After recording Lehi’s desert poem, or his admonition to Laman and Lemuel, Nephi tells us why he recorded it. Lehi hoped to turn his sons from what Nephi called their stiffneckedness. Nephi defined stiffneckedness as the complaints that the brothers had against their father.
Nephi’s message about his brother is that they are not in accord with Yahweh’s will. This is evident because they do not believe their father, Lehi, and Lehi was called of God. Nephi included the account of those visions, so Nephi’s readers would be clear that Lehi really was a prophet. Nevertheless, Laman and Lemuel did not believe.
In addition to not believing, Nephi has Laman and Lemuel express dissatisfaction with the family’s clear change in social and economic standing. In Jerusalem, they had an inheritance. They had the means to accumulate gold and silver to be used in Lehi’s plausible business. They probably had some social status. Now, they were three days into a journey to an unknown location, living in tents and having left behind all that they had valued. For Laman and Lemuel, it was all for the foolish imaginations of their father, because they did not believe Yahweh had spoken to him. It is quite probable that the idea of a visionary man had fallen from favor, and one claiming visions was deemed outside of proper, educated, society.
Nephi uses the word murmur. The brothers were doing more than just grumbling. Nephi has them enacting part of the Israelite Exodus, when the people of Moses murmured in the wilderness. Apart from the literary theme, however, Laman and Lemuel’s disagreement with their father’s course of action would include darker intent. Nephi declares that they did not know the dealings of God.