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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 1

• How did members of the group perceive the purposes of these afflictions?

Verse 2

• Compare the perspective given here with the perspective given in verses 20-21. What things are included that are the same, and which things are different? What do these differences and similarities suggest?

Verse 3

• If the Lord can't help them until after they keep the commandments, and yet his assistance is specifically designed to help them accomplish the commandments, then how much commandment keeping did these people do on their own and how much was possible because of divine assistance?

Verse 4

• How did these urban people manage to become totally self-sufficient, with the apparent exception of food delivered by the Lord, while cut off civilization for eight years?

Verse 5

• If they had survived eight years in the wilderness, why were they suddenly on the verge of perishing when they arrived at Bountiful?

Lexical notes

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Verse 3

• Anthony D. Perkins, "‘The Great and Wonderful Love’," Ensign, Nov 2006, pp. 76–78. Elder Perkins counsels us to place our burdens on Jesus Christ. "When you feel overwhelmed by expectations and challenges, do not fight the battle alone."

Verse 5

• Irreantum: Paul Hoskisson explores a South Semitic etymology for this name, explaining why Nephi gives both the transliteration and meaning of this name. Paul Hoskisson, with Brian Hauglid and John Gee, "What's in a Name? Irreantum", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, vol. 11 (2002), pp. 90-93.

The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 6

• Did the Lord bring this group out of the wilderness and into Bountiful because over the eight years they had become more righteous, or was it because the Lord needed them to set up a new society in the promised land before they became much older?

Verse 7

• What is the significance of prefacing, in the Old Testament way, this command with the word "Arise"?

Verse 8

• What precedents were there in scripture, that Nephi would have been familiar with, for building ships that were approved, let alone designed, by the Lord?

Verse 9

• In chapter 16, Nephi built a bow and asked his father where he should go to hunt. Here, he asks the Lord where he should go to find materials for the boat he is to build. Is that parallel instructive? What does this show us about Nephi? Does it suggest something for us?

Verse 10

• Was Nephi told, as well as shown, the exact location of the ore?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 11

• Wouldn't Nephi have needed an oven or a catalyst, besides just blowing air, for super-hot fires that would make the ore molten?

Verse 12

• Were they allowed to build intense fires now that they were far removed from other societies who might notice their smoke?

Verse 13

• Was this a renewal or remaking of covenants?

Verse 14

• What does the Lord mean when he says “After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, am God"? Doesn’t Nephi already know that?

Verse 15

• Nephi begins this verse with “wherefore.” In other words, what follows is a consequence of what preceded: Nephi strove to keep the commandments because the Lord promised that after arriving in the promised land he would know that the Lord is God, that the Lord delivered them, and that he brought them out of Jerusalem. How does that promise motivate Nephi’s striving for obedience?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

In verses 13 and 14 the Lord stresses that Nephi will come to know that the Lord had led Nephi and his people to the promised land. It is interesting that the Lord seems to desire not just that his people be delivered but that they realize that it is by his hand that it happens. The Lord follows this pattern in other dealings with his people--such as in Exodus 3, where the Lord stresses the importance of letting Pharaoh and the other Israelites know that it is by his hand and authority that Moses comes to deliver them. Later, in Exodus 20:5 the Lord goes so far as to say he is a "jealous God." In modern times we are commanded to "confess his hand in all things" (D&C 59:21).

It appears to be important doctrine to recognize the Lord's hand in good things that happen--and in turn the importance of doing good in the name of the Lord. Some Christian sects take this doctrine to the extreme of arguing that morality does not count unless done as an act of faith--in the name of the Lord (see, e.g., The Deadly Dangers of Moralism). Such a doctrine seems inconsistent with scriptural passages where the Lord indicates he will bless non-believing people for the commandments they do keep (see, e.g., Jacob 3:5-6). That said, it seems obvious that to take the next step beyond being just a moral people to being the Lord's covenant people requires an actual relationship with him. Such a relationship in turn requires knowledge of God and what he has done and will do for us.

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 16

• Were these ordinary tools or were they, like the ship, divinely designed?

Verse 17

• Was Nephi reluctant to share his ship building plans with his brothers or did he hope they would come around to believing in the plan once they saw his progress?

Verse 18

• In what circumstances did Laman and Lemuel blame the Lord for their misfortunes, rather than members of their immediate family?

Verse 19

• Is this an example of rejoicing in iniquity (see Moro 7:45)?

Verse 20

• Is the claim that Nephi is like his father the only truth embedded in this accusation, or did Laman and Lemuel accurately represent the feelings of at least some of the young mothers in this group?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

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• Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Power of a Personal Testimony," Ensign, Nov 2006, pp. 37–39. Elder Uchtdorf explains that, "despite the strong oppositions expressed by his faithless brothers," Nephi went on to build a ship because he had a "powerful testimony and motivation in his heart." (See verses 50-51.)

The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 21

• Were Laman and Lemuel so shallow as to think that their pursuit of materialism could provide all of the happiness they wanted and needed in life?

Verse 22

• Nephi’s brothers say that they know that the people of Jerusalem were righteous because they kept the law of Moses. Were they wrong about that, or is their standard of righteousness the problem?

Verse 23

• Nephi responds to their complaints by asking them to remember the Lord’s dealing with Moses and Israel. (Remembrance is a major theme in the Book of Mormon.) How will that remembrance answer their complaints?

Verse 24

• To what extent does Nephi see himself as a Moses for the group he is leading to the promised land?

Verse 25

• Nephi seems to be comparing the exodus of the Lehi party from Jerusalem with the exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt. Does he mean to equate the experience of Lehi's family in Jerusalem with the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt? If so, in what way was Lehi's family in bondage in Jerusalem?

Lexical notes

Verse 22

• Statutes and Judgments. This term appears repeatedly in the Old Testament (see, e.g., Deut 4:1), where it is a translation of two words. Choq is the word translated as "statute." It means an ordinance, limit, boundary enactment, decree, ordinance specific decree law in general enactments, or civil enactments prescribed by God. It is derived from the word chaqaq, which means to carve, cut, or inscribe. Mishpat is the word translated as "judgment." It refers to the act of deciding a legal case, a court, litigation, a judicial decision or right and justice. It is derived from the word shaphat which is a verb meaning to govern or judge. The phrase "statutes and judgments" also appears elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (see, e.g., 2 Ne 1:16).

Exegesis

Verses 22-24

These verses set up the extended discourse by Nephi that follows. In verse 22 Nephi's brothers insist that the people at Jerusalem were "a righteous people" because they "kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his comandments, according to the law of Moses." One way of looking at this confrontation and others between Nephi and his brothers is to see it as a contest between dueling approaches to reading the scriptures. Notice that Laman and Lemuel are not irreligious. They appeal to scripture, but do so in a particular way, adopting a self-consciously legal approach to them. They refer to Moses, but only as a lawgiver and their focus is on "the statutes and judgements" of that law. Nephi responds by also invoking Moses, but in a very different way, namely as a prophet who led his people from bondage to a promised land. Notice that Nephi's reading of the Moses story implicitly places himself and his brothers within the narrative. In doing so, he recapitulates an earlier confrontation over interpretation (see 1 Ne 15:5 ), but this time in a much more elaborate manner.

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 26

• Was Nephi saying they had been taught these stories or that they had a testimony of what happened back then?

Verse 27

• What is Nephi signaling to his brothers with his use of the word "but"?

Verse 28

• Would it be more accurate for Nephi to say "ye have heard"?

Verse 29

• Did Moses smite the rock with his powerful words or with his rod (see Ex 17:6 and Num 20:11)?

Verse 30

• Why is the word "Redeemer" absent from the writings of Moses?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

Notice that Nephi focuses in on three elements in this recounting of Moses's leading the children of Israel:

• Crossing the Red Sea
• Manna and water in the wilderness
• Murmurring against the prophet

There seem to be clear analogs in the experience of the Lehite party. They now sit on the shore of a sea that the Lord has commanded them to cross. When Nephi broke his bow, the Lord provided the party with a way to get food in the wilderness. Laman and Lemuel have murmurred against Lehi. It is also possible that the reference to the pillar of fire that led the Children of Israel in the desert is also a reference to the pillar of fire that first appeared to Lehi ( 1 Ne 1:6 ) thus launching the family's exodus into the wilderness.

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 31

• What does this verse mean by “there was not anything done save it was by his word"? What things is Nephi talking about, what the children of Israel did or what happened to them? What does “by his word” mean in this context?

Verse 32

• Was this the only version of the settlement of Canaan story that Nephi had ever heard?

Verse 33

• How can Nephi make such a sweeping and unfavorable judgment of the non-Jewish people who were in Canaan, when the Book of Mormon teaches that there must have been enough righteous individuals among the Canaanites for the Lord to deliver scripture to them and all other "nations of the earth" (2 Ne 29:7)?

Verse 34

• Is Nephi hinting at the possibility that Jews did not have a monopoly on being the Lord's chosen people, that it was possible for righteous non-Jews to become "choice" in the eyes of the Lord?

Verse 35

• What does it mean to esteem (to value?) all flesh as one but to favor the righteous? How do esteem and favor differ?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 36

• Why then have areas of wilderness?

Verse 37

• Does he wait longer to destroy wicked nations in this, the modern age, than he did in ancient times?

Verse 38

• Are some lands inherently more precious than others or is it the degree of righteousness or wickedness of the people living upon them that largely determines the worth of the land?

Verse 39

• What is the function of a footstool?

Verse 40

• How does Nephi explain Israel’s salvation? Is it because Israel was worthy of salvation? What does it mean to say that the Lord remembers his covenants? What does Nephi’s teaching in this verse suggest about us today? about our children?

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 41

• Are chastening and straitening the same thing?

Verse 42

• Why doesn't Nephi distinguish between generations who were wicked and those who were more righteous?

Verse 43

• What explanation would Nephi have given for the preservation of these few?

Verse 44

Verse 45

• Does this verse imply that the "still small voice" speaks without words, at least in the audible sense?

Lexical notes

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Exegesis

Verse 45

• It is important to note that Nephi did not tell his brethren that they "could not hear his words." Instead he was teaching them that spiritual messages most often come through feelings.
• The Lord does not use an exotic method to send his children messages. He uses a medium that is already incredibly common to them. Because humans are creatures of emotion, the Lord's use of feelings to send messages to his children maximizes the number of people who will be equipped to receive these messages.
• Because the Lord speaks to us through our feelings, we must ever be on guard to distinguish between our own emotions and feelings, one the one hand, and the feelings that carry the messages from our Heavenly Father on the other. These two things work through nearly the same channels and be easily mistaken for one another. The ability to figure out which feeling is which may be related to the gift of discernment. As we are obedient and perform the Lord's work here on earth, our capacity to distinguish between these two sources of feelings will be increased.
• If we notice that the Lord seems to be sending us less messages, we should check ourselves and determine whether we have become the limiting factor. It may very well be that we have become too casual in our relationship with the Lord. To remedy this situation, we need to recommit to being obedient, loving, and serving.
• Negativity in our thoughts, words, and actions can diminish the number of messages that we receive from the Lord. Dwelling on the negative in life can distort our natural feelings. We can find ourselves becoming cynical about situations, critical of others, and that everyone and everything falls short of our expectations. As we do so, we become emotionally crippled. We forget to find, or become unable to notice, the elements of good in everyone and everything. Once our feelings have become so one-sided, we shut ourselves out from the positive feelings that the Lord wants to send us. Should we be surprised to find it hard to communicate with a God who is the source of all goodness if we have convinced ourselves that his children and creation are full of faults?
• In this verse, Nephi teaches that the Lord sends us messages made up of words as well as of feelings. Just like spiritual feelings are designed to be similar to our own emotions, these words from heaven are adapted to our own vocabulary. This means the Lord will send words to our minds that come from our own language. The words will be recognizable, in other words, because they are words with which we are already familiar.
• Even though the Lord sends us words that we already know, it is the combination of those words that will be unique to the Lord. He will form the words he sends us into phrases and thoughts that we had not anticipated. Although he may bring things to our remembrance that we already knew, we will not have been thinking of these things at the time he sparked our memory. On other occasions, the Lord will reveal something new to us that is understandable because it is composed of words that we already know.
• Elder B. H. Roberts used to say that the Spirit cannot draw upon an empty well. What this means is that the Spirit is limited in what it can reveal to us if we have a very small vocabulary and little schooling. As we gain an education and increase the number of words that we know, there is the potential that the Lord can send us more detailed messages. As our language and learning expand, the Lord can reveal to us a great number of connections between and patterns within the pieces of knowledge we have already obtained. Before we receive these revelations, however, these connections and patterns will not be obvious to us. It takes the influence of the Spirit to make us see what was always before our eyes or to understand what was comprehensible but never before comprehended.
• The Lord likely wanted to send the same kinds of messages to Nephi and his brethren. They were, after all, in the same situation with needing to build a ship and to sail to the promised land. However, Nephi's ability to hearken to the Lord qualified him to receive more messages than his brethren. Like Nephi and his brethren, we may find ourselves in situations, like sacrament meetings, where just about everyone has the same ability to hear the same message with their physical ears. However, despite this common experience, there will likely be vast differences in the amount and types of spiritual impressions that each person in the congregation receives. Some of this revelation may be the same for most or all of the people in attendance, such as spiritual verification that what the speaker has said is true, but the rest of the revelation may be adapted to the needs and abilities of the individuals in the audience. Just as their were similarities and differences in the revelations received by Nephi and other members of his family, there can be unifying and personalized revelations received by us and the members of our wards.
• Nephi teaches here that it is possible for people to reach the point where they are "past feeling" and can no longer detect the "still small voice." We should be aware of the things in our lives that dull our spiritual sensitivities and weaken our capacity to receives spiritual impressions through our feelings. In the world people talk about individuals who have suppressed, desensitized, or lost their conscience. This is an approximation of what Nephi is talking about. The result is that these individuals no longer feel a moral obligation to treat others with respect. The corollary is that love from another person may or may not touch the hearts of these individuals. It all depends on the extent to which these individuals have become "past feeling."
• The Lord does not stop trying to talk to his children once they become "past feeling." He will, if necessary, use the language of physical force ("the voice of thunder") to get our attention. This switching on the Lord's part, from one mode of communication to another, is actually a demonstration of his mercy for his children. Rather than become offended that we have stopped listening to the still small voice, the Lord patiently and lovingly finds other channels through which to obtain our attention. He is slow to give up on us, even if we are quick to stop listening to him.
• People are foolish and arrogant if they think their inability to hear and feel messages from the Lord is somehow proof that God no longer speaks to his children. These individuals are the ones who have broken the lines of communication. The Lord always stands ready to communicate to his children. In fact, the blame is entirely upon these individuals, rather than the Lord, because he has already made attempts to send messages to them, just like Laman and Lemuel received an angel, but they turned a deaf ear to these feelings and tuned out the Lord's voice to them.

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 46

• Why does Nephi mix prophesied certainties with statements of capability?

Verse 47

• In the Old Testament, anguish is what sinners feel. After Christ comes, sorrow is what his disciples feel for the sins of the world. Is Nephi feeling both of these emotions?

Verse 48

• What does Nephi mean when he says the power of God is consuming his flesh? Is he echoing Old Testament passages that talk about sacrifices where divine fire consumes the flesh of the animal?

Verse 49

• Why is the word "labor"--which is found here and throughout the restoration scriptures--absent from the Bible?

Verse 50

• Why doesn't Nephi say that whatever the Lord commands will "happen"?
• Who or what is performing the action when Nephi says "it would be done"?

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The Book of Mormon > First Nephi > Chapter 17

Questions

Verse 51

• What does vs. 51 tell us about God's willingness to instruct us in "mundane" tasks? Can we get similarly detailed instructions for the things God has commanded us to do?

Verse 52

• If Nephi's brothers were "past feeling," then what were they experiencing when the Spirit powerfully "wrought upon them"?

Verse 53

• Is the promise that Laman and Lemuel would "not wither" proof that they had suddenly started repenting?

Verse 54

• How should we interpret Nephi's use of physical force against his brothers in light of modern LDS instructions not to exercise dominion through compulsory means(D&C 121:37)?

Verse 55

• Why did Laman and Lemuel confess the hand of the Lord and then seemingly immediately attribute the divine intervention to their brother Nephi?

Lexical notes

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