“I Did Break My Bow Which Was Made of Fine Steel”

(Since Cumorah, Nibley, p. 254)

“This would locate the incident roughly in the vicinity of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where the weather is a merciless combination of heat, humidity, sand, and salt—a force strong enough to destroy steel. We were stunned to see holes rusted through car fenders in a few months’ time. Between March and November the heat is pitiless. Even in late January the temperature hovers around 85 degrees. Humidity averages about 60 percent year round, and in the more moist part of a fifteen-year cycle the humidity rises to a yearly average of 92 percent. Unpainted metal simply cannot survive such conditions. We saw little metal used in either local building or the shipyards. Might this have also happened to Nephi’s bow? Weakened by rust, it could have snapped in his hands when he drew it to its limits. The climate would also explain why his brothers’ bows lost their springs at or around the same time. If they were wooden bows, they would have remained tensile and strong in the dry area around Jerusalem; but several years in the humid climate along the Red Sea’s coastal plain, and even a short time in the vicinity of Jiddah, would inevitably have caused them to absorb moisture until they became as limber as saplings. In fact, acquaintances of ours often reported similar experiences with some of their wood possessions.” (Lynn M. and Hope Hilton, In Search of Lehi’s Trail, pp.81-82)

“According to the ancient Arab writers, the only bow-wood obtainable in all Arabia was the nab’ wood that grew only amid the inaccessible and overhanging crags of Mount Jasum and Mount Azd, which are situated in the very region where, if we follow the Book of Mormon, the broken bow incident occurred.” (Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, pp. 66-68)