Two Places Called Bountiful

One of the miracles in the travels of Lehi’s group was the existence of the place they called Bountiful.  After spending eight years in a desolate desert—the Arabian Peninsula—the Lord led them to an oasis (likely in what is today southern Oman).  Nephi recorded, “And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey; and all these things were prepared of the Lord that we might not perish” (1 Nephi 17:5).  It was a place by the sea with mountains, timber, and fruits and honey in stark contrast to the raw meat of the desert that they had lived on for all those years.  Nephi’s statement suggests that he felt they may have perished had they not found this land, and it was surely a welcome respite as they regrouped and prepared to cross the ocean.  Nephi’s takeaway from their travels up to that point, including this arrival at Bountiful, was that the Lord will take care of His people when they obey Him: “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” (1 Nephi 17:3).  The Lord knew their needs in advance and had prepared an oasis for them to preserve their lives. 

            There is one more place in the Book of Mormon that is also called Bountiful that was likewise prepared by the Lord for the Nephites.  The land Bountiful was the northernmost part of the “land southward” where most of the Book of Mormon took place (with Zarahemla south of Bountiful).  We read that “the land on the northward was called Desolation, and the land on the southward was called Bountiful, it being the wilderness which is filled with all manner of wild animals of every kind, a part of which had come from the land northward for food” (Alma 22:31).  The land northward was where the Jaredites lived that eventually became called Desolation because of the mass destruction that took place there and the apparent depletion of the land by the millions of Jaredites that inhabited it.  Mormon wrote that “timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward” when the Nephites were starting to go forth to possess it well after the Jaredites had disappeared (Helaman 3:10).   The Jaredite record tells us how they “did preserve the land southward for a wilderness, to get game. And the whole face of the land northward was covered with inhabitants” (Ether 10:21).  So despite the innumerable Jaredites, the Lord made it so they did not take over the land southward where the Nephites would become numerous.  In fact, He even caused serpents to block the way for a time so that the Jaredites would not go into the land southward where the Lord was apparently preserving the land and the animals for the Nephites: “There came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla….  The Lord did cause the serpents that they should pursue them no more, but that they should hedge up the way that the people could not pass” (Ether 9:31, 33).  Once the people repented, the Jaredites did “go into the land southward, to hunt food for the people of the land, for the land was covered with animals of the forest,” but they did not live there and did not deplete the resources of the land southward.  So this seems to be why the Nephites would call the land just south of the narrow neck of land “Bountiful,” since, like the Bountiful of the Arabian Peninsula, it had been prepared and preserved by the Lord for them.  Both of these places named Bountiful in the Book of Mormon witness that God will prepare the way before the righteous to preserve and bless them.