Page:A dictionary of the Book of Mormon.pdf/139

Rh were so charmed with the beauty of the women that they spared all their lives. Yet they took them captives, carried them back to Lehi-Nephi, and gave them permission to retain that land, but under the conditions that they should surrender king Noah, and deliver up one-half of everything they possessed, and continue this tribute of one-half of their property year by year.

Gideon now sent men to search for Noah, that he might be delivered up to the Lamanites. They found that the men who were with Noah, being ashamed of their cowardly flight, swore that they would return; and if their wives and children, and the men who remained with them, had been killed, they would have revenge. The king commanded that they should not return, at which they became very angry with him, and burned him to death, as he had done Abinadi. When the men who put Noah to death were about to return to the land of Nephi, they met Gideon and his party, and informed him of the end of Noah and the escape of the priests; and when they heard the news that Gideon brought, they also rejoiced much that their wives and children had been spared by the Lamanites.

Noah was succeeded by his son Limhi. Gideon appears in his day to have been an officer of high standing in the Nephite forces, and a man of much wisdom and intelligence. In the war that resulted from the seizure of a number of Lamanite maidens by the priests of Noah, Gideon took a prominent part in bringing about a cessation of hostilities. It was he who suggested who the men really were that committed this vile act. (See Amulon.) In later years, when the people of Limhi escaped from the Lamanites, and returned to Zarahemla under the guidance of Ammon, Gideon took a leading part, by his advice and example, in effecting their deliverance, and directing that march. We next read of Gideon when he had become exceedingly