Nephi does not tell us how long the family stayed in the Valley of Lemuel. George Potter and Richard Wellington carefully researched Lehi’s journey from Jerusalem to Bountiful. They note:
We know that eight years elapsed from the time they left Jerusalem until the arrived at their last camp in Arabia, the place the called Bountiful (1 Ne. 17:4). Strabo wrote that a caravan journey from “Minaea to Aelena” (Yemen to Aqaba) took seventy days. Nigel Groom, an expert on the frankincense trade, estimates that a commercial camel caravan could travel from Gaza to the frankincense growing area at Dhofar in southern Arabia in 69–88 days. He estimates the entire distance as 2,110 miles. The difference between eighty-eight days and eight years suggests that Lehi might have lived in the fertile Valley of Lemuel for some time.
Lehi’s family appears to have been comfortable in the Valley of Lemuel and probably felt no urgency to move on. Nephi described their time in the valley as a period of his life when he was “blessed by the Lord exceedingly” (1 Ne. 16:8). Fond memories of these blessed days might have inspired the Nephites to name one of their New World cities after the area in which the Valley of Lemuel was located, Midian (Alma 24:5).
The plausible length of the family’s stay in the Valley of Lemuel may explain Nephi’s mention of the remaining “provisions which the Lord had given unto us.” Having exhausted any provisions from Jerusalem, they would have gathered from the crops they had planted while in the valley. As part of their preparation, they gathered “seed of every kind.” (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 8:1.) Lynn and Hope Hilton, who attempted to follow Lehi’s trail, also suggest that Lehi’s family remained at this camp long enough to have planted their own crops and therefore would have seeds available to them. These crops would be seen as bounty from Yahweh.