This may be considered an important historical clue, confirming the authenticity of the record. Let us turn for a moment to the pages of history.
In the year 608, Josiah, king of Judah, fell at Megiddo, in an attempt to prevent the Egyptian army from marching through Palestine on its way north against Assyria. Jehoahaz succeeded him. But he was deposed by the Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh Necho, who placed Jehoiakim on the throne instead.
At the battle of Carchemish, in the year 605, the Egyptians were defeated and, as a consequence, driven out of Syria. Jehoiakim was then forced to swear allegiance to the Babylonian ruler.
In the same year, Jeremiah directed his secretary, Baruch, to commit his prophecies to writing. The king heard part of the sacred roll and ordered it all destroyed, whereupon he sent his officers to apprehend the two servants of the Lord. But they could not be found, then.
Jehoiakim, shortly before the exodus of Lehi, made an alliance with Egypt, but his death saved him from the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. Jehoiachin succeeded him, and in 596, he and his household and thousands of citizens were carried captive to Babylon. That was the first deportation.
If we suppose that Nephi and his brethren came to Jerusalem on their mission to the house of Ishmael, at the time when Jehoiakim broke with Babylon and made a treaty of alliance with Egypt, we can understand why Laman, who without doubt was leaning toward the Egyptian party, again rebelled against his father and his brother, and why some of the members of the household of Ishmael sided with him. For, had not the king thrown off the Babylonian yoke, and was not Egypt going to save Jerusalem? It looked, indeed, as if the prophecies of Lehi would be proved false. Jeremiah was gone—imprisoned, for aught he knew, and his prophecies concerning the destruction of Jerusalem would not be fulfilled.
It was to some such blind reasoning that Nephi replied: “Ye shall know at some future time that the word of the Lord shall be fulfilled concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.” That event was now so near that Nephi, led by the spirit of prophecy, could state positively that they would hear about it before they were much older. The news reached them perhaps before they left the Valley of Lemuel; or at all events, before they embarked on the sea voyage.