Category: Book of Mormon Project

1 Nephi 17:49-51 

49 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto them that they should murmur no more against their father; neither should they withhold their labor from me, for God had commanded me that I should build a ship.
50 And I said unto them: If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done.
51 And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship?

Once again, Nephi finds occasion to reiterate his central theme. This time it is by telling us how his brothers tried to prevent him from building a ship. He writes that he said many things to them, but the only thing he tells us he said is that, “God had commanded me that I should build a ship. And…If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them.”

In Nephi’s narrative, this is high adventure. However, in the pattern of the cosmic sacred narrative and Feast of Tabernacles temple drama, this is the final struggle before ultimate success. There is always a final struggle, but the sure promise of triumph alleviates neither the difficulty nor the dangers of that final struggle.
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1 Nephi 17:47-48 

47 Behold, my soul is rent with anguish because of you, and my heart is pained; I fear lest ye shall be cast off forever. Behold, I am full of the Spirit of God, insomuch that my frame has no strength.
48 And now it came to pass that when I had spoken these words they were angry with me, and were desirous to throw me into the depths of the sea; and as they came forth to lay their hands upon me I spake unto them, saying: In the name of the Almighty God, I command you that ye touch me not, for I am filled with the power of God, even unto the consuming of my flesh; and whoso shall lay his hands upon me shall wither even as a dried reed; and he shall be as naught before the power of God, for God shall smite him.

S. Kent Brown and his BYU group found a place where the brothers’ threat would have been more serious than just tossing him into the water. They report that there are cliffs there where the sea crashed against rocks that would have broken his body before the water drowned him and carried him away:

It was a refreshing and exciting ride across the rolling ocean surface with fish visible below us and the steep escarpment rising dramatically above the seashore.

As we came around a curve in the shoreline, Wadi Sayq opened to our view. It was magnificent; before us lay a beautiful alcove of teaming tropical plants framed by steep and jagged mountains with a small freshwater lagoon in the center. This place touched our hearts and imagination because it fit perfectly the description Nephi gave in his record (1 Nephi 17:5-7). On one side, steep cliffs that rose over two hundred feet had at their base sharp rocks with crashing waves. Behind them, a beautifully cone-shaped mountain rose majestically over the lagoon, inviting inspiration. The steep mountain cliffs on either side of the alcove had natural caves etched into them where, the locals informed us, bees stored honey.{1}
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FOOTNOTE

{1} S. Kent Brown and Peter Johnson, Journey of Faith, from Jerusalem to the Promised Land (Provo, Utah, The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2006), 136-37.
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1 Nephi 17:43-46

42 And they did harden their hearts from time to time, and they did revile against Moses, and also against God; nevertheless, ye know that they were led forth by his matchless power into the land of promise.
43 And now, after all these things, the time has come that they have become wicked, yea, nearly unto ripeness; and I know not but they are at this day about to be destroyed; for I know that the day must surely come that they must be destroyed, save a few only, who shall be led away into captivity.
44 Wherefore, the Lord commanded my father that he should depart into the wilderness; and the Jews also sought to take away his life; yea, and ye also have sought to take away his life; wherefore, ye are murderers in your hearts and ye are like unto them.
45 Ye are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words; wherefore, he has spoken unto you like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were to divide asunder.
46 And ye also know that by the power of his almighty word he can cause the earth that it shall pass away; yea, and ye know that by his word he can cause the rough places to be made smooth, and smooth places shall be broken up. O, then, why is it, that ye can be so hard in your hearts?

Nephi was reminding his brothers of the Feast of Tabernacles temple drama and its attendant ordinances and covenants, and he has now brought them to the place of the ceremonial battle between good and evil where the king was symbolically killed before being rescued from death and hell by Jehovah. But in Nephi’s version, there was no rescue for the king and his people; rather, their destruction is made sure by their own wickedness, and the only rescue he cites is God’s leading Lehi and his family from the doomed city. In the drama, Jehovah exercises his authority over the forces of nature to defeat Israel’s enemies and restores the king.{1} But when Nephi applied those principles to his brothers, he reminded them that it was they to whom God spoke with a voice “like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were to divide asunder.”

There is a psalm that echoes all of Nephi’s sentiments—both his own joy in the Lord and his fear for his brothers’ salvation. One cannot know whether he called on this psalm to express his feelings or whether part of it went through his mind as he spoke. The concept of righteousness had been the one with which they had first challenged him. He had used it in his response. The psalm is about the contrast between those who are and those who are not righteous. It says God will bless the one but not the other. It reads in part,

17 The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
18 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit (Psalm 34:17-18).

Those last words were a concluding promise of the Feast of Tabernacles temple drama..{2} Nephi’s next words were a further echo of the promise of the psalm.

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FOOTNOTES

{1} For a discussion of the ancient Israelite temple drama see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, “Part 1.”

{2} For a discussion of the that psalm as the basis for the Savior’s instruction to the Nephites in 3 Nephi 9 see Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord, First edition, p. 884-91; Second edition, p. 620-25.
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1 Nephi 17:41 

41 And he did straiten them in the wilderness with his rod; for they hardened their hearts, even as ye have; and the Lord straitened them because of their iniquity. He sent fiery flying serpents among them; and after they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.

The event Nephi was describing is mentioned in the Old Testament,{1} but its meaning is not discussed there (Numbers 21:4-9). To learn its meaning we have to go to the Book of Mormon where we find that the serpent symbolized the Savior as the Messiah. It was a later Nephi who explained that it represented the Atonement of “the coming of the Messiah” (Helaman 8:13-16).

The Savior referred to that Old Testament event when he spoke with Nicodemus. If we read the story of Nicodemus as being the Savior’s teaching that great, good, and learned man about who he (Jesus/Jehovah/Messiah) really was, then we see his statement about Moses’s brass serpent as an explanation that Jesus is the Messiah of whom Moses testified (John 3:14-21).
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FOOTNOTE

{1} The brass serpent, but not the incident, is mentioned again but with a negative connotation. It was worshiped as a false god, and king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kings 18:4)
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1 Nephi 17:22 

22. And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people; and our father hath judged them, and hath led us away because we would hearken unto his words; yea, and our brother is like unto him. And after this manner of language did my brethren murmur and complain against us.

This can be read two ways, but we suspect Nephi had only one in mind. The first way is to read it with disdain. The evil brothers were misusing the word “righteous” and were giving the people in Jerusalem credit they could not possibly deserve.

The second, and we think the more correct, is that the brothers knew exactly what they were saying, that their argument was not only sound in their thinking, but technically correct; and that it was because of the technical correctness of their argument that Nephi chose to include this incident as part of his story. The English word “righteous” is translated from the Hebrew zedek. In the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon, “righteousness” usually means priesthood and temple correctness, that is doing the precisely right thing at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, with the right authority, saying the right words, and dressed the right way.

If Nephi’s brothers had accepted Josiah’s religious innovations, and were using the word “righteous” to mean simply following the prescribed pattern in religious ritual, then their argument would seem sound enough. They said, “And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people.” Nephi’s reply does not challenge his brothers’ argument, only their definition of “righteousness.”

Rather than discussing whether the king, High Priest, and their followers at Jerusalem were doing the temple sacrifices, festivals in a form that seemed to follow the rules of the Law of Moses, Nephi asked about the Canaanites who were in the land before the Israelites came. He asks if they were righteous. To us that is a relevant question, and may imply that the apostate religions of the Canaanites looked from the outside very much like the religion from which they had apostatized. We can know from the discoveries of the ancient libraries of Ras Shamra that some of the Canaanite religious practices were similar to those of the Israelites.{1}

It appears that Nephi acknowledges his brothers’ contention that the people at Jerusalem seem righteous because they have perpetuated some of the works required by the Law of Moses. But by this acknowledgment he does not concede either the validity or correctness of those works or of his brothers’ conclusion that they were truly righteous as he and his father would define the word. Rather, he insists on the correct definition of “righteousness.” Nephi achieves that by recounting the story of Moses’s deliverance from Egypt (1 Nephi 17: 23-40). Nephi’s statement to his brothers may be read as simply a quick review of their ancient history, but it would seem relevant if we understood it to be his reminding them of the Feast of Tabernacles temple drama and of the covenants they made during those ceremonies.
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FOOTNOTE

{1} For a discussion of the libraries of Ugarit and what they teach us about the Canaanite religion, see, “Part 1, The Modern Re-discovery of the Ancient Israelite Feast of Tabernacles Temple Drama in the Old Testament,” in Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord.
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1 Nephi 17:18-21 

18 And thus my brethren did complain against me….
21 Behold, these many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy.

Nephi was ever the optimist. His optimism is the testimony that he threads though his entire story, assuring us again and again that he understood what he was supposed to do and that he was always disappointed when his brothers tried to change either the method or the outcome. Now their argument (which had, no doubt been an underlying motive for their earlier determination to kill their father) came to full blossom: “we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy.”

That argument would have struck Nephi to the heart. He knew that the “happiness” their property would have brought them would have been turned by the Babylonians into enslavement or death. But he also know that the happiness they were determined to exchange for their temporary satisfaction was only an ephemeral lure for emptiness, sorrow, and eternal aloneness. His knowledge that they sought such fleeting happiness probably hurt his soul as much as their refusal to assist him in building the boat.
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1 Nephi 17:15-16 

15 Wherefore, I, Nephi, did strive to keep the commandments of the Lord, and I did exhort my brethren to faithfulness and diligence.
16 And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.

Nephi did not have to ask the Lord for instructions about how to smelt ore or how to form it into the appropriate tools. It is apparent that he already understood those techniques. What he did not know was where to find the iron ore. The fact that he reports that he simply smelted “the rock” indicates that he did, in fact, simply pick up the iron ore off the ground, just as one would pick up other rocks.

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1 Nephi 17:11 

11 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts; and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire.

The Hiltons gave us an interesting insight about the bellows Nephi might have made to smelt the iron ore. They wrote,

The idea for a bellows was certainly not Nephi’s own invention. His contemporary, Jeremiah, mentions bellows in his own writings (Jer. 6:29).

We were excited when we discovered an old skin bellows in a blacksmith’s shop in Oman. It is very probable Nephi used a similar one. It is called keer in Arabic. The bellows was hanging, blackened and neglected, on the wall of the shop. The blacksmith told us that this bellows had been used by his father, his father’s father, and so on back for many generations (an estimated six hundred years). We had never seen a bellows like this before; it did not work in accordion fashion, pressed together like a European bellows, but was worked on the ground by a pump-like motion. The neck of the tanned goatskin was tied around a wooden coupling tube that fit into an iron pipe which would, naturally, have been placed under the fire. This reminded us of a clay pipe, dated 1,000 B.C., that we had seen in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a device that had also been used to carry air from a bellows to the fire. The four legs of the skin of this bellows of Oman had been folded back and tied off carefully. The entire back end of the goat skin was open, the skin fastened to two parallel sticks so that it looked like a woman’s large knitting bag that can snap shut. The blacksmith showed us how to grasp these two sticks in one hand, holding them open while he pulled the skin up, drawing in air, then closing them as he pushed the skin bag down, forcing the air out the neck pipe. We were impressed that it worked well, and we wondered how such bellows differed, if any, from Nephi’s.{1}
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FOOTNOTE

{1} Lynn M. Hilton and Hope A. Hilton, Discovering Lehi (Springville, Ut., Cedar Fort, Incorporated, 1969), 159.
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1 Nephi 17:8-10 

8 And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.
9 And I said: Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me?
10 And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools.

During S Kent Brown’s BYU exploration of the area that Lehi called Bountiful, he discovered not just a possible source of iron from which Nephi could have constructed his tools but a remarkable deposit of iron ore that would have enabled Nephi to pick the ore off the surface of the ground and smelt it with great ease. They report:

The unique part of the iron ore discovery that we made was that the iron is actually mixed in with carbonate, which is used naturally as a flux to lower the melting point of iron. The iron ore is highly concentrated and so not only would it have been easy for Nephi to see and collect, it would have been easy for him to make a tool from these raw materials.

The iron ore in only these two areas is right on the surface of the ground. We have veins of iron ore coming up through the metamorphic rock right to the surface of the ground. And so collecting it would have been no problem at all. Nephi could have collected enough iron ore in a matter of a few minutes to make all the tools he would want. And it is right by the coast. You load it into a boat, carry it wherever you want it, and process it.{1}
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FOOTNOTE

{1} S. Kent Brown and Peter Johnson, Journey of Faith, from Jerusalem to the Promised Land (Provo, Utah, The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2006), 64. Statements by Ron Harris and Revell Phillips.
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1 Nephi 17:7 

7. And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord.

There is much one can learn from this seemingly incidental part of Nephi’s story. Its importance is emphasized by similar circumstances being repeated over and over again throughout the scriptures and sacred history. There are many examples of prophets finding seclusion on a mountain in order to speak with God. Not everyone has immediate access to the quietude of a mountain, but that is not the point. The point is this: When the Spirit says “stop what you are doing and go to the mountain” or “go for a walk” or “go to your room” or “sit quietly and listen,” then one should obey.

We take the sacrament weekly as a token of the covenant that we will do our part to have the Spirit always be with us, but we sometimes get too busy to listen when he is there. That is like walking in the mountains with a friend but ceaselessly talking about a football game, or about politics, or about philosophy all the way going and coming—and never really having been on the mountain at all.

We often get on our knees and expect the Lord to answer our questions just then, while we are taking the minute to talk at him. We grunt and groan inside, trying to get as “spiritual” as we can for the experience. Nothing happens and we go away disappointed, or we let our own enthusiasm get in the way of our listening and go away convinced that the Lord shares that enthusiasm and that he approves of whatever it was we tried to convince him to sanction. Then when it doesn’t work out, we respond incredulously, “But I prayed!” Or else we kneel down with our hearts so full of sorrow, or disappointment or fear that those feelings take up all the space in our heart and soul and we go away thinking that we have had “a stupor of thought,” so that must be God’s answer. Shakespeare expressed the problem clearly when he had King Claudius say,

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.{1}

Real prayer is not a routine, night and morning recital of our usual shopping list. It is a quiet conversation, but the time for such quietude is sometimes hard to come by. There is an ancient Jewish tradition according to which Satan and one of his henchmen watched as Adam and Eve left the Garden. Satan tells his subordinate how to frustrate God’s plans— simply fill up human life with so much trivia that people will be too busy to listen to the Spirit. It concludes, “Cast men into great distractions and pains in life, so that their men should be preoccupied with life, and not have time to attend on the Holy Spirit.”{2}

That is why a quiet prayer is so important. Prayer is a togetherness. It is walking in a mountain with a friend. Sometimes stopping to talk. Sometimes just needing to talk and talk and know that you are being listened to. Sometimes filling one’s mind by listening to what he has to say. Sometimes filling one’s whole soul by just knowing that you and he are together.

Our world tends to crowd out such prayer, and the needs of just living can make that forever so. But when the Spirit whispers, “Arise, and get thee into the mountain,” it is time to go and to walk with a Friend.
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FOOTNOTES

{1} Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3.

{2} Roger Aubrey Bullard, The Hypostasis of the Archons (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1970), 29, lines 7-11.
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