In the tenth chapter of his first book, Nephi makes the following statement:
For behold, it came to pass after my father had made an end of speaking the words of his dream, and also of exhorting [my brethren] to all diligence, he spake unto them concerning the Jews . . . after they should be brought back out of captivity they should possess again the land of their inheritance. Yea, even six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem, a prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews--even a Messiah, or in other words, a Savior of the world. And he also spake concerning the prophets, how great a number had testified of these things, concerning this Messiah of whom he had spoken or this Redeemer of the world. (1 Nephi 10:2-5)
This statement sounds strange in view of the fact that there are only two references to the term "Messiah" in the Old Testament, and both references are found in succeeding verses in the book of Daniel (Daniel 9:25-26). One might wonder just what happened to all these references. Were they part of the "plain and most precious things" which Nephi in vision would foresee to be taken out of the holy writ? (see 1 Nephi 13:26). In view of this paradox, I find it very interesting that Alfred Edersheim, one of the most noted commentators on the life and times of Jesus, makes the following comments:
Perhaps the most valuable element in Rabbinic commentation on Messianic times is that in which, as so frequently, it is explained, that all the miracles and deliverances of Israel's past, would be re-enacted, only in a much wider manner, in the days of the Messiah. Thus the whole past was symbolic, and typical of the future--the Old Testament the glass, through which the universal blessings of the latter days were seen. It is in this sense that we would understand the two sayings of the Talmud: "All the prophets prophesied only of the days of the Messiah (Sanh. 99a) and "The world was created only for the Messiah." (Sanh. 98b).
In accordance with all this, the ancient Synagogue found references to the Messiah in many more passages of the Old Testament than those verbal predictions, to which we generally appeal; and the latter formed (as in the New Testament) a proportionately small, and secondary, element in the conception of the Messianic era. This is fully borne out by a detailed analysis of those passages in the Old Testament to which the ancient Synagogue referred as Messianic. [Note* Edersheim refers the reader to Appendix IX, where a detailed list is given of all the Old Testament passages which the ancient Synagogue applied Messianically, together with the references to the Rabbinic works where they are quoted] Their number amounts to upwards of 456 (75 from the Pentateuch, 243 from the Prophets, and 138 from the Hagiographa), and their Messianic application is supported by more than 558 references to the most ancient Rabbinic writings. But comparatively few of these are what would be termed verbal predictions. Rather would it seem as if every event were regarded as prophetic, and every prophecy, whether by fact, or by word (prediction), as a light to cast its sheen on the future, until the picture of the Messianic age in the far back-ground stood out in the hundredfold variegated brightness of prophetic events,, and prophetic utterances. (Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Part 1. Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971, pp. 162-163)
If the term and concept of "the Messiah" had to be salvaged in Rabbinic writings, which were written commentaries based on oral traditions dating back to after the fall the Jerusalem (and to the Dispersion of which Daniel was a part), then the taking out of many "plain and most precious" parts of the holy writ could have already occurred at the time Lehi was called as a prophet to warn the people of the destruction that was waiting for them if they did not repent. It is interesting that when Lehi prophesied that Jerusalem would be destroyed because of their wickedness they only mocked him, but when he preached to them that "the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the world" the Jews sought to take his life (see 1 Nephi 1:19-20). [Alan C. Miner, Personal Notes] [See the commentary on 1 Nephi 1:19-20]