He Doth Nourish Them

After Ishmael passed away at Nahom, Nephi recorded the reaction of his five daughters: “And it came to pass that the daughters of Ishmael did mourn exceedingly, because of the loss of their father, and because of their afflictions in the wilderness; and they did murmur against my father, because he had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, saying: Our father is dead; yea, and we have wandered much in the wilderness, and we have suffered much affliction, hunger, thirst, and fatigue; and after all these sufferings we must perish in the wilderness with hunger. And thus they did murmur against my father, and also against me; and they were desirous to return again to Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 16:35-36). Previously when some of the daughters of Ishmael had rebelled in their original trip from Jerusalem to the tent of Lehi, Nephi wrote, “Two of the daughters of Ishmael, and the two sons of Ishmael and their families, did rebel against us” (1 Nephi 7:6). He was clear to specify that it was only two of the daughters (presumably the ones who ended up marrying Laman and Lemuel) that rebelled. But this time after the death of their father, Nephi included no such detail, suggesting that all five (understandably) murmured at their great loss. This must have been a trying time for Nephi who, newly married, had to try to support his wife who had just lost her father and may have even blamed him for it. It is likely that Ishmael’s deal was at least in part due to lack of food that they had been experiencing, perhaps in conjunction with his old age. Now Nephi’s wife was looking east into an endless desert, overcome with grief over the loss of her father and knowing that her husband and Lehi wanted to take them there next.  That desert must have been the most depressing sight imaginable, and she and her sisters cried out in their suffering believing they too would perish of hunger in the hot sands.

               Unfortunately, the chapter break between chapters 16 and 17 hides the connection that I believe Nephi was making with this story and what happened next. I think that he did not want to be critical of Ishmael’s daughters, and so he made sure to say how they ultimately responded to this tragedy with faith in the Lord and His strength: “And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness; and our women did bear children in the wilderness. And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like unto the men; and they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings.” They did not murmur any longer and were given the strength of men to endure the arduous journey. They even bore children in the Saudia Arabian desert—something very hard to imagine—and were strengthened by the Lord throughout it all. The did not die of hunger because the Lord provided for them, even given them the strength to live on raw meat. The key message of Nephi was that the Lord will bless us as we seek to keep His commandments, no matter how impossible that seems to us: “And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness” (1 Nephi 17:1-3). I wish we had more details of how they survived that hot desert for eight years, but surely they received miracle after miracle to keep them alive and fed—the Lord indeed provided means for them because they were trying to keep His commandments. And I imagine that fruit has never tasted better to anyone than it did for this group as they arrived and tasted it in Bountiful after years of eating raw meat!