When the brothers begin their journey, they take their tents with them (v. 9). This suggests that they expected the expedition to require enough time that they would be required to provide their own shelter.
Culture: While modern people might be familiar with casting lots to make a selection purely by chance, that scenario does not explain what is happening here. The brothers were not simply assigning someone at random to make the attempt. Throughout Old Testament times (and in many other cultures in antiquity) it was assumed that God would intervene in the lot-casting. Thus, it was a means of discovering Yahweh’s will.
All four sons had accepted their father’s assignment and knew from his own lips that he had received a prophetic vision directing them to take this action. Regardless of Laman’s and Lemuel’s skepticism, they knew that this was a religiously directed mission. Almost any action that was random might be used in a divination, but divination frequently took forms that related to human activities and tools. Nibley discusses a particular form used among some Arabs in the pre-Islam years that involved three arrow shafts. One would be blank, one would be inscribed “My Lord hath commanded me,” and the third would be inscribed “My Lord hath forbidden me.” Up to seven shafts with these inscriptions (and blanks) would be placed in a bag and shaken. The diviner would then randomly select one without looking. Since the human operator made no conscious selection, God was directing the selection. A common modern descendant of this type of lot-casting is selecting the short straw. A number of straws (or other objects that look alike) are arranged so that the person making the selection can only see the like portion. One of the straws is shorter, and the person selecting that straw will be designated for the specified purpose.
History: As a younger brother, Nephi’s social position was decidedly inferior to that of his father and three older brothers. While the record includes no information about their ages, it is possible to build a reasonable estimate. Nephi dies approximately fifty-five years after the departure from Jerusalem (Jacob 1:1–12). Since the whole point of recruiting Ishmael’s family is to secure wives for Lehi’s sons, Sam must have been of marriageable age, which at that time was probably in the early or mid-teens. I lean slightly toward mid-teens so that Nephi, in his early teens, would also be considered marriageable. Thus, Nephi would have lived about seventy years, which accords with the ages of other Book of Mormon men who die of old age, rather than being killed in battle. Even though Nephi was physically mature (he fits Laban’s armor adequately and is strong enough to hold the frightened Zoram—1 Ne. 4:19, 31), he was still a youth, not yet forged into the man he would become.
Scripture: If the Lord intervened in the lot-casting, why did the lot fall on Laman instead of Nephi when the Lord knew that Nephi would succeed? This is actually two questions: Why was Laman allowed to fail? and why was Laman chosen instead of Nephi?
Although the Book of Mormon does not discuss either question, in my opinion, Laman was allowed to fail for the same reason that all of us are allowed to fail at various tasks in this life. The combination of mortal circumstances, opportunities, agency, and ability determine the success or failure of many enterprises. With a slightly different mixture, Laman might very well have succeeded. This perspective is not the same, however, as saying that Yahweh was willing to let the mission fail. Laman’s failure was personal, just as Nephi’s success was personal; but the mission succeeded.
The next question is why Laman was chosen rather than Nephi. Culturally, Laman, as the eldest brother, was the appropriate candidate. The selection of Laman would have appeared to confirm Yahweh’s hand in the casting of lots. Laman should have been the first, but rather than assert that position he was acknowledged through the process of casting lots. Thus, the episode of the brass plates begins as expected. It concludes in an unexpected way (with the success of a younger brother) which signals the pending reversal of the age-dependent family structure and Nephi’s ascension to leadership, with the additional implication of Yahweh’s approval. This incident thus justifies Nephi’s ascendancy, a bitterly contested process that continues for the duration of the family’s journey. Laman’s attempt and failure both recognized his birthright and marked the birthright’s passage to the worthier son.
Variant: The 1981 edition restored “we had gone up” for “we had come up.” Skousen explains: “Here the unknown scribe 2 of the original manuscript initially wrote ‘had come up’, then he erased come and corrected it to gone. The correction was not clearly done, with the result that Oliver Cowdery copied the word as come into the printer’s manuscript.” Skousen also notes that “Nephi and his brothers always ‘go up’ rather than ‘come up” to Jerusalem” in other instances in the text.