1 Nephi: Headnote, Part IV

“He taketh three days’ journey into the wilderness with his family.”

It’s so funny that I would get to this sentence, this morning. Last night I was researching something related to the Bible and discovered a web site that mocks the Book of Mormon. Such sites are, of course, a dime a dozen, but this one was different: never before have I seen such inaccurate information as this. I mean, it’s one thing to take issue with the doctrines or even the historical narrative; it’s quite another to come up with such incredibly obvious straw man arguments. Such is the statement that is brought to mind by this passage:

“It only took Nephi and his family three days to travel from Jerusalem to the Red Sea. (A distance of 250 miles)”

Let’s ignore, for the moment, the fact that this author couldn’t even manage grammatical accuracy in his argument. Where on Earth did s/he get this idea? Lehi didn’t start from the city of Jerusalem; he started from “the land of Jerusalem” (see “Headnote, Part II”). Jeffrey R. Chadwick argues that the Valley of Lemuel was probably in Bir Marsha, a mere 50 miles from Ezion-geber (where Solomon built “a navy of ships”; see 1 Kings 9:26)—roughly three days’ journey. Seriously, people… get a clue.

Likening the scriptures unto myself:
This is a tough one. It’s hard to transplant myself into the life and world of an Arab Bedouin like Lehi. Indiana’s a pretty empty place, but it’s nothing like the Arabian Peninsula; and even if it were possible for me to “take three days’ journey into the wilderness, how would I ever manage to take enough provisions to survive for more than that? To quote the popular maxim, “Whom God calls, God prepares.” So what have I been called to do? How has God prepared me for that work? And most importantly, am I doing it?