Nephi’s narrative ends as the five of them flee ("our flight," 4:36) to Lehi’s tent (or tabernacle) in the wilderness. Having shed blood, Nephi and his accomplices may have faced the legal need to flee to a place of refuge in order find protection and to purge any guilty blood taint. Indeed, in the case of any "unpremeditated" killing, Exodus 21:13 provides that the slayer must take refuge in "a place" which God will appoint. There the slayer was protected from avengers and was to be given a fair trial to determine whether, indeed, he had acted culpably by lying in wait or not.
In times and places where the laws of these cities of refuge were in effect, the "place" of refuge was generally understood to be an altar or place in one of six designated Levitical cities. But the term "place" is ambiguous. It can sometimes refer to the wilderness (as in Deuteronomy 1:33; 9:7; 11:5; 29:6). Thus, it may have been legally sufficient, in such cases of unpremeditated or unplanned slayings, for a killer such as Nephi to go into the wilderness, as was prefigured in the precedents of Cain’s banishment and of Moses’s fleeing into Midian. Of course, Nephi was prepared, in any event, to leave the land of Israel and never return.