The vision of the future destruction of his people created the kind of distress in Nephi that only a righteous parent can feel for wayward children. As Nephi reports:" I was overcome because of my afflictions, for I considered that mine afflictions were great above all, because of the destruction of my people, for I had beheld their fall." (1 Nephi 15:5)
According to Douglas and Robert Clark, one cannot fully appreciate Nephi's grief without considering the larger covenant context of his writings, in particular the Abrahamic covenant (see 1 Nephi 6:4, 15:18; 17:40; 19:10; 22:9; 2 Nephi 8:2; 27:33; 29:14). As one eminent modern scholar has observed about that Abrahamic covenant, "Its core is the blessing and promise of posterity; this is linked with a promise of victory, and the effect of the blessing on the nations." Specifically, because Abraham had not withheld his son Isaac, the Lord had sworn to him, "In blessing I will bless thee" (Genesis 22:17). According to some, this slavishly literal translation for Genesis 22:17 in the King James text tends to obscure the meaning. In Hebrew the juxtaposition of different forms of the same verb acts as an intensifier, so that the meaning is, as more modern translations express it, "I will indeed bless you" or "surely bless you" or "greatly bless you" or "bless you abundantly" or "shower blessings on you." Furthermore, the Lord promised, "In multiplying I will multiply thy seed" (again the verbal intensifier) "as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies" (Genesis 22:17) (a promise of victory), "and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 22:17). . . . Against such a background Nephi's grief becomes as profound as was his "delight" in the Lord's covenant to Abraham (see 2 Nephi 11:5). [E. Douglas Clark and Robert S. Clark, Fathers and Sons in the Book of Mormon, pp. 15-16]