1 Nephi: Headnote, Part VIII
“Their sufferings and afflictions in the wilderness.” Nephi has already mentioned “sufferings” once in his headnote, with respect to his first trip back to Jerusalem (see 1 Nephi: Headnote, Part V ). The sufferings mentioned here are different, though: these are the sufferings of his entire extended family—wife and children, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, etc.—while “in the wilderness.” In fact, we know from 1 Nephi 17:4 that they spent “eight years in the wilderness,” so that’s a pretty good chunk of time for some pretty intense “sufferings” to occur. What happened to the families while in the wilderness? 1 Nephi 16 gives us some clue—hunger and even death were definitely part of their travails—but I suspect it was a lot more than that. Discomfort was probably the rule of the day, even in the city of Jerusalem. They didn’t have climate-controlled homes as do we, nor even electricity. They didn’t have running water in their homes. They didn’t have cars to hop over to Wal...