Ether 6–11 — “That Evil May Be Done Away”

Come, Follow Me — November 18–24, 2024
Official lesson: “That Evil May Be Done Away.” — Ether 6–11. The manual invites readers to learn from the voyage, walk humbly, remember God’s mercies, compare righteous and wicked leaders, hear prophetic warnings, repent, and recognize works of darkness so that evil loses power over human hearts.¹

← Previous: Ether 1–5 — Rend That Veil of Unbelief | Next: Ether 12–15 — By Faith All Things Are Fulfilled →

Ether 6 begins with illuminated stones inside storm-tossed vessels. By Ether 11, unnamed prophets are trying to carry light into a storm-tossed civilization. In the first crossing, the people cry to God, sing through the night, remember tender mercies, and arrive alive. In the later history, rulers and peoples repeatedly seek power, silence warnings, forget deliverance, and move toward captivity. The same record therefore gives two kinds of navigation: how God carries a covenant people through a dangerous sea, and how a people can refuse the light that would carry them through a dangerous history.

Moroni does not preserve these generations merely to make readers sad. The official title comes from his direct explanation in Ether 8:26: he writes so “that evil may be done away,” Satan may have no power over hearts, people may be persuaded to do good continually, and they may come to the “fountain of all righteousness.” The warning is not an invitation to become fascinated with hidden wickedness. It is an invitation to expose power-and-gain patterns, repent of their beginnings in one’s own heart, receive prophetic light, and come to Jesus Christ.

What to Watch for While Reading

Every form of light, darkness, cry, praise, remember, humble, prosper, captivity, power, gain, prophet, repent, and reject.
The sequence in Ether 6: prepare, commend themselves to God, face furious winds, cry, sing, arrive, bow, remember, and work.
The surprising direction of the wind: it is furious, but it blows toward the promised land.
The difference between having continual light and having a trouble-free voyage.
The Jaredites’ response both during the crossing and after their feet reach shore.
The brother of Jared’s warning that monarchy “leadeth into captivity,” and the repeated captivity that follows.
Rulers who remember: Orihah, Shule, Shez, and others who turn inherited memory into just action.
Rulers who consume: Akish, Riplakish, and others who turn people, wealth, law, and family into instruments of appetite.
Moroni’s editing pace. He slows for patterns and moral decisions, not for a complete political chronology.
Prophets as mercy: God sends warnings before destruction, often more than once.
The repeated cycle in Ether 7, 9, and 11: wickedness → prophetic warning → rejection or repentance → consequence or deliverance.
Secret combinations as organized covenant-breaking for power and gain—not merely as secrecy in the ordinary sense.
Moroni’s refusal to disclose the oaths while still exposing their motives, methods, and fruits.
The positive purpose of Ether 8:23–26. The chapter aims at awakening, goodness, Christ, and salvation.
The tension in Ether 10: prosperity and technology can accompany righteousness, yet prosperity can also become the setting for renewed forgetting.
The final handoff in Ether 11: Coriantor begets Ether, who will interpret the collapse from inside it.

Historical and Literary Context

A long history compressed into a moral map

The official manual notes that Ether 7–11 covers at least twenty-eight generations.¹ That compression explains why the narrative can feel like a rapid list of unfamiliar names, rebellions, restorations, and captivities. Moroni is not writing a modern, year-by-year national history. As followHIM’s B. J. Allen observes, Moroni selects recurrent themes—especially the role of prophets and the difference God makes in human life.²

The structure is easier to see when read as a moral map:

Repeated feature	What Moroni shows
A ruler remembers God’s deliverance	Humility, justice, teaching, and often peace follow
Prosperity grows	It can support flourishing, but it also tests memory
Someone sets a heart on a kingdom	Flattery, rebellion, captivity, and family violence follow
Secret power organizes	Murder and gain become mutually reinforcing
Prophets warn	God gives a real opportunity to repent before judgment
People humble themselves	The Lord spares, sends rain, restores, and revives
People harden and reject	Prophets withdraw, society fragments, and destruction approaches

The BYU Studies lesson index confirms that the scholarly resources for this unit are uneven: some address the voyage, some Moroni’s role, some monarchy or textual variants, and some propose historical parallels that go beyond what Ether itself can prove. This guide uses the index as a discovery map and does not treat route theories, precise chronology, or proposed ancient royal parallels as established facts.³

The Nephites first received Ether as tragic knowledge

The manual frames the week through Mosiah’s people. They were “desirous beyond measure” to read the twenty-four plates, then felt sorrow at the Jaredite destruction, “nevertheless” rejoicing in the knowledge the record gave (Mosiah 8:9; Mosiah 28:12–18).¹

That is a useful reading posture. We should not romanticize the violence or use the record as a codebook for labeling political enemies. We can grieve the collapse and still receive knowledge: what gratitude sustains, what memory protects, what corrupt leadership consumes, why hidden violence spreads, how God warns, and how quickly repentance can change the direction of a people.

Two crossings in one unit

The first crossing is geographical: eight vessels traverse the sea for 344 days. The second is generational: a covenant memory must cross from parents to children, rulers, and peoples. The first crossing succeeds because the people carry light, cry to God, and commend themselves to Him. The generational crossing repeatedly fails when descendants forget the God who carried their fathers.

This is why “remember” functions as more than nostalgia. It is covenant navigation. Don’t Miss This calls attention to Orihah, Shule, and Shez as rulers whose remembrance becomes righteous judgment and kingdom-building.⁴ followHIM similarly emphasizes remembering as a way of holding to known spiritual truth when moods and circumstances change.²

The Voyage: Light Does Not Mean Calm Water

Prepared, then entrusted

Ether 6:4 holds human preparation and divine trust together:

“When they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God.”

They gather food, prepare for animals, board, and then entrust themselves to God. “Commend” does not mean doing nothing. Their trust follows sustained obedience and provisioning. Nor does preparation mean they can control the route. There is no human steering system in the text. They do what belongs to them and entrust what does not.

Mikayla Woodward reads Ether 6 as a devotional pattern of the plan of salvation: created vessels, Christ-given light, preparation, covenant trust, mortal trial, prayer, gratitude, and arrival. The analogy can illuminate the chapter, but it is an interpretive typology, not a claim that every barge detail has one official symbolic meaning.⁵

Furious wind, right direction

The wind is not merely permitted; “the Lord God caused” it to blow toward the promised land (Ether 6:5–8). It produces mountain waves, burial in the depths, and terrible tempests. The direction is good; the experience is frightening.

This corrects a common but damaging equation:

False equation: God’s will = ease; resistance = wrong direction.
Ether’s pattern: God’s direction can include resistance, and divine preparation can be the reason the resistance does not destroy.

Don’t Miss This states the point memorably: “the presence of a storm does not mean the absence of God.”⁴ Unshaken calls the same pattern “redemptive turbulence”—a devotional phrase for trials that, under God’s care, move disciples toward needed transformation.⁶ Neither phrase means every tragedy was individually engineered as a lesson or that suffering should be minimized. Ether’s narrower claim is strong enough: for these voyagers, the wind was fierce, God was present, their preparation mattered, and the wind still moved toward the promised land.

Continual light is companionship, not an itinerary

The stones do not reveal the number of remaining days. They do not flatten the sea. They give enough light for men, women, and children not to cross in darkness. Don’t Miss This imagines an exhausted traveler looking at the lit stone and remembering that Christ knew the vessel and the voyage; the transcript labels this as devotional imagination rather than a reported historical detail.⁴

That distinction is spiritually useful. God may give:

light without a schedule;
presence without a painless route;
a promise without a daily explanation;
enough truth for the next faithful act without disclosing the whole crossing.

The Jaredites have “light continually” both above and beneath the water. The location of the vessel changes; the source of light does not.

Crying and praising belong in the same boat

When buried, the people “did cry unto the Lord,” and He brought them to the surface. They also sing and praise “all the day long,” continuing into the night. Praise is not denial that they are tossed. Lament, petition, gratitude, and trust can all be covenant speech.

Unshaken suggests that songs in the depths may begin in a minor key before they resolve; the point is not forced cheerfulness but refusing to let darkness have the only voice.⁶ Gospel Talktrine highlights the union of faith and gratitude: the people keep trusting that the wind moves toward promise even before land appears.⁷

Arrival reveals what the journey formed

After 344 days, they bow on the shore and shed tears because of “the multitude of his tender mercies.” Don’t Miss This makes a perceptive devotional observation: falling before God at arrival has become instinctive because they have practiced crying and praising throughout the crossing.⁴

They do not merely celebrate the geography. They recognize the relationship. Their next acts are equally important: they till, multiply, teach humility, and receive teaching from on high. A promised land is not a retirement from covenant work. Arrival begins stewardship.

Remembering as Covenant Infrastructure

Memory turns inherited deliverance into present righteousness

Three rulers provide an explicit refrain:

Orihah “did remember how great things the Lord had done for his father” and taught the people (Ether 6:30).
Shule remembered God’s deliverance across the deep and therefore executed judgment in righteousness (Ether 7:27).
Shez remembered both ancestral destruction and the original deliverance, built a righteous kingdom, and walked in the Lord’s ways (Ether 10:1–2).

The past is not self-applying. Each ruler chooses which ancestral story to carry forward. Jared’s daughter searches the old record for Cain’s path to power; Shez searches inherited memory for deliverance and destruction. Scripture can become a pattern to imitate, a warning to heed, or material to weaponize. The reader’s desire matters.

“Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind”

followHIM connects remembrance with retaining evidence of God’s past help during present uncertainty. The episode quotes Sterling W. Sill’s image of an artist keeping a painting of roses as proof of prior capacity: “Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind.”² Applied carefully, the point is not self-salvation. It is refusing amnesia about what God has already done in and through us.

A practical remembrance practice:

Name a former “deep” from which God brought you up.
Record the help received—people, scripture, correction, endurance, skill, grace.
Name what the experience taught about God and about your stewardship.
Ask what faithful action that memory supports now.
Teach the story without exaggerating it or making it a formula for another person’s outcome.

This belongs beside Prayer and the Book of Mormon’s repeated call to “remember, remember” the rock of the Redeemer (Helaman 5:12).

Kingship and Leadership: What Power Is For

“Surely this thing leadeth into captivity”

At the end of Ether 6, the people request a king. The brother of Jared warns of captivity but will not force Pagag to accept the crown. The scene holds two concerns together: concentrated rule can become coercive, and even a would-be safeguard should not coerce an unwilling person into ruling.

The warning echoes Israel’s later request for a king in 1 Samuel 8:4–22. The parallel does not make every monarchy identical. Ether itself includes good kings. Its repeated question is functional: Does leadership remember God and protect people’s access to truth, or does it consume people to feed the ruler’s appetite?

A leadership comparison

Leader	Defining action	Fruit
Orihah	Walks humbly, remembers, teaches	Justice and inherited covenant memory
Shule	Protects prophets from violence and allows them to speak	Repentance, sparing, peace
Omer	Heeds a warning and departs	Life preserved; eventual restoration
Emer	Reigns in righteousness and sees the Son of Righteousness	Peace and rejoicing
Shez	Remembers both mercy and destruction	A righteous rebuilt kingdom
Riplakish	Multiplies wives, taxes, palaces, prisons, forced labor, and death	Revolt, expulsion, collapse
Lib	Defeats robbers and presides over industry	Prosperity—followed by renewed vulnerability
Com	Protects rejected prophets	Personal blessing amid broad apostasy

The official manual asks readers to compare these figures with Jesus’ teaching that greatness means service rather than domination (Matthew 20:25–28).¹ Christlike leadership does not use office to enlarge appetite. It uses influence to protect, teach, remember, judge righteously, create room for repentance, and serve.

Riplakish: a kingdom built as a consumption machine

Ether 10:5–8 gives unusually concrete details. Riplakish burdens people with taxes, builds spacious buildings and an elaborate throne, creates prisons, forces labor, and executes those who will not comply. His private appetites and public administration become one system.

This is more than “a bad personality.” It is institutionalized extraction: law, wealth, architecture, punishment, and labor all point upward toward the ruler. The official manual’s leadership comparison helps move application beyond ancient monarchy. Any influence—family, Church, workplace, civic, or informal—can ask either:

“How can this role help people become free, truthful, capable, and close to Christ?” or
“How can these people sustain my image, comfort, control, and gain?”

Prosperity is a stewardship, not a verdict

Ether 10 describes trade, metalwork, textiles, tools, agriculture, and great prosperity. The text celebrates industriousness and the Lord’s blessing; it does not teach that every wealthy society is righteous or every struggling person is wicked. The same book repeatedly shows righteous people suffering and prosperous people forgetting.

followHIM notes the communal flourishing of Ether 10 while the narrative itself warns how quickly old combinations return.² The covenant question is not merely, “Did we prosper?” It is, “What did prosperity make possible, and what did we remember while using it?”

Secret Combinations: Darkness Organized for Power and Gain

What the phrase means in Ether

A secret combination is not simply a private meeting, confidential conversation, or ordinary institutional secrecy. Ether 8 gives defining traits:

oaths designed to conceal murder and wickedness;
organized pursuit of power and gain;
flattery and manipulation;
loyalty enforced by threat;
willingness to destroy family, friendship, law, and government;
claims of inherited legitimacy from Cain’s pattern;
secrecy used to remove accountability;
corruption that spreads from a plot to a people.

Moroni withholds the oaths themselves. He gives readers enough information to recognize the pattern without teaching its operating manual. That editorial choice models responsible warning: expose motive, fruit, and danger without glamorizing methods.

The daughter of Jared and misdirected scriptural memory

Jared sets his heart on the kingdom. His daughter sees his sorrow and retrieves an old pattern for securing power. She is not passive; she plans, manipulates desire, and sets assassination in motion. The story has a surface resemblance to Herodias’s daughter and John the Baptist (Mark 6:17–29), but Ether’s account stands on its own and predates that New Testament episode within the Book of Mormon chronology.

Unshaken makes a sharp literary observation: from the inherited record she chooses Cain rather than Abel, Seth, Adam, Eve, or Noah.⁶ Don’t Miss This develops the application as a question of influence: one person can direct substantial power toward building or destroying a kingdom.⁴ The text does not make womanhood the danger. The danger is expert influence joined to appetite, concealment, and murder—traits the male conspirators eagerly adopt and expand.

“Awake to a sense of your awful situation”

Moroni addresses Gentile readers directly. His command is not “guess the identity of every modern conspiracy.” It is to repent, refuse to uphold murderous power-and-gain systems, and awake when their defining fruits appear.

A careful personal and communal audit asks:

Do I excuse deceit when it advances my side?
Do I want gain that depends on another person’s captivity or silence?
Do I use loyalty to prevent accountability?
Do leaders preserve truth-telling, or punish anyone who names harm?
Does a group need fear and anger to keep members compliant?
Am I more interested in detecting evil “out there” than repenting of manipulation, flattery, greed, or domination in myself?

The parallel with Helaman 1–6 is explicit in Moroni’s statement that these combinations destroyed both Jaredite and Nephite civilizations. The antidote is not merely better detection. Ether 8:26 points to continual good and the “fountain of all righteousness”—Christ.

Prophets, Repentance, and the Mercy before Judgment

God sends warnings before endings

These chapters repeatedly introduce unnamed prophets. Their anonymity does not make their message unimportant. They warn that idolatry, murder, and wickedness will bring destruction unless the people repent. Unshaken pictures them as ordinary stones made to shine in civilizational darkness—an explicitly devotional metaphor grounded in Ether 6’s light imagery.⁶

followHIM emphasizes an easily missed mercy: after repeated rebellion, God sends prophets rather than simply ending the story.² Warning is not evidence that mercy has expired. It is mercy arriving before consequence.

Shule protects the conditions for repentance

The people revile and mock the prophets, but Shule executes judgment against persecution and gives the prophets access to the people. He cannot force belief. He can prevent violence from silencing witness. The people hear, repent, and are spared.

This distinction is valuable in every leadership setting:

A leader cannot manufacture another person’s conversion.
A leader can protect truthful speech, prohibit abuse, and make room for correction.
A leader can receive counsel rather than treating disagreement as disloyalty.
A leader can repent first.

Compelled humility can still become real repentance

In Ether 9, famine and poisonous serpents drive the people toward desperation. Only when they “saw that they must perish” do they repent and cry to the Lord. Their late beginning does not prevent divine response. After they humble themselves sufficiently, rain comes and the people revive.

The text does not celebrate famine or claim that every disaster maps neatly to a particular sin. It records a specific covenant judgment in the Jaredite narrative. Its durable doctrine is the Lord’s willingness to receive people who finally turn, even when suffering first broke their illusion of self-sufficiency. Compare Alma’s distinction between being compelled to be humble and choosing humility (Alma 32:13–16).

Rejection becomes a civilizational habit

By Ether 11, prophets warn, flee to Com for protection, return in later generations, mourn, withdraw, and warn again. The final rejection is tied to secret society and wicked abominations. The catastrophe is not one impulsive mistake. It is accumulated refusal: message after message, generation after generation.

That makes the guide’s central question immediate: What warning am I still treating as background noise because consequence has not yet arrived?

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

Ether 6:1–4 — Light Installed, Provisions Gathered, Trust Enacted

“They got aboard of their vessels … commending themselves unto the Lord their God.”

The brother of Jared places a prepared stone at each end of every vessel. The Lord causes the stones to shine; human labor supplies the vessel and placement, while divine power supplies the light. The text explicitly includes men, women, and children—this revelation serves an entire covenant community, not only the prophet.

Preparation is detailed: food for people and animals, boarding, and departure. Trust is not a substitute for this labor; it is what follows when faithful labor reaches the boundary of human control. followHIM reads the shining stone alongside Ether 12:27 as an image of Christ making a faithful but insufficient offering effective.²

Restoration parallel: Ether 12:27 centers grace in Christ’s power to make weak things strong for the humble.

Come, Follow Me connection: Prepare what belongs to your stewardship, then consciously entrust the uncontrollable remainder to God.

Ether 6:5–8 — Buried, Crying, Brought Up Again

“The wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land.”

The same wind that moves the vessels also creates the frightening conditions of movement. When buried, the people cry, and the Lord brings them again to the surface. Their sealed vessels matter; prayer matters; divine power matters. Ether refuses to make these competitors.

Restoration parallel: The promise “I will bring you up again out of the depths” in Ether 2:24 is fulfilled repeatedly, not once. Deliverance may be cyclical before it is final.

Come, Follow Me connection: When a faithful path is turbulent, ask both, “What preparation is protecting me?” and “Where is this wind moving me?”

Ether 6:9–12 — Singing through Night and Bowing on Shore

“He did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord.”

Praise continues before arrival. The voyage lasts 344 days. On shore, gratitude becomes embodied: they bow, humble themselves, and shed tears. The destination is a gift, but the stated reason for joy is God’s multitude of tender mercies.

Restoration parallel: 1 Nephi 1:20 introduces the Book of Mormon’s “tender mercies” theme; Moroni’s language links Jaredite deliverance to the book’s broader witness.

Come, Follow Me connection: Practice gratitude before resolution so that, when deliverance comes, you recognize the Giver rather than only the changed circumstances.

Ether 6:13–18 — Arrival Becomes Work, Family, Humility, and Teaching

“They were taught to walk humbly before the Lord; and they were also taught from on high.”

The people till, multiply, grow strong, and teach. “From on high” does not replace family and communal teaching; it accompanies a posture of humility. The narrative joins spiritual formation to practical stewardship of land and household.

Come, Follow Me connection: A promised blessing is usually also a stewardship. Ask what the arrival now requires you to cultivate, teach, and build.

Ether 6:19–30 — The Request for a King and Orihah’s Memory

“Surely this thing leadeth into captivity.”

Jared and his brother ask how they can bless the people before death. The request for a king grieves them. Pagag refuses, and the brother of Jared will not allow coercion. Orihah eventually accepts and walks humbly, remembers God’s acts, and teaches them.

The chapter therefore refuses a simplistic equation that “king” automatically means wicked. The office is dangerous because concentrated power can lead to captivity; Orihah shows that humility and remembrance can restrain that danger for a time.

Restoration parallel: Mosiah 29:16–18 warns how difficult it is to dethrone an iniquitous king. See Mosiah 29–Alma 4 — The Choice Is Yours.

Come, Follow Me connection: Before seeking influence, ask what safeguards will keep the role from turning other people into instruments of your will.

Ether 7:1–7 — Rebellion Turns Kinship into Captivity

“He rebelled against his father, and came over and dwelt in the land of Nehor.”

Kib’s son Corihor gathers followers, captures the kingdom, and places his father in captivity. The brother of Jared’s warning begins to materialize within one generation. Political appetite converts family relationship into leverage.

Come, Follow Me connection: Watch for the early moment when a righteous desire to contribute becomes a demand to possess, defeat, or control.

Ether 7:8–22 — Shule Restores a Kingdom but Cannot End the Cycle by Force

“Shule gave battle unto his brother Corihor, in which Shule did beat him.”

Shule grows strong, recovers the kingdom, and gives Corihor authority after repentance. Yet Noah rebels again, captures Shule, and divides the country. Rescue through force can change who holds the throne without healing the underlying appetite for domination.

Come, Follow Me connection: Solving a crisis is not the same as forming a covenant culture. What habits of humility and accountability must outlive the immediate victory?

Ether 7:23–27 — Prophets Protected, People Spared

“The people did repent of their iniquities and idolatries; and because they did repent the Lord did spare them.”

Prophets name the curse produced by wickedness. Shule protects them from those who revile and mock. Access to the message leads to repentance, sparing, prosperity, and peace. Shule then remembers the great deep and executes judgment in righteousness.

Restoration parallel: Doctrine and Covenants 1:14–16 warns against rejecting the Lord’s servants and walking after one’s own image.

Come, Follow Me connection: Give prophetic teaching an honest hearing before deciding it has nothing to say to your life.

Ether 8:1–7 — A Heart Set upon the Kingdom

“Jared … had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of the world.”

Jared uses cunning words to gather support, loses the kingdom, and becomes exceedingly sorrowful—not over sin, but over lost power. Sorrow alone is not repentance. Its object matters.

Come, Follow Me connection: When disappointed, ask, “Am I grieving because goodness was harmed, or because my preferred status and control were denied?”

Ether 8:8–18 — Ancient Oaths, Manipulated Desire, Organized Murder

“They formed a secret combination, even as they of old.”

Jared’s daughter retrieves the old pattern, dances before Akish, and turns marriage into the price of murder. Akish binds associates through oaths and threats. The combination seeks power, gain, murder, plunder, lying, and hidden wickedness. Moroni explains the structure but refuses to preserve the oaths.

Restoration parallel: Moses 5:29–33 associates Cain’s secret covenant with murder and gain.

Come, Follow Me connection: Refuse systems that ask you to trade truth or another person’s safety for belonging, advancement, protection, or gain.

Ether 8:19–26 — Moroni Breaks the Fourth Wall

“It is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you.”

Moroni states that secret combinations destroyed both the Jaredites and Nephites. He warns Gentile nations not to uphold them and commands readers to awake. The purpose clause is decisive: evil done away, Satan deprived of power over hearts, people persuaded to continual good, and souls coming to Christ.

Restoration parallel: 2 Nephi 26:22–24 contrasts the devil’s flaxen cords with the Lord, who works openly for the world’s benefit.

Come, Follow Me connection: Study evil only as far as needed to reject it, protect others, repent, and move toward the fountain of righteousness.

Ether 9:1–12 — Omer Flees; the Combination Devours Its Own

“The Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land.”

Omer obeys and escapes. Jared regains power, but Akish soon murders Jared and starves his own son. A system built on betrayal cannot create secure loyalty. The associates’ shared wickedness becomes civil war, and nearly the whole kingdom is destroyed.

Come, Follow Me connection: When God gives a clear warning to leave a destructive setting, obedience may look like loss before it becomes preservation.

Ether 9:13–25 — Restoration, Peace, and the Son of Righteousness

“Emer did execute judgment in righteousness all his days.”

Omer is restored. Emer and Coriantum preside over prosperity, and Emer “saw the Son of Righteousness.” Moroni gives only a line about the manifestation, but it prevents the Jaredite record from becoming an uninterrupted catalogue of wickedness. There are real periods of righteousness and peace.

Come, Follow Me connection: Do not let the prevalence of evil erase evidence of Christ’s presence, quiet faithfulness, and generations of peace.

Ether 9:26–35 — Famine, Serpents, Late Repentance, Rain

“When they had humbled themselves sufficiently before the Lord he did send rain.”

Heth embraces old secret plans, rejects prophets, and faces famine. Serpents drive animals and intensify scarcity. When the people recognize that they must perish, they repent and cry to God. Rain and revival follow.

The account should not be generalized into the claim that every natural disaster identifies a community’s sin. Moroni presents this as a specific prophetic judgment in this covenant history.

Restoration parallel: Alma 32:13–16 distinguishes compelled humility from freely choosing humility while affirming that compelled humility can still begin repentance.

Come, Follow Me connection: Do not wait for crisis to soften the heart—but if crisis finally has, turn now. Late repentance is still repentance.

Ether 10:1–4 — Shez Remembers Both Mercy and Ruin

“Shez did remember the destruction of his fathers.”

Shez remembers negatively and positively: destruction warns him; deliverance teaches him whom to trust. He builds a righteous kingdom and walks in the Lord’s ways. Memory is complete when it retains both mercy and consequence.

Come, Follow Me connection: A faithful family history includes God’s blessings and honest accounts of choices that caused harm.

Ether 10:5–8 — Riplakish Makes Appetite Public Policy

“He did lay that upon men’s shoulders which was grievous to be borne.”

Many wives and concubines, heavy taxes, spacious buildings, an ornate throne, prisons, forced labor, and executions reveal a coherent leadership failure. Riplakish uses people to enlarge himself. After forty-two years, the people rise against him.

Restoration parallel: Mosiah 11:1–15 portrays King Noah using taxes and labor to support appetite and display.

Come, Follow Me connection: Audit leadership by who bears the burden and who receives the glory.

Ether 10:9–18 — Morianton to Hearthom: Prosperity and Captivity Alternate

“He did ease the burden of the people.”

Morianton gains power through battle but improves the people’s temporal condition. Yet he does not execute judgment righteously before God. Later rulers again enter captivity. Ether separates competent administration from covenant righteousness; a ruler may reduce burdens and still fail spiritually.

Come, Follow Me connection: Appreciate real temporal good without mistaking effectiveness, popularity, or prosperity for complete righteousness.

Ether 10:19–28 — Lib, Industry, Tools, and a Choice Land

“Never could be a people more blessed than were they.”

Lib defeats secret robbers. The people cultivate land, trade, mine and work metals, make textiles and tools, and prosper. Moroni’s list honors craftsmanship, agriculture, exchange, and inventive labor. Blessing appears in ordinary making as well as dramatic visions.

Restoration parallel: 2 Nephi 5:17 likewise links communal flourishing with being industrious and laboring with one’s hands.

Come, Follow Me connection: Treat skill, technology, and productivity as stewardship: whom do they serve, what burdens do they relieve, and what kind of society do they build?

Ether 10:29–34 — Old Plans Return

“They adopted the old plans, and administered oaths after the manner of the ancients.”

After great prosperity, robberies and old oaths reappear. A society can possess advanced tools while reviving primitive moral patterns. Innovation does not automate virtue.

Come, Follow Me connection: Ask whether new capabilities are being governed by renewed covenant memory—or merely giving old appetites greater reach.

Ether 11:1–3 — Com Protects the Prophets

“The prophets fled unto Com for protection.”

The people seek to destroy the prophets, but Com offers safety and receives their ministry. His faithfulness does not instantly convert the nation; it creates one protected place where truth can still be spoken.

Come, Follow Me connection: Even when you cannot reverse a culture, you can make your home, class, quorum, organization, or friendship safer for truth and repentance.

Ether 11:4–13 — War, Famine, Pestilence, and Withdrawal

“The prophets mourned and withdrew from among the people.”

Shiblom’s reign includes war and severe calamity. His brother has the prophets killed, and the people harden their hearts. After many destructions and afflictions, the people begin to repent, but later generations again return to wickedness. The Shiblom/Shiblon spelling variation noted in textual scholarship does not change the moral sequence.³

Come, Follow Me connection: A temporary response to suffering is not the same as sustained conversion. Build practices that continue after immediate danger passes.

Ether 11:14–19 — Captivity Deepens across Generations

“Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord.”

Power changes hands, Moron loses half the kingdom, regains it, and then lives in captivity. Coriantor remains captive all his days. The long fulfillment of “this thing leadeth into captivity” is now unmistakable.

Come, Follow Me connection: Some patterns become easier to inherit than to interrupt. Repentance may need to address systems and family habits, not only isolated acts.

Ether 11:20–23 — Final Warnings and the Birth of Ether

“They did reject all the words of the prophets, because of their secret society and wicked abominations.”

Prophets announce great and marvelous things, cry repentance, and warn of utter destruction and replacement by another people. Rejection is no longer incidental; organized wickedness supports it. Coriantor begets Ether in captivity. The prophet who will narrate the end is born inside the consequence his ancestors were warned about.

Restoration parallel: Mosiah 28:17–19 shows the later Nephites receiving this destruction as sorrowful but valuable knowledge.

Come, Follow Me connection: Receive the warning while it can still redirect the story. The purpose of prophecy is not to make destruction feel inevitable but to make repentance possible.

Teaching Illustrations

1. A compass and a lantern

Place a compass and a lantern on a table. The compass answers, “Which direction?” The lantern answers, “How can I see here?” Ether 6 gives the Jaredites divine direction through the wind and continual light through the stones, but neither object makes the sea calm.

Ask:

What direction has God made clear?
What light is sufficient for today?
What turbulence am I wrongly treating as proof that all guidance failed?

2. The storm chart

Draw two columns:

What did not stop	What also did not stop
furious wind	light
mountain waves	crying to God
burial in the deep	being brought up
night	praise
uncertainty	movement toward promise

Invite learners to add a present difficulty to the left and identify a real grace, covenant, person, truth, or faithful practice that can continue on the right. Do not require a cheerful answer or imply that every storm will end on a preferred mortal schedule.

3. Two uses of an inherited record

Write Shez on one side and Jared’s daughter on the other.

Shez remembers deliverance and destruction, then walks in the Lord’s ways.
Jared’s daughter retrieves Cain’s way to power and repeats it.

Ask: When I read scripture or family history, am I searching for justification, a weapon, a warning, a promise, or a pattern of Christlike action?

4. The leadership burden test

Use a backpack. Add a weight for each phrase in Ether 10:5–8: taxes, palaces, throne, prisons, forced labor, death. One learner wears the burden while another sits in the “beautiful throne.” Then reverse the image with Jesus’ teaching that the greatest becomes servant.

Ask: In the way I lead, who carries the weight and who receives the benefit?

5. A light that can be covered but not argued dark

Put a small light under a clear bowl, then cover it with progressively darker materials labeled flattery, gain, fear, secrecy, anger, and mocking prophets. The light has not ceased; the group has chosen layers that prevent it from being received.

Connect Ether 6:3 with Ether 8:16 and Ether 11:13. God gives light; secret combinations keep people in darkness; prophets mourn when people repeatedly refuse to see.

6. The memory wall

Give learners cards titled “A great thing the Lord has done.” Invite a private written memory of help, correction, strength, or mercy. Place blank cards on a wall rather than requiring public disclosure. The wall becomes a visual counterpart to “hang these pictures on the walls of your mind.”

Ask: What present faithful action does this memory support?

Covenant Applications

Prepare, then commend. Do the provisioning within your stewardship and entrust the route you cannot steer.
Keep a light for the middle. Establish scripture, prayer, sacrament, temple worship, music, and truthful relationships before the next deep.
Cry and praise honestly. Petition and gratitude are not competitors; neither requires pretending the storm is pleasant.
Remember in writing. Preserve precise accounts of mercy so changing emotion does not erase spiritual evidence.
Teach deliverance across generations. Orihah remembers for himself and teaches his people.
Choose Christ as King. Notice rival rulers—status, appetite, party, wealth, resentment, approval, or control—that demand captivity as their price.
Protect access to truthful counsel. You cannot force conversion, but you can refuse to mock, threaten, or silence correction.
Treat warning as mercy. A call to repent is evidence that the story can still change.
Audit influence by its fruit. Does it persuade toward continual good and Christ, or toward fear, secrecy, gain, and domination?
Do not weaponize conspiracy language. Use Ether’s actual criteria, demand evidence, protect innocent people, and begin with personal repentance.
Use prosperity to serve. Skill, trade, tools, and wealth become covenant blessings when they relieve burdens and enlarge righteous stewardship.
Interrupt inherited captivity. Name long patterns honestly and seek Christ’s help to stop passing them forward.

Questions for Personal Study or Discussion

Why does Moroni place the illuminated voyage beside centuries of political darkness?
What is the difference between being prepared and being in control?
How can a furious wind move in a good direction without making the pain of the voyage unreal?
What light has remained available during a season when the destination was hidden?
What do crying, singing, and bowing reveal about the Jaredites’ relationship with God?
Why is their gratitude directed to tender mercies rather than only to arrival?
Which “great things” of God do Orihah, Shule, and Shez remember, and what actions follow?
What spiritual evidence should you preserve before your mood changes?
Why does the brother of Jared connect kingship with captivity?
How do Orihah and Shule show that a dangerous office can still be exercised righteously?
What makes Riplakish’s sin systemic rather than merely private?
In your leadership, who bears the burden and who receives the glory?
What exact traits define a secret combination in Ether 8?
Why does Moroni reveal the motives and fruits but withhold the oaths?
How can conspiracy language itself be abused through fear, flattery, accusation, or pursuit of power?
What is the positive purpose of Ether 8:23–26?
Why are unnamed prophets central to the narrative?
What does Shule do that makes repentance possible without forcing it?
What does Ether 9 teach about turning to God after humility has been compelled?
Why does prosperity repeatedly become a test of memory?
How can technology and industry be real blessings without becoming proof of righteousness?
What can Com do faithfully when he cannot convert the wider society?
Which repeated warning in Ether 7–11 are you most tempted to treat as background noise?
What inherited pattern needs to stop with you?
How does this sorrowful history persuade a reader to come to the fountain of all righteousness?

Gospel Library Scripture Links

Assigned reading

Key passages in the unit

Key parallels

Annotated Source Guide

Official Come, Follow Me manual: Establishes the exact lesson title and authorized emphases: mortal-journey comparison, praise, humility, remembrance, Christlike leadership, prophetic guidance, repentance, and secret combinations contrasted with the Lord’s open work. Official Church curriculum.¹
BYU Studies Come, Follow Me index: Supplies the lesson-specific research map, including Woodward’s Ether 6 study, broader work on Moroni, monarchy, and the Ether 11 textual variant. The guide uses it selectively and rejects unsupported certainty about route, chronology, and ancient political parallels.³
Mikayla Woodward, “Ether 6 and the Plan of Salvation”: Offers a sustained typological reading of vessels, light, preparation, commending oneself to God, storms, prayer, gratitude, and arrival. Useful devotional student scholarship; symbols are presented here as possibilities, not official or exclusive meanings.⁵
Unshaken with Jared Halverson: Contributes the repeated light/darkness frame, prophets as stones shining in civilizational darkness, “redemptive turbulence,” the king/captivity warning, Cain-versus-righteous-ancestor reading of the old record, and detailed attention to the pride cycle. Devotional interpretation.⁶
Don’t Miss This with Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler: Contributes the “not a cruise” framing, storm does not equal divine absence, continual light as remembered companionship, practiced gratitude at arrival, the “great things” remembrance pattern, a heart-level audit of secret combinations, and influence directed toward building or destroying. Devotional teaching commentary from the prior Book of Mormon cycle.⁴
followHIM with B. J. Allen: Contributes Moroni’s selective spiritual history, Christ making faithful efforts sufficient, the prison-temple illustration labeled as application, remembrance as retained spiritual evidence, Shule and Com protecting prophets, righteous flourishing without flattening Jaredite history, and prophetic warning as mercy. Retained 2024 PDF and local searchable extraction.²
Gospel Talktrine with Mark Holt: Contributes the broad contrast between gratitude joined to faith and idolatry joined to pride and gain, plus close attention to the people’s praise throughout the voyage. Its claims about routes, currents, exact provisions, and reconstructed Jaredite institutions are conjectural and are not adopted here.⁷