Zeezrom
The lawyer who tried to buy a denial of Christ — and ended up converted and healed by the men he had tried to silence
The Trap
Zeezrom was an expert in the law, “expert in the devices of the devil” (Alma 11:21), whose livelihood depended on the corrupt legal-religious establishment of Ammonihah. When Alma and Amulek began preaching, Zeezrom went to Amulek with a public offer: six onties of silver if Amulek would deny the existence of a Supreme Being. It was both a bribe and a test — if Amulek took the money, his credibility was destroyed; if he refused, the crowd would see a man who would rather talk than earn.
Amulek didn’t take the money. He exposed Zeezrom’s tactic, named his motive, and then preached with such clarity about the Atonement that the crowd was split and Zeezrom was shaken. Alma joined the exchange, and the two apostolic missionaries systematically answered every question Zeezrom raised — including his own guilty conscience.
The Burning
Zeezrom began to tremble. The text says he began “to be harrowed up under a consciousness of his own guilt” (Alma 12:1). He changed sides publicly — began defending the missionaries, trying to stop what he had helped start. The crowd turned on him. He was cast out. Later, when the believers were burned and Alma and Amulek were imprisoned, Zeezrom lay in Sidom with a burning fever, “tormented by the memory of his many sins” (Alma 15:3).
Alma 15:8–9
“And Alma said: If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed. And he said: Yea, I believe according to thy words. And then Alma cried unto the Lord, saying: O Lord our God, have mercy on this man, and heal him according to his faith which is in Christ. And when Alma had said these words, Zeezrom leaped upon his feet, and began to walk.”
He was baptized that day. He later became a missionary himself — laboring with Alma in the work he had once tried to stop. Zeezrom teaches that the very sharpness of a person’s opposition to the gospel can sometimes be the measure of how thoroughly the Spirit has been working on them. The man who offered silver to suppress truth was converted and healed by the truth he had tried to buy. God used the guilt that the gospel produced in him as the very mechanism of his conversion.