312. Nephi and The Boys Who Kept Returning

Throughout my life I have often heard the story of Nephi returning to Jerusalem to retrieve the Brass Plates for his family. It's one most LDS kids know and love. But I remember thinking as a little girl "why didn't they just get them on the way out? Why did the Lord wait until they had traveled for days (weeks? months?) before saying "hey, the boys need to go back to get these records" and then again later "hey, the boys need to go back to get wives." 

It seemed a little odd to me that the Lord kept sending them back for more things, like a mother who takes twenty minutes to leave the house because her daughter is missing a shoe or her son had a blowout getting buckled in. Surely if anyone could get it together, God could.

I figured there was probably a reason for it, but never really gave it a whole lot of serious thought. It became one of those unimportant "gee, I wonder" things and I moved on.

However, this week as I once again read the story (1 Nephi 2-7) I was finally struck with the "aha" moment that had this far escaped me. This could, of course, be totally incorrect, but then it could also be dead on. Add it to my list of questions to ask Nephi when I die. With that in mind, realize this is said with a whole lot of maybes and probablys (probablies?). Here goes:

Nephi says that the people of Jerusalem wanted to take away his father's life. This is what caused Lehi to pack up his tents, his provisions, and his animals and leave with his family into the wilderness. They Jews were angry at Lehi for preaching repentance at them and wanted him gone. His leaving the city of his own accord accomplished the same end goal that killing him would have done: no more preachy prophet. So they didn't bother going after him and Lehi is safe.

Time goes by, they happily forget about the troublesome Lehi, and the people move on to other problems. Suddenly Laban is found dead in the streets, a scriptural record is missing (do they even realize that the plates are gone?) and one of Laban's nobody-servants has disappeared in the night. They search a little for the servant, but he, too, has disappeared. He's a nobody. He's gone. There's nothing they can do about it, nowhere to look. They search the city for a few days but if the murderer is gone, no use trying to bring him back, is there?

Now, if Lehi, a publicly hated figure, had disappeared the same night that Laban had been killed and his records stolen, there would have been heads rolling (pun totally intended). They wouldn't have just let Legi and his family slip off into the night. They would have chased him down and slaughtered him and possibly his whole family. I'm sure the Lord could have whipped up some firey pillar or angry sea-serpent or something equally cool if he'd wanted to, but there was another, simpler way here, with the added bonus that it accountably strengthened Nephi's and Sariah's faith. 

The same logic applies to the retrieval of Ishmael's family. I assume that Ishmael was a righteous and religious man like Lehi, or he wouldn't have been chosen to go with Lehi to start a new nation. If they had been fetched at the same time as the plates, they could have been accused of being the murderers/thieves and been hunted down. But since the three events occurred at separate times, the people of Jerusalem didn't put the puzzle pieces together and the soon-to-be-Americans were able to ride off into the desert in unpursued peace.

But don't take my word for it.