Nephi next explains the importance of obtaining the brass plates. His first reason is preserving their language for future generations. Did Lehi give him this reason? Did he deduce it for himself? Nephi was certainly sufficiently bright to be thinking about what a future colony would need, especially now that he knew without question that he would be playing a crucial role in its formation and survival. Furthermore, this reason confirms that he knew that the “promised land” to which Yahweh would lead them would leave his descendants cut off from Jerusalem. Laman and Lemuel probably thought that Lehi was overreacting and that, after lying low in the desert for a while, they could return to their own people.
Variant: The phrase “it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve… ” is the result of Joseph Smith’s 1837 editing. Skousen notes:
In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith frequently changed the historically past-tense (or subjunctive) modal verbs might, would, and should to their historically present-tense (or indicative) forms may, will, and shall. Joseph’s apparent motivation was to avoid the modern-day tendency to interpret the past-tense modals as conditional, hypothetical, or subjective. Such editing, however, has been sporadically applied.