The Book of Mormon

Week 6: Lehi₁’s farewell address; Nephites & Lamanites separate

2 Nephi 1–5

19 October 2023

• Lehi₁’s teachings are an example of a biblical testament offered by a dying patriarch, which included the dying family head gathering together his relatives and close friends, exhorting them to avoid temptations, instructing them in the ways of righteousness, uttering blessings and cursings, and prophesying of the future. See “KnoWhy #29: Should 2 Nephi 1:1–4:12 Be Called the ‘Testament Of Lehi’?”, Book of Mormon Central, 9 February 2016.

• Matthew Nickerson, “Nephi’s Psalm: 2 Nephi 4:16–35 in the Light of Form-Critical Analysis,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6, no. 2 (1997): 26–42. Nickerson’s article outlines the Psalm of Nephi₁ and shows how it follows the same literary pattern found in the Old Testament Psalms.

• Steven P. Sondrup, “The Psalm of Nephi: A Lyric Reading,” BYU Studies 21, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 357–72. Sondrup analyzes the poetic structure of Nephi₁’s Psalm.

• After the death of Lehi₁, Nephi₁ recorded that “the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon” to those who followed Laman₁ (2 Nephi 5:21). Clifford P. Jones argues that Laman₁ and his followers marked their skins with “a permanent, self-imposed mark—an ancient tattoo—cut into the skin in defiance of the law of Moses” as a sign of rebellion against God. Jones, “Understanding the Lamanite Mark,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 56 (2023): 171–258. (Kyler Rasmussen has prepared this brief summary of Jones’s paper.)