Nephi writes this personal essay on the Atoning Messiah in the context of explaining how and why he made his small plates. After stating that he writes of sacred things, Nephi’s mind immediately turns to the most sacred subject, the Messiah.
Redaction: This passage is an aside—a personal reflection that contains a multitude of ideas and events. Nephi is writing for a future audience, not necessarily a present audience. In a single loosely constructed sentence, he covers the Savior’s birth and crucifixion, plus Israel’s ultimate redemption. Because Nephi sees that ultimate redemption as a conditional possibility, he explains what future generations need to know to fulfill that condition.
This orientation is evidence that Nephi is not writing to the people of his days. While the large plates are kept current with rulers, the wars, and state affairs, here Nephi is writing what he wants to write, both for his own satisfaction and also in outreach to a distant and hoped-for audience.
This passage also shows his familiarity with the brass plate prophets. He alludes to them, rather than copying their prophecies. Clearly, he assumes that his future audience will have access to the full documents. Prophet though he was, he did not foresee our desire to know more about what have become “missing” texts.
What and how much does the Book of Mormon quote other sources? The answer is: very little. The longest quotations appear in the writings of Nephi and Jacob. The priests of Noah present Isaiah 52:7–10 as a test text, which Abinadi requotes but recasts. Other scattered quotations are brief—for example, Alma 33:13: “Ye must believe what Zenos said; for, behold he said: Thou hast turned away thy judgments because of thy Son.”
Other references look like Nephi’s passage—allusions and paraphrase/summaries but not quotations—for example, Helaman 8:19: “Since the days of Abraham there have been many prophets that have testified these things; yea, behold, the prophet Zenos did testify boldly; for the which he was slain.”
Even more interesting is the lack of internal quotation. Nephi’s prophecies are not quoted at all, except by Jacob. Later generations knew Nephi’s story. Mosiah 10:13 summarizes Nephi’s narrative succinctly: The Lamanites claimed that they “were wronged while in the land of their first inheritance, after they had crossed the sea, and all this because that Nephi was more faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord—therefore he was favored of the Lord, for the Lord heard his prayers and answered them, and he took the lead of their journey in the wilderness.” Alma 3:6 explains that the Lamanites were cursed with a dark skin “because of their [Laman and Lemuel’s] transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.”
Even though it is not surprising that both Nephites and Lamanites would have preserved their myths of peoplehood, it seems surprising that Nephi’s writings are not remembered, even though his people continued to consult the brass plates. This fact bolsters the hypothesis that Nephi’s small plates were lost to the memory of the recordkeepers and rediscovered late by Mormon.
Text: The phrase “isles of the sea” is not unique to Nephi, but he uses it in a way that illuminates how he understands himself. Of the phrase’s ten occurrences in scripture, eight of them are in Nephi’s writings. The ninth is in Esther 10:1: “Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea.” These isles are obviously known. Although they could be either specific or generic (meaning “everywhere”), they are certainly part of the known world.
The tenth occurrence is in Isaiah 24:15: “Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea.” This passage seems less likely to mean specific locations than to mean “everywhere.”
Nephi, however, obviously considers himself to be on one of the “isles of the sea.” 2 Nephi 10:21 reads: “But great are the promises of the Lord unto them who are upon the isles of the sea; wherefore as it says isles, there must needs be more than this, and they are inhabited also by our brethren.” He identifies these promises as made to specific people in specific locales—not only himself but also on other isles (“more than this [isle]”).
Nephi evidently shared the biblical understanding of “isles of the sea” meaning any land whose principal access was by the sea, even though a land route also might be available. The LDS Bible Dictionary indicates that “[isles] was frequently used to denote any lands washed by the sea, especially the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean (Gen. 10:5; Ps. 72:10; Isa. 20:6, 24:14, 66:19).
More importantly, Nephi had a theological reason for associating his people with the isles of the sea. He quotes a prophecy of gathering from Zenos in 1 Nephi 19:16: “Yea, then will he remember the isles of the sea; yea, and all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord, according to the words of the prophet Zenos, from the four quarters of the earth.” Nephi interprets this scripture as applying to his own people, paralleling the promised gathering of Jerusalem’s scattered inhabitants. This promise obviously strikes a strong emotional chord for him.
We see a similar process occurring in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 4Q177 the commentator gives a verse from Psalms, followed by his explanation (brackets and ellipses indicate lacunae in the text):
[To the master singer,] to David. In the Lord I have taken refuge,] so how can You say to me, Flee [to your mountain, little bird, for now the wicked are bending their bow,] and fitting arrows to [the string to shoot in the night at the honest in mind:] (Ps. 11:1–2).
[This means that] the men of [the Yahad] shall flee [. . .] [. . . like] a bird from its place and be exiled [from their land… they are written about] in the book of the [prophet Micah: “Rise and go, this is not the right place to stay, impurity has marred it, it is completely ruined.]
Here the Qumranic commentator has recontextualized two verses to his own experience in a community self-exiled from Jerusalem. This passage supported the theological basis for the community’s existence in the desert. Nephi’s use of the “isles of the sea” makes this same correlation of text to current circumstance.
Although Nephi makes this connection, the concept never appears again in the Book of Mormon. Apparently, relocating to the New World, a psychological burden Nephi felt keenly, was unimportant to later generations. Perhaps Nephi’s correlation was intricately bound to his need to find continuity between his Old World roots and his New World life.