Nephi began his record by noting that he had goodly parents. He will eventually speak of his own experiences as allowed by those goodly parents, but at this point he is interested in his father. The previous verses noted that there had been prophets in Jerusalem, and now his father will become one of them.
Without expressly saying so, Nephi suggests that the message of those prophets had touched his father, and led to his father praying on behalf of his people. As a response to that prayer, Lehi receives a vision. Nephi says that “he saw and heard much,” but tells us nothing of what he saw or heard. What is important in this part of the story is that a pillar of fire descended and “dwelt upon a rock.” This image intentionally invokes two aspects of Moses’ life.
The first is the burning bush. While no bush burned for Lehi, there was burning on a rock, a similarly miraculous event. Where Moses’ bush was not consumed, Lehi’s pillar of fire burned without terrestrial source. In both events, Jehovah was in the fire.
The second element of the pillar of fire is the image of that pillar of fire guiding the children of Israel as they journeyed in the wilderness. Lehi probably didn’t understand that image at the time, but Nephi—writing long after the fact—certainly saw in the pillar of fire the image of his father leading his family from their old home to a new one across the wilderness.