Page:A dictionary of the Book of Mormon.pdf/24

Akish. who, we have reason to believe, was a good man. The example of the kings and princes had thus far, as a rule, been pernicious, and tended to encourage the people in lives of wickedness.

Omer had a son named Jared, an ambitious, unscrupulous man. He rebelled against his father and by his flatteries induced half the people to join his standard. He established himself in a land named Heth, and when he felt sufficiently strong he gave battle to and defeated the forces of his father, whom he took prisoner and held in captivity; and, it is said, Omer remained in this condition half his days. So long, indeed, was the time that Jared kept him prisoner that sons begotten by him during his captivity grew up to manhood before he was released. Two of these young men, named Esrom and Coriantumr, became very angry at the way their father was treated, and they raised an army and attacked their brother Jared by night. This attack appears to have been an utter surprise to Jared, for his army, was entirely destroyed, and he himself would have been slain had he not humbly pleaded with his brothers that his life might be spared, he promising that he would surrender the kingdom to his father. On this condition his life was granted him.

Now Jared, though he had made this promise when his life was in peril, still longed for the glories and power of the kingly authority; and his sorrow and unrest could not be hid from those near him. Among those who noticed his deep-seated grief was a daughter, who, was exceeding fair, and was apparently as unscrupulous as her father. Whether it was because she really had affection for her father, or, like him, languished for the pomp and magnificence of the court life she no longer possessed that caused her to submit to him a plan by which he might regain the kingdom, cannot be told; perhaps, also, she loved the man whom she suggested as the instrument to be