The Book of Mormon: 1 Nephi 2

Today, we’ll be studying 1 Nephi Chapter 2. 

First off, Lehi is told in a dream to take his family and “depart into the wilderness.(v 2)”  Lehi doesn’t hesitate, but gathers up his family and camels and tents and they leave.  Here, too, we learn that Lehi was a wealthy man.  They leave behind gold and silver and “precious things(v 4).”  In this chapter, we learn the composition of Lehi’s family.

1. The head of this family is Lehi /lē´hī/ (Hebrew: cheek or jaw) and his wife Sariah /sa-rī´a/ (Hebrew: Princess of the Lord or Jehovah is Prince)
2. The first son is Laman /lā´mun/ (Arabic: twinkling)
3. The second son is Lemuel /lĕm´yūl/(Hebrew: devoted to God)
4. The third son is Sam /săm/.  At the website josephsmith.com I found the following “The name is Egyptian. ‘It was the distinctive name of one of the highest orders of the priesthood. The great Rameses, himself, belonged to the order of Sam.’ (George Reynolds)” (Reynolds and Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 1, p. 25-26)  It could also be a shortening of the name “Samuel” which was a Hebrew name meaning “Asked of God” according to the Bible’s footnotes.
5. The fourth son is Nephi /nē´fī/(origin unknown)

They traveled three days until they came to a lovely little valley with a stream flowing through it.  After pitching tents and building an altar, which I take to mean that Lehi wished to establish his camp as decidedly a Hebrew dwelling place, Lehi named the stream or river for his eldest son and the valley for his second son.  Then, being a loving father, he offered his two wayward eldest sons something to think about, thus letting them know his naming of these features of their camp after them wasn’t to be an honorific, but a lesson.  In verse 9, Lehi exclaims that he wishes Laman were like the river which was named for him, “continually running into the fountain of all righteousness.”  In verse 10, he makes the same wish for Lemuel, desiring him to be “firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord.”

Like many, I have wondered why Lehi did this, other than in the obvious parental desire to gently teach his children where they needed to point themselves.  Hugh Nibley states in his book Lehi in the Desert that this is a practice that the Bedouin still follow today.  Lots of people have debated about whether this constitutes definitive evidence that the Book of Mormon is true.  Personally, I think that it’s reasonable that Lehi, during his travels before the events detailed in this book, noticed this practice among the Bedouin and thought it was cool.  This is fairly typical of many of us, in that, if someone else has a tradition that we admire, we may take that home and implement it.  For example, this Christmas our Relief Society were discussing Christmas traditions our families use to put Christ back in Christmas.  One of the sisters said that they have a white stocking hanging with the family’s stockings.  This they fill with little notes telling of deeds they did or others did for them that were Christ-like.  I thought that was a pretty neat tradition.  The very next day, I bought a white Christmas stocking and hung it on the mantelpiece with ours, telling the kids that this was Jesus’ stocking and that we were going to fill it with the kind of gifts he wants, namely Christ-like behavior, which we would read out loud on Christmas day.  Now, even though this wasn’t previously a tradition of my family, this doesn’t mean I can’t borrow it.  I think the same may well have been the case for Lehi.  He saw this wonderful tradition of naming a campsite among the nomadic tribes and, since he and his family were going to be nomadic for a while, he implemented it.  It makes sense to me.

Anyway, Laman and Lemuel murmured a great deal because A) their dad was behaving like a lunatic, dragging them from their home without any of their wealth and making them live in the wilderness, B) He is claiming that Jerusalem will be destroyed, which seems unlikely to them because it’s been attacked several times already and it’s still there (at the time), and C) they didn’t understand the ways of the Lord.   

As I read this chapter, I felt very much as though this was the chapter about obedience to the commandments of the Lord. If we look at each family member, we see a different attitude to keeping the commandments.

Lehi, the family prophet and leader, was the one who had the vision.  The Lord commanded him to skedaddle and what did he do?  Did he stand there dithering over what to bring?  Nope!  He packed up all the essentials – provisions, tents, camels, wife and sons – and skedaddled.  His wife, Sariah, it is assumed, quietly obeyed her husband.  We’re not told what her reaction was, though, as evidenced in later chapters, she obviously had her doubts.

Next we come to the continuum of people who follow the prophet.  Nephi, the youngest of the four brothers, is at one end of this continuum.  He’s the brother who, rather than blindly obeying his father, took the matter to the Lord so he could know for himself.  His faith meant that he received a visitation from the Lord and confirmation of the words of his father.  So, he was able to obey his father without causing any trouble.

Sam is someplace in the middle of the continuum.  We aren’t told much about him except that, when Nephi spoke to him, he believed Nephi’s words and also didn’t rebel.  So, although Sam, it seems, didn’t possess the faith to ask the Lord himself, he did have faith in Nephi’s faith.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given that the results are basically the same.

Laman and Lemuel are on the opposite end of the continuum from Nephi.  They never stopped murmuring until their father had to tell them off (v 14).  Even then, however, their belief flagged again and again until, finally, they decided that doing away with their younger brother would be their best bet.  To my mind, and the Lord’s it seems, that’s always a deal breaker.  Nephi, too, was concerned about their behavior and that they didn’t seem to believe him when he said he’d received confirmation from the Lord that their father was following commandments.  The Lord’s response was pretty definitive.  If they continued to fail in following the commandments, Nephi would be made a ruler and teacher over them and, if they rejected him, they would be cut off and their descendants would be used as a scourge when Nephi’s descendants forgot the gospel. 

Applying the Scriptures to my own life:

Obviously, I want to be like Nephi and/or Sam.  When a commandment comes from the prophet, I want to be one of those who goes to the Lord for confirmation or, if I don’t, quietly obeys the voices of those that did.  The Prophets have given us many commandments in these latter days.  There’s nothing that says I can’t follow in Nephi and Sam’s footprints and do as they did in following those commandments.  I can be like Lehi and immediately obey rather than standing here dithering about the how.