The Lord warned Lehi in a dream to take his family and depart into the wilderness. Kelly Ogden writes, Why Lehi? What qualified this Judahite to lead a colony of Israelites through the wilderness to a new Promised Land? There are hints in the scriptural record that Lehi was wealthy. (1 Nephi 2:4; 3:16, 22.) The Mediterranean world was alive with mercantile activity in this period of time, Syria/Palestine being the hub of sea and commerce, the place where continents and cultures come together. Caravans traversed Judah from all directions: side roads off the Coastal Highway and the King’s Highway, the distant Frankincense Trail, pilgrims’ highways and trade routes connecting Moab, Edom, and Arabia with Gaza and Egypt. Lehi could have been a trained and experienced caravaneer and trader. He knew what provisions to prepare and what route to take. Knowing how God has worked in other periods of history, it is not unlikely that he selected a man who, in addition to his spiritual maturity and responsiveness, was already adapted to the particular task at hand, in this case one acquainted with the rigors of desert travel and survival. Here again was the right man for the right time. [D. Kelly Ogden, “Answering the Lord’s Call,” in Studies in Scripture: Book of Mormon, Part 1, p. 21] [See the commentary on 1 Nephi 2:4]
“He Should Take His Family and Depart into the Wilderness - Potter Theory”
According to George Potter, the world of Nephi was partitioned into two spheres, the civilized world, and the rest, devoid of civilization, a political and cultural wilderness. What is important for understanding Nephi’s text is that the nearest uncivilized part of the “known world” of Nephi’s era, that is, lands outside the direct control of the dominant empires, was Arabia (see map--1 Nephi 2:4). In Nephi’s period, Arabia was considered by the Jews to be a wilderness and a place of refuge when persecution and repression became too difficult. Northern Arabia was, for the most part, inhabited by nomads. Concerning this region of Arabia, the LDS Bible Dictionary states, “In northern Arabia were a large number of wandering tribes.” To this day, the Arabian bedouins travel from camp to camp seeking fresh pasture for their goats and camels. Jeremiah referred to those living in this desert as “the Arabian in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 3:2).
Abu Hurairah, an early Islamic period geographer, wrote of the Jews who escaped into northwest Arabia to avoid the persecution of Nebuchadnezzar. These Jews were Nephi’s contemporaries and compatriots. [George Potter with Richard Wellington, Following the Words of Nephi: Part One: Discovering the Valley of Lemuel, Unpublished Manuscript, 1999, p. 12-13] [See the commentary on 1 Nephi 16:14]
“He Should Take His Family and Depart into the Wilderness”
Lenet Read relates the following:
When I was a young girl I loved to read… . I often went to the library and chose books for which I had little guidance in reading. Alice in Wonderland, Gulliver’s Travels, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter--I loved them because of the adventure, the intrigue, and the beautiful language they contained. As years passed and I studied these works again in school with a teacher as a guide, I learned that I had, on my own, missed much of the impact and meaning of these books. Many of the people, items, and events in them were used as symbols to portray perspectives or truths about life. Each book became much richer to me when I began to explore its full depth of symbolic meaning.
The scriptures make a great deal of the wilderness. Adam and Eve were cast out into the wilderness; Israelite groups wandered in the wilderness, were tempted in the wilderness, worshipped false images in the wilderness, and were fed and watered in the wilderness; while throughout, prophets cried repentance out of wildernesses. These events are history, but they are also similitudes. They illuminate the reality of man’s mortal experience as a true wilderness, and of his relationship to the Savior. [Lenet Hadley Read, “All Things Testify of Him--Understanding Symbolism in the Scriptures,” in The Ensign, January 1981, pp. 5, 6]
“He Should Take His Family and Depart into the Wilderness - Spackman Theory”
During Zedekiah’s reign, long-term accessibility to the city of Jerusalem was interrupted only by the Babylonian siege that preceded the destruction of Jerusalem and Zedekiah’s death. In the autumn of 589 B.C.E., the Babylonian army invaded Judah to punish Zedekiah for his alliance with Egypt. The fortified cities of Judah were systematically destroyed and Jerusalem was encircled with an ever-tightening blockade. The siege of Jerusalem finally began on January 9, 588 B.C.E. (2 Kings 25:1; Jeremiah 39:1, 52:4; Ezekiel 24:1). A Jewish military envoy was dispatched to obtain help from the Egyptians immediately. When the Egyptian strike force approached Palestine, the Babylonian army withdrew from its siege of Jerusalem. For a short time, the great powers threw their armies at each other. According to the words of Ezekiel, the siege was lifted for five months, between August 588 B.C.E. and April 587 B.C.E. This respite allowed Jerusalem to open its gates and augment its siege provisions. According to the theory of Randall Spackman, this period proves to be the right time in many ways for not only the departure of Lehi from Jerusalem (1 Nephi 2:4), but also the return trips for the plates of brass (1 Nephi 3-4) and for the family of Ishmael (1 Nephi 7). [Randall Spackman, “Introduction to Book of Mormon Chronology,” F.A.R.M.S., p. 11] [See also the commentary on 1 Nephi 10:4 for a different opinion] [See also Appendix A--Chronology]
“He Should Take His Family and Depart into the Wilderness - Potter Theory”
Lehi was commanded that he should take his family and depart into the wilderness“ (1 Nephi 2:2). The text states that Lehi was obedient to this commandment, coming down by the Red Sea (1 Nephi 2:3-5) in what is now Arabia. According to George Potter and Richard Wellington, Jeremiah spoke of ”the Arabian in the wilderness“ (Jeremiah 3:2). Such prominent authorities as Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., James E. Talmage and B. H. Roberts believed that Lehi fled into Arabia. Hugh Nibley also believed that the great Arabian desert was Nephi’s wilderness. He reminded us that the word wilderness ”has in the Book of Mormon the same connotation as in the Bible, and usually refers to desert country." Nephi’s reference to a wilderness beyond the Red Sea, Arabia, is totally correct because it was not only a physical wilderness, it was also considered a geopolitical one in Nephi’s time.
The oral traditions of several Jewish colonies tell of other groups leaving Jerusalem and going into Arabia to avoid Nebuchadnezzar’s captivity. Abu Hurairah, an early Islamic period geographer, wrote of the Jews who settled in northwest Arabia to escape the persecution of Nebuchadnezzar. This flight resulted in large numbers of Jews settling at towns of al-Hijr, Khaibar and Medina. According to Reuben Ahroni: “As a result of this prophecy of doom (Jeremiah 38:2), seventy-five thousand courageous men … who firmly believed Jeremiah’s prophecy of impending national catastrophe accompanied by priest, Levites, and slaves … crossed the Jordan River and went into the desert … and arrived in the land of Eden. From there they turned south until they arrived in Yemen.” A similar story of escape from Nebuchadnezzar is told by the descendants of a Jewish colony in India.
Concerning the cultural and geographical background against which the story of Lehi and Nephi is portrayed, the reader should be aware of the fact that until Arabia opened up to westerners after the discovery of oil, little was known about its interior. At the time Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, only 25% of the supposed 1700 mile course that Lehi traveled through Arabia had been seen and subsequently described in writing by westerners (Verthema, Wild and Pitt). The accounts that do exist lacked specifics and were considered unreliable. The likelihood that Joseph Smith had access to these vague accounts is very unlikely. So scanty was the west’s knowledge of even the northernmost 25% of the frankincense trail is brought out in the words of the distinguished explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, who wrote of this area in 1878, “The eastern frontier is still unexplored, and we heard of ruins far in the interior.”
Lord Derby wrote of Burton that “before middle age he had compressed into his life more study, more hardship, and more successful enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence of half a dozen ordinary men.” By his death Burton had mastered 41 foreign languages. If the brilliant and scholarly Burton, who had traveled to Arabia twice before, considered even the part of the trail that was seen by Varthema, Wild and Pitts, unexplored in 1878, what knowledge could Joseph Smith have had about this land? How could the twenty-four year old Smith, who had no formal education and had never left the farming communities of New England have known about such obscure and nebulous writings, or for that matter, how could he have even hoped to write about the other 75% of the trail which no westerner had ever reported seeing before 1830. Yet if the First Book of Nephi is true history, as they believe it is, it not only represents the oldest existing record on travel along the Gaza Branch of the ancient frankincense trail, but a record subject to verification. They believe they have provided that verification. [George Potter & Richard Wellington, Discovering Nephi’s Trail, Preface, p. ii, Chapter 1, pp. 5-6, Unpublished] [See the Potter commentary on 1 Nephi 2:5: Route #3 & 4]
“The Lord Commanded My Father Even in a Dream That He Should Take His Family and Depart into the Wilderness”
Joy Osborn notes that in the Apocalypse of Baruch, treasured in the Legends of the Jews, we read that Baruch and other pious men and prophets were “sent away” by God, from Jerusalem, before the day of the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. The Lord also sent warning to the righteous Rechabites who fled into the desert before the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. [See the commentary which follows.]
The Dead Sea Scrolls also tell of forgotten prophets who were driven out of Jerusalem because they prophesied of wicked Judah’s destruction and of the coming of the Messiah.
In the Lachish Letters, Number 8, is a complaint “that the prophets of doom are undermining the morale of the people in town and country.” These ancient letters, discovered in 1938, were written in the days of the prophet Jeremiah (and Lehi) just before the destruction of Jerusalem and they echo the warning of Jeremiah and other prophets who warned of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and Judah because they no longer believed in, nor looked forward to, the coming of the Messiah! [Joy M. Osborn, The Book of Mormon -- The Stick of Joseph, p. 171]
Richard Anthony writes some interesting items related to the Rechabites. He quotes first from the book of Jeremiah:
The word which came unto Jeremiah from the Lord in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying,
Go unto the house of the Rechabites, and speak unto them, and bring them into the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink… . And [Jeremiah] brought them into the house of the Lord … and set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine.
But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever:
Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents… .
[Thus] we have dwelt in tents and have obeyed and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.
But it came to pass, when Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up into the land, that we said, Come and let us go to Jerusalem for fear of the army of the Chaldeans, … so we dwell at Jerusalem.
Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah, saying: thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Go and tell the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Will ye not receive instruction to hearken to my words? saith the Lord… . [The Rechabites] obey their father’s commandment: notwithstanding I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto me.
I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying Return ye now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them … but ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me.
Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have performed the commandment of their father, which he commanded them; but this people hath not hearkened unto me:
Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced against them: because I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered.
And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus said the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts, and done according unto all that he hath commanded you: Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever. (Jeremiah 35:1-19; emphasis added)
Who were these Rechabites, and how do they relate to the Book of Mormon narrative? According to 1 Chronicles 2:55, the Rechabites were a branch of the Kenites. The Kenites were a Midianite tribe (Numbers 10:29; Judges 1:16; 4:11). The Kenites first appear as inhabitants of patriarchal Canaan (Genesis 15:19). Subsequently Moses became the son-in-law of a Kenite named Reuel [Jethro] (see Exodus 2:18).
According to Exodus 2:16-22, “the priest of Midian [Jethro] had seven daughters.” One named Zipporah married Moses. They had a son named Gershom. Zipporah and Gershom were Kenites, as well as the other children of Moses. The other six daughters of Jethro were also Kenites, as were their offspring. In Judges 1:16 we find that “the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father in law, went up out of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad.”
The Kenites were known for their zeal toward Jehovah. It is noteworthy that the Kenites were spared by Saul in his Amalekite war (1 Samuel 15:6), and David cultivated their friendship (1 Samuel 30:29)
The Kenite name means “smith,” and the presence of copper southeast of the Gulf of Aqabah, the Kenite-Midianite region, confirms this interpretation. Thus, the Kenites were metalsmiths:
In his comprehensive study of Metallurgy in Antiquity (1964:64-68), Forbes makes several observations about the smith in antiquity which are pertinent to an assessment of the Rechabite discipline. In a pre-industrial society, the smith had to be familiar with many technical procedures, the knowledge of which was handed down and guarded jealously from one generation to the next… . Metallurgist in antiquity, as a rule, formed proud endogamous lines of families with length genealogies, which could account for the staying power of the biblical Rechabites, who apparently maintained their discipline at least from the 9th to the 6th centuries B.C… . The nature of the work prevented the smith from establishing a permanent domicile or from engaging in agriculture. Smiths would stay in one general local from a few months up to several years, or until the supply of ore and/or fuel at that place was exhausted… . The smith’s work required such skill and long practice that he could not farm. The Rechabite discipline might thus be seen as one appropriate to smiths… . Like other measures which were designed to guard the secrets of the trade, such as living apart from urban centers, so too might abstention from intoxicants be yet another safeguard to prevent “loosed lips” from “sinking ships”
With this information about the Rechabites/Kenites in mind, Richard Anthony asks the following questions:
1. Considering the insistence of Nephi to repeatedly inform the reader that “my father dwelt in a tent” (1 Nephi 2:15; 9:1; 10:1, 6; 16:6), did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
2. Lehi’s family traveled in the wilderness to the Red Sea (near the Gulf of Aqaba), and their valley of Lemuel was probably located in the ancient land of Midian. Thus did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
3. Nephi is constantly bringing up the name of Moses, whose father in law was a Kenite. Once again, did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
4. In time, Lehi’s family will finally get to the land Bountiful where the Lord commands Nephi to build a ship. Nephi’s concern is where to find ore, but not what to do with the ore once he finds it (1 Nephi 17:9-10). Did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
5. Eventually Nephi will take the sword of Laban and make many swords “after the manner of it” (see 2 Nephi 5:14). If the phrase “after the manner of it” refers to the metallurgical technique and not necessarily the size and shape, did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
6. Nephi recorded his record on plates “which I have made with mine own hands” (1 Nephi 2:17). Did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
7. Hugh Nibley states that “Lehi and his family were Rechabites.” He says that “Lehi was, no doubt, a friend of the Rechabites because he was close to Jeremiah. He was in the Jeremian party you might say.” Once again, did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
8. If there was a connection between the Kenites and the Kenizzites, and a connection between Zenos and Zenez or Kenaz (see the commentary on Jacob 5), did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
9. The nearest we come in the scriptures to the name Hem (Mosiah 7:6) is Hemath. Did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
10. A group of Nephite apostates who surface in the Book of Mormon narrative from unknown origin are called “Amalekites” (Alma 21:2-5). In view of the close connection of the Kenites with the Amalekites of the Old World, did Lehi have some connection to the Rechabites?
[Richard D. Anthony, “Rechabites-Kenites-Kenizzites,” Unpublished paper, 1997]