Post by Laman –
This traveling in the wilderness is not going well. We finally did stop as my father says “that we might tarry for the space of a time.” What that means is “Ok, lets stop for a while until I get another foolish urge to get moving.” Even stopped, things are bad around here right now.
Our dear “father-in-law” is now dead. Ishmael – the lucky one – doesn’t have to wander through this forsaken wilderness any longer. We buried him in a place called Nahom. But you can’t believe what his death has done to his daughters.
Our wives, Ishmael’s daughters, are mourning out of control, because of the loss of their father. That’s not all, because of their afflictions in the wilderness, they are very upset at my father because he brought them out of the land of Jerusalem. You know I don’t blame them. Nephi says Lemuel and I can murmur, we have nothing on Ishmael’s daughters.
It goes something like this; Our father is dead; we have wandered forever in the wilderness, we have suffered every affliction, hunger, thirst, and fatigue; and after all this suffering we must perish in the wilderness with hunger. They are actually right, and I feel the same way.
And they were’t just murmuring against my father, to my delight, they went after Nephi as well. All they wanted was to return again to Jerusalem. This was the opportunity I was looking for. Enough was enough and now I had the support I needed. I got Lemuel and Ishmael’s sons on my side so we could kill our father and our little brother Nephi.
I reminded them how Nephi had taken it upon himself to be our ruler and our teacher – us, his older brothers! I told them that Nephi says the Lord has talked with him and that angels have ministered to him. I said we know Nephi is a liar and that he tells us these things and works his cunning arts so he can deceive our eyes and convince us to follow him into some strange wilderness so that he can make himself a king over us so he can do with us as he pleases.
My speech making worked, boy did I stir their hearts up to anger. Finally, we will do away with our father and Nephi and we can all return to Jerusalem – that great land of our inheritance. With Laban dead maybe we can get our precious gold back.
(Book of Mormon | 1 Nephi 16:33 – 38)
