Alma 48:24

nevertheless, they could not suffer to lay down their lives, that their wives and their children should be massacred by the barbarous cruelty of those who was once their brethren, yea, and had dissented from their church, and had left them, and had gone to destroy them, by joining the Lamanites;

But they could not let their wives and children be killed by cruel people. These people had once been their brothers. They had left the church. They had left them and tried to destroy them by joining the Lamanites.

Yet they couldn’t just lay down their lives and let their wives and children be massacred by the brutal cruelty of men who had once been their brothers—men who had abandoned the church, left them, and joined the Lamanites to destroy them.