Nephite weights and measures Nephite system of monetary exchange for goods and services. The Nephite system of weights and measures at the time of Mosiah2 is specificually outlined in Alma 11:5-19, presumably to underscore the high value of a bribe that Zeezrom offered to Amulek while Amulek was preaching in Ammonihah. Zeezrom offered six onties of silver, or the equivalent of 42 measures of grain (also equal to 42 days of pay for a Nephite judge; Alma 11:3, 13; see accompanying table), to Amulek if he would “deny the existence of a Supreme Being” (Alma 11:22).

The system of weights and measures known in the Book of Mormon is not a continuation of the system known in the Old Testament. According to the Book of Mormon, names, weights, and values of the pieces o gold and silver were not reckoned “after the manner of the Jews” but were altered “according to the minds and the circumstances of the people, in every generation, until the reign of the judges” (Alma 11:4). Thus, the organization of a general system of weights and measures could have begun shortly after Lehi1 and his family left Jerusalem or arrived in the promised land, and continued to develop to the time of Mosiah2.

According to the “law of Mosiah . . . every man who was a judge of the law, or those who were appointed to be judges, should receive wages according to the time which they labored to judge” (Alma 11;1). Apparently there was some problem in Nephite society with debtors reneging on their obligations, and judges were the arbiters of such disputes. Judges had the authority to send enforcement officers to individuals who would not pay to bring them to a court where evidence was presented against them. If an individual was found guilty, the judge could force payment (Alma 11;2). In payment for his service the judge would receive “a senine of gold” or “senum of silver” per day, which were equivalent in value (Alma 11;3). By ca. 82 BC. Some of the legal experts had devised ways to enhance the profit they could make from these legal suits by stirring “up the people to riotings, and all manner of disturbances and wickedness, that they might have more employ, that they might get money according to the suits which were brought before them” (Alma 11:20). Verses 5-19 of Alma 11 lists various kinds of gold and silver measures, presumably designated by weights and their relative values. Mosiah assigned these values relative to certain amounts of grains (see accompanying table).

As one source on the subject indicates, it is not possible to “be altogether confident about the meanings of terms in the weights and measure system or their possible etymologies” (“Weights,” 2). A few terms, however, such as “shum,” “shiblom,” and “limnah,” bear some resemblance to Jaredite, Sumerian, and Akkadian words (“Weights,” 1-3).

Systems of weights and measures are known from Mesopotamia and Egypt from the third millennium B.C., but coinage proper was not invented until the sixth century B.C. by the Lydians. The Book of Mormon says nothing about coins. Instead, the word money is used, which may indicate that pieces of metal of different shapes and sizes could be assigned a value through weighing (Nibley, 224). Richard Smith suggests that the Nephite “system was a peculiarly efficient one. The selection of 1, 2, 4, and 7 for the values of the larger coins [metal pieces] seem particularly wise. . . . In every case it turns out that ‘1-2-4-7’ system has an edge over . . . other systems for the standpoint of number of coins [metal pieces] required for a purchase” (316).