Hugh Nibley believes that to symbolize what is utterly inaccessible, Lehi is shown “a great and terrible gulf” (1 Nephi 12:18), “an awful gulf” (1 Nephi 15:28), a tremendous chasm with one’s objective (the tree of life) maddeningly visible on the other side. All who have traveled in the desert know the feeling of utter helplessness and frustration at finding one’s way suddenly cut off by one of those appalling canyons with perpendicular sides. Nothing could be more abrupt, more absolute, more baffling to one’s plans, and so will it be with the wicked in a day of reckoning. [Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, F.A.R.M.S., p. 46]
“A Great and a Terrible Gulf Divideth Them”
Nephi associates the large and spacious building (1 Nephi 8:26; 12:18) in which vain worldly people mocked the righteous with a “great and terrible gulf” (1 Nephi 12:18) or “awful gulf” (1 Nephi 15:28). Regarding this gulf Hugh Nibley writes:
a tremendous chasm with one’s objective (the tree of life) maddeningly visible on the other side; all who have traveled in the desert know the feeling of utter helplessness and frustration at finding one’s way suddenly cut off by one of those appalling canyons with perpendicular sides.
Corbin T. Volluz describes the river in Lehi’s dream “cutting through the chasms and gorges of the Grand Canyon, so as to create a great gulf of division.” Thus George Potter and Richard Wellington note that these two writers also associate the vertical walls of a canyon with the image of a “gulf,” exactly what is found in wadi Tayyib al-Ism. [George Potter and Richard Wellington, Discovering the Lehi-Nephi Trail, pp. 63-64] [See the Potter commentary on 1 Nephi 8:26]
1 Nephi 12:18 A great and terrible gulf divideth them (Potter) [Illustration]: Canyon walls near opening, George standing in the lighted area of the canyon floor. [George Potter & Richard Wellington, Discovering Nephi’s Trail, Chapter 3, p. 18, Unpublished]