Book of Mormon Commentary CofC - Odessa, Missouri Community ...

Book of Mormon Commentary
1 Nephi Chapter 5
food (59). The Lord promised to "make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not” (76). The
explanation for not using fire to roast their meat is given in these simple words. “For the Lord had
not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire as we journeyed in the wilderness” (5:75).
This was said after they had reached the Land Bountiful. A certain amount of danger from attack
by Bedouin tribes existed in the wilderness, and the smoke from cooking fires would only
intensify the danger. (See notes on 1:46.)
Also the Jews were likely to be looking for the precious brass plates. They were of great
importance, and their loss, Laban's death, and Zoram's disappearance must have infuriated them
and sent them on an intense search.
1 Ne 5:61 And we did sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness.
5:61 They had not reached their destination, but they had reached the end of the caravan journey.
They had been led to a place where there was an abundance of fruit and wild honey, which place
they called Bountiful (62). It was by the sea, which they named Irreantum, meaning many waters.
Perhaps we would say much water, an ocean. If they had gone southeast as far as the Gulf of
Aden, a thousand miles from Jerusalem, and then traveled east as far as they could go they would
come to the Gulf of Oman, another thousand miles. As Alma said, they “tarried in the wilderness,
or did not travel a direct course" (A. 17:77), so it would have taken the eight years.
1 Ne 5:66 And notwithstanding we had suffered many afflictions, and much difficulty, yea, even so
much that we can not write them all, we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the sea-shore;
5:66 They had been on the Red Sea (1:30) and could have gone down to the Gulf of Aden, if they
wished, before turning eastward. It was not just to reach a seashore that they had come so far, but
when they pitched their tents in Bountiful, they realized that this was the place the Lord had
wanted them to come. Subsequent events bear this out.
And by what other route could Lehi have reached his happy shore? To the north lay enemy
country, the Mediterranean was a world of closed harbors and closed seas, as dangerous as in the
days of Wenamon, who was repeatedly stopped by enemies and pirates, the deserts to the east of
Jerusalem swarmed with hostile and warring tribes, north and central Arabia were the classic
grazing and fighting grounds of the Arabs, and so crisscrossed with trade routes in the time of
Ptolemy "that there appears little left of the inaccessible desert: 'in general Ptolemy knows of no
desert…’ ”
Egypt offered no escape to one marked as an enemy by the pro-Egyptian party. Only one way lay
open, the hardest and wildest, through the mountains that border the Red Sea and then due east
over the western extension of the terrible “Empty Quarter” where the party saw so much affliction.
They had to turn east when they did because the whole southwest corner of the peninsula
comprised the kingdom of the Sabaeans, probably the strongest, richest, and most thickly settled
state Arabia has ever had.
So, long and painful though it was, Lehi's itinerary turns out to have been actually the shortest and
safest, if not the only one he could have taken. On the shore of the Arabian Sea the story of Lehi in
the desert properly ends. Though this has been but a preliminary telling, still there is enough to
justify certain reflections by way of summary.