1 Nephi: Headnote, Part VII
“They take their families and depart into the wilderness.” So let’s think about this for a minute. We’ve already established that Nephi and his brothers are married. Those of us who have read the book previously realize that this happened as a result of their second return to the land of Jerusalem, so it would seem that none of them were married before they left. On the other hand, it would seem that at least some of them also had children by that time, else why the use of the word “families”? Everything between chapter 7 (the second journey) and chapter 16 (when they “[take] of the daughters of Ishmael to wife”) seems to have preceded the weddings, which is not tremendously surprising since those chapters consist almost exclusively of Lehi’s vision and Nephi’s reprise thereof, with only chapter 16 relating a different series of events. Thus, they probably spent much of their “sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness” ( 1 Nephi 17:4 ) as married ...