The Record of Lehi

I noticed something yesterday in Nephi’s words that I don’t know that I had ever really picked up on.  After he described their arrival in the promised land and how he found ore there, he wrote, “And it came to pass that the Lord commanded me, wherefore I did make plates of ore that I might engraven upon them the record of my people. And upon the plates which I made I did engraven the record of my father, and also our journeyings in the wilderness, and the prophecies of my father; and also many of mine own prophecies have I engraven upon them” (1 Nephi 19:1).  Here he was talking about the first set of records, what we call the “large plates,” which he created and wrote upon before he started the small plates, a translation of which is what we have in the Book of Mormon today.  What struck me was his statement that on these large plates he engraved “the record of my father.”  I think in the past I have assumed he meant here that he wrote on the plates about his father, but as I consider it more fully that doesn’t seem to be what he was saying.  He actually took the record of his father, i.e. a record Lehi had created, and Nephi engraved it onto the plates so that it would be preserved.  Nephi confirmed this again in his delineation in the next verse about what was in those large plates: “The record of my father, and the genealogy of his fathers, and the more part of all our proceedings in the wilderness are engraven upon those first plates of which I have spoken.” 

This conclusion that Nephi manually copied his father’s words onto the large plates is consistent with what he said earlier in 1 Nephi 6:1, “And now I, Nephi, do not give the genealogy of my fathers in this part of my record; neither at any time shall I give it after upon these plates which I am writing; for it is given in the record which has been kept by my father; wherefore, I do not write it in this work.”  Lehi kept a record at some point—perhaps even started before they left Jerusalem—and Nephi felt the need to make sure it was preserved.  Likely Lehi wrote his record on some perishable material like parchment as Jacob had alluded existed among their people: “But whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away” (Jacob 4:2).  So the large plates written by Nephi then started with the record of Lehi, copied over to the plates manually by Nephi, followed by Nephi’s own account and history.  It then makes sense why the first book that Mormon wrote in his abridgement of the large plates of Nephi was called “The Book of Lehi,” the name of the book translated on the 116 pages  which we no longer have because of the Martin Harris incident. That book was indeed taken from the record written originally by Lehi.

If one were to ask the question, “Which prophet’s words did Nephi engrave most in his record?” I think we would naturally reply that it was Isaiah.  But that probably wouldn’t be quite correct.  I believe the right answer would be Lehi.  Of course we don’t know how long the record of Lehi was, but Nephi alluded to the fact on the small plates that he couldn’t there record all the things of his father: “And all these things did my father see, and hear, and speak, as he dwelt in a tent, in the valley of Lemuel, and also a great many more things, which cannot be written upon these plates” (1 Nephi 9:1).  Lehi’s record likely would have contained his preaching and ministry in Jerusalem, an account of their journey to the promised land, his numerous visions, his teachings to his children, and his prophecies.  Jacob would later record how hard it was to preserve their record on the plates: “I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates” (Jacob 4:1).  It is therefore a show of the great love Nephi had for his father that he would make the effort to engrave the whole record of Lehi on his plates so that the words and ministry of Lehi would be preserved for future generations.