In the First Year of the Reign of Zedekiah

In the fourth verse of the Book of Mormon Nephi said this, “For it came to pass in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, (my father, Lehi, having dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days); and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.” So Lehi had his vision and calling in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah and he began to preach unto the people: “After the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard” (1 Nephi 1:4, 18). In the next chapter Lehi was commanded to depart into the wilderness: “And it came to pass that the Lord commanded my father, even in a dream, that he should take his family and depart into the wilderness” (1 Nephi 2:2). Nephi did not write when it was that they departed into the wilderness, but Mormon later confirmed in the heading to book of 3 Nephi that it was still the first year of the reign of Zedekiah: “Being a descendant of Nephi who was the son of Lehi, who came out of Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, the king of Judah.” Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem for about 11 years, and at the end of his reign was the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem.

            The article from BYU Studies that I referenced yesterday discusses the dating of Lehi’s departure and discusses the argument that some have made that Lehi actually left near the last year of the reign of Zedekiah. The strongest argument I see for that is this statement from Nephi: “Wherefore, it hath been told them concerning the destruction which should come upon them, immediately after my father left Jerusalem; nevertheless, they hardened their hearts; and according to my prophecy they have been destroyed, save it be those which are carried away captive into Babylon” (2 Nephi 25:10). The word immediately of course suggests that it was very soon after Lehi left. Could “immediately” be eleven years later? In Webster’s 1828 dictionary the word means this: “Without the intervention of any other cause or event, opposed to mediately.” Certainly the Lord did not intervene in that time period and the city was sieged and destroyed; perhaps the word could imply not necessarily that the timing was immediate but that there was nothing to intervene or stop it from happening. To accept that Lehi left in the last year of the reign of Zedekiah (when the destruction was indeed imminent) would be to suggest that Mormon got the date wrong in the heading to 3 Nephi. That seems very unlikely since he had all of the records before him, including the large plates which undoubtedly described when they actually left.

            There is one more piece of evidence that to me suggests that Lehi’s group did indeed leave in the first year of Zedekiah. We know that they traveled eight years across the Sahara Desert, and so their total time to arrive in the promised land included that plus the time they took to build the boat and cross the ocean. Though Nephi does not tell us, that seems like it would have taken about a year or two, putting their total time to journey at approximately 10 years or so. If they did indeed leave in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, then they would have been getting to the promised land right around the time that Jerusalem was destroyed. And that is right when Lehi told his family this: “And [Lehi] also spake unto them concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained—how merciful the Lord had been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem. For, behold, said he, I have seen a vision, in which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem we should also have perished” (2 Nephi 1:3-4). Though the text does not state it explicitly, to me this suggests that Lehi received this information at the specific moment when Jerusalem was destroyed. And this is consistent with what the Lord said to them: “After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, am God; and that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction; yea, that I did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 17:14). They wouldn’t know until after they arrived in the promised land that they had been delivered from destruction. Once they got there, about ten years after they departed, they learned through Lehi’s vision that Jerusalem had indeed been destroyed. This again supports Mormon’s statement that they did indeed leave in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah.