{"id":37130,"date":"2017-10-30T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37130"},"modified":"2017-09-05T04:50:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T09:50:29","slug":"reading-nephi-1612-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/10\/reading-nephi-1612-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilderness Starvation – Reading Nephi – 16:12-17"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here.<\/a>\u00a0To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below.<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

Now they cross the River Laman and depart into the wilderness. I notice that Nephi\u2019s last note before departing concerned the gathering of food, and the only thing he really mentions from their journey and travels is food. Food is a huge issue for Nephi. I\u2019m tempted to add up the verses that account for the eight years between the Valley of Lemuel and Bountiful and divide them by the number of verses speaking about food. Quantitatively and qualitatively, this is the<\/em> issue\u2014in a way that it isn\u2019t and really could never be for most of us. But I do deeply recognize consuming hunger on a spiritual level, the kind of hunger that rivets one\u2019s attention and drives one\u2019s actions, that leads to significant conflict with others and brings about a sore temptation to murmur against God.<\/p>\n

Shazer. The footnote says it means twisted or intertwining. A series of canyons? A land, I take it, with a thriving ecosystem, providing water and forage and animals. Perhaps it intertwined with other humans as well. A fertile part of the wilderness that warranted a stop long enough to gather food\u2014that all important element\u2014before departing. Maybe they traveled through the fallow season and stopped to sew, raise, and harvest crops before continuing. Then they travel south south-east for many days, only stopping to hunt. Shazer was no Valley of Lemuel, but it wasn\u2019t just a place to hunt either. What was it? Why mention it? In Hebrew, sh\u2019azer <\/em>could also mean \u201cwho\/that [which] helped.\u201d Did someone assist them in this valley? Was it a place they felt God helped them\u2014providing food for them? Was the valley itself a helper?<\/p>\n

Thereafter, we get a grand blank. They\u2019re traveling. They\u2019re hunting. How long? \u201cMany days.\u201d What else do they do? Their everyday activities are a grand mystery. We can\u2019t know; but I can\u2019t help thinking that their everyday reality was pretty hellish. I don\u2019t think Lehi up and decided spontaneously to murmur in a few verses simply because Nephi\u2019s bow broke. I suspect that this great big old hole in Nephi\u2019s account is where\u2014unlike the discovery of the Liahona and unlike Nephi\u2019s miraculous crafting of a new bow and providing food\u2014nothing about their journey seemed to manifest the hand of God. Hunger was obviously the overwhelming variable of their travel in this period. Perhaps there was also disease. The incredible hardship of pregnancy (after all, they\u2019re all married now and without birthcontrol\u2014even Sariah gets pregnant twice). Perhaps the women\u2019s breasts do not \u201cgive suck\u201d here, which is why it\u2019s later mentioned with such gratitude. Maybe this is the analog to the failed \u201cprophetic\u201d adventures of Joseph to Canada and Boston, seeking treasure and finding only embarrassment. And, of course, the hard won, dearly paid for spiritual growth that the wilderness\u2014the real wilderness, the unromanticized, unmiraculous, tedius, painful, seemingly unending wilderness\u2014provides.<\/p>\n

There is one element of the journey mentioned in addition to food (sort of). They traveled in the more fertile parts of the wilderness. I wonder: was it their need for the fertility (again, food) that determined the general direction of their travels? Or was it the Liahona that guided them independently of their needs and judgments? Or did they both serve as guides, perhaps complementing or mutually reinforcing each other? Figuring this out\u2014what is revelation and what is mere necessity and what is the relation between the two\u2014is the great epistemic question of our own journey, the ever-present question in our attempt to carve out and live faithful lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Food is a huge issue for Nephi. I\u2019m tempted to add up the verses that account for the eight years between the Valley of Lemuel and Bountiful and divide them by the number of verses speaking about food. Quantitatively and qualitatively, this is the issue\u2014in a way that it isn\u2019t and really could never be for most of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37180,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37130\/revisions\/37180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}