Nephi’s Brothers Try to Kill Him
I, Nephi, prayed a lot to the Lord my God. My brothers were very angry. But their anger got worse. They wanted to kill me. They complained about me. They said: 'Our younger brother thinks he can rule over us. He has caused us a lot of trouble. Let’s kill him. Then he won’t bother us anymore with his words. We don’t want him to be our ruler. We are the older brothers. We should rule over these people.'
I won’t write down all the things they said against me. But they did want to kill me.
Nephi and His People Leave
The Lord warned me to leave them. He told me to go into the wilderness. I should take everyone who wanted to go with me. So I took my family. Zoram and his family came. Sam, my older brother, and his family came. Jacob and Joseph, my younger brothers, came. My sisters came too. Everyone who wanted to go with me came. All these people believed God’s warnings. So they listened to my words.
We took our tents and everything we could carry. We traveled in the wilderness for many days. After we traveled for many days, we set up our tents.
My people wanted to name the place Nephi. So we called it Nephi. Everyone with me decided to call themselves the people of Nephi.
The People of Nephi Do Well
We followed all of the Lord’s rules and laws. We obeyed the law of Moses in everything. The Lord was with us. We did very well. We planted seeds and got lots of food. We started to raise flocks and herds and all kinds of animals.
I had also brought the brass plates with me. I also brought the compass that the Lord made for my father. We did very well. We had more and more people in the land.
I took the sword of Laban. I made many more swords just like it. I knew the people now called Lamanites might attack us. I knew they hated me and my children and my people. I taught my people to build buildings. I taught them to work with wood, iron, copper, brass, steel, gold, and silver. We had lots of these things.
I built a temple. I built it like Solomon’s temple. But I didn’t use as many fancy things. We didn’t have them in our land. So it couldn’t be built exactly like Solomon’s temple. But it was built in the same way. The work was very good. I got my people to work hard with their hands.
Nephi Becomes a Ruler
They wanted me to be their king. But I didn’t want them to have a king. Still, I did what I could for them.
The Lord’s words came true. He said I would be my brothers’ ruler and teacher. So I was their ruler and teacher. I followed the Lord’s commands. This was true until they tried to kill me.
The Curse on the Lamanites
So the Lord’s word came true. He said: 'If they won’t listen to you, they will be cut off from me.' And they were cut off from him.
He caused a curse to come on them. It was a bad curse because of their sins. They had made their hearts hard against him. Their hearts were like stone. They were white and very beautiful. But the Lord God made their skin become black. This was so they wouldn’t attract my people. This is what the Lord God says: 'I will make them ugly to your people. Unless they stop sinning.' Anyone who marries them will be cursed. Their children will be cursed with the same curse. The Lord said it, and it happened.
Because of their curse, they became lazy. They were full of trouble and tricks. They hunted wild animals in the wilderness. The Lord God said to me: 'They will be a problem for your children. They will remind your children to think about me. If your children don’t remember me and listen to my words, the Lamanites will hurt them badly. They might even destroy them.'
Living in Peace
I made Jacob and Joseph priests and teachers over my people.
We lived in a happy way.
Thirty years had passed since we left Jerusalem.
I had kept the records on my plates. I wrote about my people up to this point.
The Lord Tells Nephi to Make New Plates
The Lord God said to me: 'Make other plates. Write on them many good things that will help your people.' So I obeyed the Lord’s commands. I went and made these plates. I wrote these things on them.
I wrote what makes God happy. If my people like the things of God, they will like what I wrote on these plates. If my people want to know more details about our history, they should read my other plates.
Forty years had passed. We had already had wars and fights with our brothers.
Influences
- 5:7 — Romans 15:4 (KJV)For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
- 5:8 — Galatians 2:10 (KJV)Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do.
- 5:8 — 2 Maccabees 1:36 (KJV)And Neemias called this thing Naphthar, which is as much as to say, a cleansing: but many men call it Nephi.
- 5:9 — Acts 19:13 (KJV)Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.
- 5:14 — Galatians 2:2 (KJV)And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain.
- 5:17 — 1 Corinthians 4:12 (KJV)And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
- 5:18 — Acts 18:14 (KJV)And when Paul was now about to open his mouth, Gallio said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:
- 5:20 — John 12:38 (KJV)That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?
- 5:25 — 2 Peter 1:13 (KJV)Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;
- 5:25 — Luke 22:19 (KJV)And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
- 5:32 — 1 Corinthians 2:11 (KJV)For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Notes
- 5:6
This is the only reference to sister(s) in the Book of Mormon. The words grandmother and aunt are never used.
Nephi never mentions his wife's name. Nephi does not name any of his own children either (1 Nephi 18:19). Interestingly, he uses his own name "I, Nephi" eighty-six times.
Sariah is one of only three women in the New World who are given names. The others are "Abish" in Alma 19:16, and "the harlot Isabel" in Alma 39:3.
"The fact that the Book of Mormon story says so little about women seems to throw a serious cloud of doubt over Joseph Smith's contention that it was written by a number of ancient Jewish authors after 600 B.C. The claim is that these men had the ancient books of the Bible-books which contain the names of many women and stories concerning them. However, the uniform lack of material regarding women in the Book of Mormon points to just one author." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 199.
- 5:8
"There are thirty-two interesting parallels between material found in three books of the Apocrypha and the Book of Mormon story of Nephi....Interestingly, twenty-eight of the thirty-two parallels to the Apocrypha are found in the first five chapters of the Book of Mormon. This constitutes an extraordinary cluster of similarities..." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 29.
Parallel: There is a significant parallel in wording between 2 Maccabees and the Book of Mormon in that both books use the words "the place" and "call it Nephi" (see 2 Maccabees 1:34, 36).
For other parallels, please see: 1 Nephi 1:1, 1 Nephi 1:2, 1 Nephi 1:17, 1 Nephi 4:20-24, 1 Nephi 2:4-6, 1 Nephi 3:3, 1 Nephi 3:16, 1 Nephi 3:25, 1 Nephi 3:31, 1 Nephi 4:1-2, 1 Nephi 4:4-5, 1 Nephi 4:7-9, 1 Nephi 4:18, 1 Nephi 4:19-24 & 38, 1 Nephi 4:20, 1 Nephi 4:27, 1 Nephi 5:9, 1 Nephi 13:40, 2 Nephi 5:8, Mosiah 10:13, 4 Nephi 1:31.
For a full note on the use of the Apocrypha, please see the annotation at 1 Nephi 1:1.
- 5:21
The 1830 edition of 2 Nephi 30:6 read, “shall be a white and delightsome people.” In 1840, this wording was changed to “shall be a pure and a delightsome people.” However, in 1841 the text was reverted back to “white and delightsome.” It was not changed again to “pure and delightsome” until 1981—three years after the 1978 lifting of the priesthood ban.
Although many Latter-day Saints argue that “white” should be understood metaphorically as referring to righteousness or purity rather than race or ethnicity, statements from LDS leaders leave little ambiguity about how these passages were historically interpreted. Here are just a few statements from LDS authorities:
“You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation …When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break his covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people” (Journal of Discourses 7:336).
At the October 1960 LDS Church Conference, Spencer Kimball utilized 2 Nephi 30:6 when he stated how the Indians “are fast becoming a white and delightsome people.” He said,
“The [Indian] children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation” (Improvement Era, December 1960, pp. 922-3).
During the same message Kimball referred to a 16-year-old Indian girl who was both LDS and “several shades lighter than her parents…” He went on to say,
“These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.”
Elder Eugene J. Neff, in a 1927 conference message claimed, “The first missionaries went from this section around to another little town on the east side of the island, and there they gathered in a grass hut one hundred people to hear the message of these strange white men, As they all sat around the mat and heard the voice of this missionary from Utah, they were transfigured before George Q. Cannon, and he saw ninety-seven of them become white, and three of them remained dark. He did not understand. He did not know why it was that three of them would remain dark and all the rest should become light. He received a partial answer to this manifestation when it was learned that ninety-seven of those people in meeting at this time joined the Church, became devout members, lived and died Latter-day Saints, while three of them never did. It is said that they will become a white and delightsome people. They are delightsome at present, and I believe they are going to become white. They are growing whiter from year to year. I have said to myself and to some of my intimate friends that I thought the Hawaiian people would become white and delightsome, through intermarriage. I do not know whether that is according to the doctrines of the Church or not, but they have married the oriental races and married white people on the islands to such an extent that today there are more half casts than there are pure Hawaiians” (Conference Report, April 1927, p.49).
The Juvenile Instructor (26:635) reads, “From this it is very clear that the mark which was set upon the descendants of Cain was a skin of blackness, and there can be no doubt that this was the mark that Cain himself received; in fact, it has been noticed in our day that men who have lost the spirit of the Lord, and from whom his blessings have been withdrawn, have turned dark to such an extend as to excite the comments of all who have known them.”
See also 2 Nephi 5:21; 2 Nephi 30:6; 3 Nephi 2:15-16; Jacob 3:8-9; Alma 3:6.
- 5:33
Many of the same phrases that appear in the Book of Mormon are also found in Smith’s writings. Among them is the recurring expression “more particular."
This phrase, "more particular," can also be found in: 1 Nephi 19:2; Alma 13:19; and D&C 10:39-40.
See 2 Nephi 28:22; 1 Nephi 1:1; 2 Nephi 26:15; 2 Nephi 28:16; and 1 Nephi 8:2 as other examples of Smith's common phrases.
- 5:34
It is reasonable to wonder how, within just forty years, the population could have grown large enough to sustain what the text describes as “wars.” After all, this would still have been the first generation of people in the New World. It is also important to note that Lehi’s original group likely consisted of only seventeen to nineteen adults.