“The land of promise” is a quotation from Yahweh’s revelation to Nephi (1 Ne. 2:20). It is interesting to speculate on what Lehi’s family understood as their ultimate destination and what direction they should pursue to reach it. The revelation commanding Lehi to leave Jerusalem apparently did not specify either a direction or a destination (1 Ne. 2:1–3). Lehi may have known that they were heading toward a land of promise, but the text does not say so at this point. However, 2 Nephi 1:3–9 suggests Lehi received the promise of a land.
In either case, they must have assumed that the land of promise would provide the necessities of life—even, if they were thinking in these terms, wives for Lehi’s sons. This revelation instructs them to recruit another Jerusalem family, one with several daughters, to join them. Why would they need wives, and why now?
On a literal level, the only irrefutable reason why they would need to bring wives would be if there were no women where they were going. However, no known part of the world lacked women. Another possibility is that it might be difficult to acquire wives, due to differences in culture, perhaps language (since they did not know yet where they were going), and most importantly religion. The law of Moses required them to marry Israelite women, and leaving the land of their first inheritance would make it impossible to find such women.
As for timing, certainly they needed to marry before it was too difficult or too far to return to find Israelite women. But why now and not at the time they first left? Or why was this mission not combined with the expedition for the plates? While the Book of Mormon offers no answer, I hypothesize that obtaining the brass plates solidified the reality of the exodus to them, firmly severing the possibility of a return. If they allowed Zoram to live and return with them, then he could have been a witness that Nephi had killed Laban. Even if there were no other witnesses, the conflict between the brothers and Laban would have been well known to at least his force of fifty and probably to other people in the city. Furthermore, there is no indication that Lehi’s enemies would have moderated their hostility. The family could not return.
Acquiring the brass plates confirmed through their experiences that Yahweh was leading them. Thus, these experiences not only strengthened their resolve but perhaps also provided arguments that would convince Ishmael and his family to accompany them.
Text: There are two ways to read the phrase: “his sons should take daughters to wife, that they might raise up seed unto the Lord.” The pronoun might refer to daughters since that is the nearest antecedent. Skousen notes, however, that the concept of raising up seed in the Bible is associated with the men rather than the women (see Gen. 38:8, Deut 25:7, Ruth 4:5, Matt. 22:24, Mark 121:19, Luke 20:28). This sentence should therefore probably be read “his sons should take daughters to wife, that [his sons] might raise up seed unto the Lord.”
Variant: When copying the printer’s manuscript from the original, Oliver Cowdery added the word saying in this phrase: “the Lord spake unto him again, saying that it was not meet for him.… ” Skousen notes that the scribe in the original was not Oliver at this point and that that particular scribe did not tend to “omit words except subject pronouns, so this addition seems to be based on Oliver’s expectation that saying belonged there.”