Mormon had asserted that Noah was cowardly: “And now the king was not so much concerned about his people as he was about his own life… ” (v. 8), and this incident, which he would have known about before writing the abridgment, provides proof of Noah’s character flaw.
Yet possibly there was something else behind this apparently cowardly command. Schele and Mathews discuss the settlement of Chichén Itzá (a city settled long after the close of the book of Mormon): “We also suspect that most of the refugees/migrants were nobles, because the accounts say that the migrants went without their wives so that they married local women during their migrations.”
Although this account of the Itzá residents’ travels is much later, it provides a potential parallel context for Noah’s command. If Noah realized that they had lost both city and position (how likely was it that Gideon would let him live, let alone restore him to the throne?), he may have quickly grasped the slim possibility of fleeing to a different location and re-creating his dynasty there. Intermarriage with the local women would give them some connection to the area; and in fact, Noah’s priests seem to have done something like this later in the story (Mosiah 20:1–5).