My Father

I noticed that Nephi used interesting language when speaking about Lehi in connection with his brothers Laman and Lemuel.  For example, in describing the experience trying to obtain the plates, he wrote, “And it came to pass that Laman was angry with me, and also with my father; and also was Lemuel, for he hearkened unto the words of Laman. Wherefore Laman and Lemuel did speak many hard words unto us, their younger brothers, and they did smite us even with a rod” (1 Nephi 3:28).  I would have expected him to say that they were angry “also with our father” or “his father.”  Later when Nephi described his brothers’ reaction to Lehi’s teaching, he similarly wrote, “And it came to pass that I beheld my brethren, and they were disputing one with another concerning the things which my father had spoken unto them” (1 Nephi 15:2).  Again, I would have expected him to say “our father” in referring to Lehi, but instead he used the word my.  Nephi employed the same language even when speaking to his brothers directly: “And I said unto them that the water which my father saw was filthiness; and so much was his mind swallowed up in other things that he beheld not the filthiness of the water” (1 Nephi 15:27).  When they were refusing to help him with the ship Nephi chastised his brothers in these words: “Wherefore, the Lord commanded my father that he should depart into the wilderness; and the Jews also sought to take away his life; yea, and ye also have sought to take away his life; wherefore, ye are murderers in your hearts and ye are like unto them” (1 Nephi 17:44).  He was speaking to his brothers, whose father was of course also Lehi, and yet he referred to him as “my father.”  He did this one more time when teaching his brothers in the promised land: “Wherefore, ye need not suppose that I and my father are the only ones that have testified, and also taught them. Wherefore, if ye shall be obedient to the commandments, and endure to the end, ye shall be saved at the last day” (1 Nephi 22:31). 

            While Nephi did sometimes refer to Lehi as “our father” in passages when speaking to or about his brothers (see 1 Nephi 3:15, 2 Nephi 1:1), the fact that he didn’t always seemed to suggest that Nephi felt in some ways that Lehi was his father but not his brothers’ father.  This reminds me of the conversation about fathers that Jesus had with the scribes and Pharisees in John 8.  Though they were all in one sense from the same fathers (e.g. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), Christ emphasized how spiritually their fathers were not the same: “I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” They responded, “Abraham is our father,” to which Christ answered, “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father.”  When they claimed that God was their father, He responded, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (v38-44).  For Christ, their father was the one whom they followed after, and that was the devil.  This may have been what Nephi was implying about his brothers; though of course Lehi was physically their father, their spiritual father was the devil for, like these Jewish leaders Christ was speaking to, they sought to kill “a man that hath told [them] the truth,” even Lehi and Nephi.  For Nephi, Lehi was truly his father because he believed, obeyed, and reverenced him, where as brother disregarded and rejected Lehi.  Perhaps we can take from this simply the idea that all of our actions point to a father—but which “father” do we follow after?