Along those lines, why didn’t leadership pass to Sam, as Sam was older than Nephi? Not much is said of him. He appears to be on Nephi’s side, but he’s never described as defending Nephi against Laman and Lemuel. Poor Sam seems to be damned by faint praise.

His actions are left completely un-described in the Nephi versus Laman-and-Lemuel dynamic.

Sheldon: Nephi did two things to destroy Laman and Lemuel’s hopes for ditching the family and going back to their cushy life in Jerusalem. 1) He lost their gold and silver to Laban when trying to buy or bribe the plates away from him. L & L would have had to start from scratch. But more importantly, 2) by killing Laban after the two confrontations, (and due to the item they were seeking turning up missing) Nephi and his brothers were the natural suspects in Laban’s murder. IE, they couldn’t go back now. Laman and Lemuel were screwed. And it was all Nephi’s fault (in their eyes.)

Not much is given about Ishmael’s motivation to join the group. All that is said is that the boys “did gain favor” with him, spoke “the words of the Lord” to him, and the Lord softened Ishmael’s heart. I don’t know if that means Ishmael received a testimony of the goings-on, or that the boys merely convinced him to skip town too. There’s so much left unsaid.

On a related point, Nephi did Laban a favor. The manner in which Nephi dispatched Laban was much quicker and much less painful than the tortuous deaths that the Babylonians would later inflect upon the Jews who held political or military leadership positions. A blow that severs or totally disrupts the medula oblongata is the quickest death, and Laban was effectively anesthetized to boot.

Nate: Nephi describes the recapitulation through his own life as “likening the scriptures unto ourselves.”

Love your insights, Nate. Very well said.

I was just pondering how sometimes when the Lord needs to impart some important instruction, he does it in the temple. Here, as with Moses, Nephi didn’t have a temple, so he was called to a high mountain, symbolic, of course, of the temple (or is the temple symbolic of the high mountain?).

I also pondered why this group didn’t use fire much, and considered the possibility of thieves, robbers, maraudererers(??) that would have been drawn to the group by smoke during the day and the light of fire at night. I then thought about how the Lord tends to use natural means to the extend he can when intervening in our lives.

I thought I was gaining some insight that perhaps was intended to be gleaned from Chapter 17 and then I come across this.

I’ll just go crawl back into my cave for now.

If Nephi is overlaying the Moses story onto his own experiences, I wonder if Moroni recalled Nephi’s ‘exodus’ story as he prepared the records of the Jaredites for inclusion? Surely, the story of Nephi’s exodus from Jerusalem to the New World must have been as important in Moroni’s faith tradition; as Moses’ exodus from Egypt was to Nephi’s people?

I don’t know how much of the story we have in Ether is as described by Ether, or how much is just Moroni’s summary of events, but there are definitely strong similarities. Like the Lehites, the Jaredites fled their old home to avoid the the devastation to their old society. The Lord led the Lehites to the land of Bountiful; the people of Jared to the Valley of Nimrod. Both groups seemed comfortable in the land at the water’s edge – Nephi gives a glowing description of Bountiful, and the people of Jared seemed comfortable enough to sit there and wait for 4 years. Eventually, the Lord told both groups that he had not yet led them to their final destination. They were each instructed to build boats to reach their actual promised land.

Using your own words, “Like [Nephi], [the brother of Jared] is called by the Lord … where he is given instructions on the leading of God’s people to the promised land. Like [Nephi], upon hearing God’s command, [the brother of Jared] is incredulous or at the very least unsure. ‘[O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe, save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish.' As with [Nephi], God answers his servant’s questions/objections, and the servant then sets forth to obey the divine command.”

Just as you say, it is clear from the way Nephi brings it up so often, that he views the Moses story of the Exodus as foundational to his life.

Nephi seems to show that he had deeply imbibed the Moses exodus story because he brings it up with his brothers (at the very beginning of their embarkation on their own exodus) – in 1 Nephi Chapter 4 – when he implores Laman and Lemuel to return to Jerusalem for the plates:

1 And it came to pass that I spake unto my brethren, saying: Let us go up again unto Jerusalem, and let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; for behold he is mightier than all the earth, then why not mightier than Laban and his fifty, yea, or even than his tens of thousands?
2 Therefore let us go up; let us be strong like unto Moses; for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither, and our fathers came through, out of captivity, on dry ground, and the armies of Pharaoh did follow and were drowned in the waters of the Red Sea.
3 Now behold ye know that this is true; and ye also know that an angel hath spoken unto you; wherefore can ye doubt? Let us go up; the Lord is able to deliver us, even as our fathers, and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians.

It would seem then, if Nephi isn’t iterpolating the Exodus story into his memory of the conversation he had with his brothers, that he was already channeling the original Moses exodus story at that early a point.