, and in so going I found myself in the presence of the king unto whom I had gone in unto for the purposes of being in whose presence I might find myself in.

7) And thus, having found myself in the presence of the king, he straight up said that we could possess the land of Nephi-Lehi-Nephi, and the land of Shilom. And not just that, he invoked imminent domain and commanded all his people to depart out of those lands without so much as a senine to cover their damages in property loss.

8) And behold, this embittered his people against us, nevertheless we found it to be a rather profitable arrangement on our part, and we began numerous construction projects in addition to the structural improvements already prevalent in the land.

9) And we did even gain a free harvest, for many of the Lamanites had been forced to abandon fields that had already been furrowed and sown, even with all manner of seeds, like corn, and tulaberry, and pizza, and neas and deas and weas and jeas and sheum, and ye won't even research whether they are real or anachronistic anyway, so it mattereth not what I say.

10) Now it was the cunning and the craftiness of king Laman to bring my people into bondage, that he stripped such great wealth from his own people and gave it up unto us.

11) Yea, so cunning and crafty was it, that after twelve years he forgot his plan entirely, and began to grow uneasy with his decision, yea, he woke up one day and said, huh, these Nephites seem to have grown rather wealthy, and maybe I should do something about it before they become powerful, or something like that.

12) Now they were a lazy and idolatrous people; therefore they were desirous to bring us into bondage, that they might glut themselves with the labors of ours hands, yea, that they might feast themselves upon the flocks of our birds; and this is not racist or xenophobic to say, for I have already claimed to have seen much good in them despite my cutting remarks.

13) Therefore it came to pass that king Laman began to stir up his people, and once they were all worked up, in his cunning and craftiness he told them that rather than use all that energy for constructive and profitable purposes, why don't they go start killing their neighbors and stealing their stuff.

14) Yea, in the thirteenth year of my reign in the land of Nephi-Lehi-Shilomnorihu, when my people were tilling their lands, a numerous host of Lamanites came upon them and began to slay them, and to take off the corn of their fields.

15) Yea, and even though they had only been tilling, and hadn't even sown yet, much less allowed time for their crops to germinate and grow, the Lamanites still managed to stop, reap, bundle and ship massive amounts of corn from these empty fields somehow. At least that is what the farmers told me as they ran to me for protection, and because they were Nephites I knew they could not lie.

16) And so it came to pass that I did arm them with bows, and arrows, and swords, and cimeters, and sharks, and lasers, and sharks with lasers, and with all manner of such futuristic weapons which we could invent, and I and my people did go forth against the Lamanites to battle.

17) Yea, and I did forget about all the good that I had previously seen in them, and decided that rather than my usual pacifistic diplomatic approach that my friends and family had killed so many of our brethren for at beginning of this chapter, this time I would open a can of whoop-ass upon the Lamanites instead, for verily it seemed the right thing to do at the time.

18) And God did join our side; and we did go forth in his might, and in one day and a night we did slay three thousand and forty-three; without taking any prisoners; for behold, each and every Lamanite did either flee from the land, or die upon it; there were no wounded or captured to speak of.

19) And I did help finish off their dead, and I never shed one single fucking tear over the brutality of the massacre that I had just caused; for the Lord had said Vengeance is mine, and I had taken a little. And behold, I did blame it all on the Paiutes, and did move along as if nothing had ever happened.

No comments:

Post a Comment