In his dream, Lehi beheld a "strait and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron" (1 Nephi 8:20). Hugh Nibley asks the question, What is the rod of iron? Nibley remarks that there is a statement in the Midrash about this. The temple mountain in Jerusalem has been flattened off artificially to make a place for the Dome of the Rock that stands there today, the great mosque of the Moslems. Before then it was really quite steep where the temple was originally built in the time of David, and in the Jebusite city. The sacred way that went up to the temple was steep and narrow and went zigzag up the side. You can see this in Athens at the Acropolis. The sacred ways always go up that way. It was slippery and it was on the rock. When it would storm, you could fall off--with old, feeble people, etc. So there was a railing that went up, and you could follow it. It was iron, and it rusted away in time. It was replaced with a wooden railing. They had to cling to the iron rod to get up to the temple so they wouldn't slip and fall on the rocks.
Another example is at Adam's Mount in Ceylon, the most sacred place in the East. That's where Adam is supposed to have landed when he descended from the other world and came here. They show a footprint there, etc. From there he went wandering, and didn't find Eve until he got to Medina. But when he got to Mecca, he made an imitation of the original temple. The Angel Gabriel came and showed him how to build it out of sheets of light, etc. But here we have the sacred rod. There was originally a railing that went up, and it has been replaced by a brass chain that people pull themselves up by. . . . Sometimes it's a chain, sometimes a rope, sometimes a cable--anything they can get to make it and pull themselves up to the top. It's an omphalos. Every ancient temple, every ancient world shrine had an omphalos, which means an umbilicus [connecting cord] and the temple represented the center of the world--the birthplace of creation. . . . So the idea of holding to the rod and pulling yourself up is a very common one. And also the idea of a "strait and narrow path." [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 1, pp. 174-175]