Nephi begins by pleading with his brothers to keep Yahweh’s commandments. Surely his own sworn oath to do so was impressive. Obviously, Nephi is speaking under inspiration. He knows that this mission will succeed, and he is making every attempt to carry out that mission. He proposes offering their riches to Laban in exchange for the plates. The description of the result of this attempt suggests that the attempt was not to directly purchase the plates. There is no contract, and something of such value would not have commercial price. The familial right to the record would be the reason that they might be transferred, not a purchase. It is more likely that the riches become a gift that was intended to influence Laban’s actions. Thus, when Laban keeps the riches and the plates, he is doing nothing illegal. He is not violating a legal or economic contract. He is violating a moral contract that would have been assumed upon the acceptance of the gift. Nevertheless, it would not have been binding, and therefore the brothers would have had no legal basis for complaining of theft.
This is the first indication in the record that Yahweh commanded Lehi to abandon his wealth. Nephi reasons that, if Lehi left this wealth behind at Yahweh’s command, then perhaps it was because Yahweh knew that it needed to be readily available to purchase the plates.
Variant: Royal Skousen describes the process that yields our current text:
Here the unknown scribe 2 of [the original manuscript] wrote simply “because of the commandment.” Later, Oliver Cowdery emended the reading in [the original manuscript] by supralinearly inserting the postmodifying phrase “of the Lord”.… When Oliver copied the text from [the original manuscript] to [the printer’s manuscript], he also changed the singular commandment to the plural commandments, thus ending up with the current reading “because of the commandments of the Lord.”
Skousen also notes that scribe 2 frequently left off the plural s, presenting the possibility that the intended original was commandments as corrected by Oliver Cowdery.