This particular contradiction is unusual from a modern perspective, but much more understandable in the Book of Mormon’s ancient context. Benjamin declares that his people should not fear him, or think him more than a mortal man. Modern readers are used to understanding that our leaders are mortal men with specific callings, but that has not always been the case.
Even in the tradition of European kings, there was a reverence and a suggestion that they were somehow endowed by the divine with something more. In ancient Mesoamerica, kings were personifications of deities in life, becoming deities of some sort after their death. This suggestion that the people might have thought Benjamin “more than a mortal man” is a direct reflection of the common assumptions of people of the region.
The reversal statement reaffirms Benjamin’s essential mortality, a mortality that is subject to common infirmities. The point is to define the type of king that Benjamin is, and to create that definition in contrast to cultural expectations. Benjamin is king because he was consecrated by his father, not because he was divinely appointed.