What Did Mormon Mean: “Thus Were the Nephites Nearly Surrounded by the Lamanites”

In his abridgement of Alma, Mormon takes a moment to explain something in great detail that he knew would not have been otherwise understood by his future readers. First of all, Alma in this part of his writing, is describing Aaron and his companions Omner, Himni, and their brethren, Muloki and Ammah, who encounter king Lamoni’s father, the great king over all the Lamanite lands, who is never named. After Aaron discusses God with the great king, the king evidently is pricked in the heart and desires to know this God of Aaron of whom Ammon first spoke, and begins to pray (Alma 22:18), which results in his slipping into a coma (caught up in the Spirit) that is interpreted as death by the queen and her servants. Concerned over the results of their fear, Aaron eventually raises the king onto his feet and the king immediately pacifies the fears of his queen and servants and assures them he is all right (Alma 22:26). 

Aaron and his brethren were in the City of Nephi where Lamoni’s father, the king over all the Lamanites, dwelt
    After he has Aaron and his companions preach to all in his palace, the king decides to send a proclamation: “throughout all the land, amongst all his people who were in all his land, who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness…”
    So we know three things from this:
1. There is a narrow strip of wilderness that ran across the land;
2. The Land of Nephi, that land the Nephites controlled, is to the south of the narrow strip, and included all the land south of there (Also the Land of Lehi) from sea to sea;
3. The Land of Zarahemla, the Nephite land, is to the north of that narrow strip.
    Now Mormon becomes more detailed in his description of this narrow strip of wilderness, by saying of it: “…which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla—” (Alma 22:27).
    Now we know two more things:
4. That narrow strip of wilderness ran from sea to sea, all across the land;
5. When the narrow strip reached the seashore, it curved (round about on the borders of the seashore) upward, into the Land of Zarahemla and ran along the coast northward along both shores;
    Mormon continued: “and thus were the Lamanites and the Nephites divided.”
6. This narrow strip of wilderness was the single dividing line between the Nephites and the Lamanites, even where it curved upward along the coast of both seas.
    Thus, we now have a clear picture of six important benchmarks; 1) the Land of Zarahemla was to the north, 2) the Land of Nephi to the south, of 3) a Narrow Strip of Wilderness was in between, 4) that ran from the sea east to the sea West, and 5) curved up along the seashores encroaching into the Land of Zarahemla, that 6) divided the Lamanites and the Nephites.

A rough drawing of the Land as Mormon describes it, including some lands (like Gideon, and the unnamed land between Zarahemla and Bountiful) that we learn about later in Mormon’s descriptions. Note the “round about” nature of both the east and west wildernesses, keeping in mind that a wilderness is a “tract of unoccupied land without human improvements or permanent occupation”
    Evidently, considering that information not sufficient, Mormon adds more regarding that area in the wilderness that ran “round about” up along the seashores:
    “Now, the more idle part of the Lamanites lived in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents; and they were spread through the wilderness on the west, in the land of Nephi; yea, and also on the west of the land of Zarahemla, in the borders by the seashore, and on the west in the land of Nephi, in the place of their fathers' first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the seashore” (Alma 22:28).
    We now have a seventh benchmark or landmark:

7. The wilderness area ran northward along the seashore in the west, all the way from the far south where Lehi landed, up past the Land of Nephi, and even into the Land of Zarahemla.
    Mormon continues now about the east coast: “And also there were many Lamanites on the east by the seashore, whither the Nephites had driven them” (Alma 22:29).
    So not only did the wilderness that curved up “round about” along the seashore in the west, but also in the east, which Mormon, looking back over the records to a time about which he is writing but not during his lifetime, clarifies what the two coastal wildernesses meant to the Nephites.

Nearly surrounded, a comment Mormon makes from his military viewpoint that the Nephites, allowing the incursion of the Lamanites in the east and west wildernesses nearly had the Nephites in Zarahemla surrounded
    Thus Mormon wrote: “And thus the Nephites were nearly surrounded by the Lamanites…” (Alma 22:29).
    Looking at this in hindsight with his military eye, Mormon realizes that something needed to have been done—which the Nephites later did when Moroni drove the Lamanites out of these east and west wildernesses a few years later, driving them south into their own lands, which were south of Zarahemla (Alma 50:7), and south of the narrow strip of wilderness. To ensure the Nephites would not be nearly surrounded again, Moroni “caused that the inhabitants who were in the Land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land” (Alma 50:9).
    However, at this moment, in Mormon’s mindset (we don’t know if these words were in Alma’s writings since Mormon is inserting these nine verses on his own), Mormon looking backward in time, sees how the Lamanites could have had the Nephites nearly surrounded, by encroaching into the wilderness to the west and along the east coast evidently to a much larger amount and distance.
    Mormon then goes on to qualify his comment of the Nephites being nearly surrounded, by adding: “…nevertheless the Nephites had taken possession of all the northern parts of the land bordering on the wilderness, at the head of the river Sidon, from the east to the west, round about on the wilderness side; on the north, even until they came to the land which they called Bountiful” (Alma 22:29).
    Somewhere around this point, Mormon decides to expand upon his description, by showing the relationship to other parts of the Land of Promise (Alma 22:30-34) before returning to the account in Alma he was abridging (Alma 22:35).

With Lamanites controlling both the south, east and also part of the west of the Land of Zarahemla, Mormon fully understood the importance of the Lamanite encroachment, as did Moroni later who drove the Lamanites out of the east and west wildernesses (Alma 50:11)
    Evidently, from his military viewpoint, Mormon saw the narrow strip of wilderness as such a division between the Nephites and Lamanites, that it provided them some type of definitive chokepoint or blockage to crossing, such as a wide canyon, deep ravine, or cliffs and mountains, that he saw the existence of Lamanties in the wilderness regions to the east and west in the Land of Zarahemla as a real threat to encirclement. That is, allowing the Lamanites to live in these two wildernesses gave Mormon a concern regarding the defense of the Land of Zarahemla against who Mormon considered to be their enemy (Alma 22:34), and one that he considered innumerable (Alma 58:8).