In verse 4, Nephi identified those among his people who will be destroyed, namely the proud and those who do wickedly. In this summation, Nephi captures one of the main themes in the long block of Isaiah chapters that he has just quoted. The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, prophesied over and over again about pride being the great pitfall of the people living in the land of Jerusalem during his time. Isaiah also prophesied that pride would be the great pitfall for those of us living in the latter days.
Nephi elaborated in verse 5: "They that kill the prophets, and the saints, the depths of the earth shall swallow them up, … and mountains shall cover them, and whirlwinds shall carry them away, and buildings shall fall upon them and crush them to pieces and grind them to powder." This statement of the divine punishment of those who kill the prophets compares with Nephi’s previous prophecies (see 1 Nephi 12:4 and 19:10–18) about the types of calamities that would eventually befall the lands of the Nephites and Lamanites in the New World at the time of Christ’s death. These things can be related to the catastrophes that took place in 3 Nephi 8–9. People were specifically warned by Nephi, several hundred years before those events occurred, about the thunderings, lightnings, earthquakes, and all manner of destruction that would take place.
Book of Mormon Central, "How Does Prophecy Shape the Book of Mormon’s Content and Structure? (Words of Mormon 1:4)," KnoWhy 498 (January 15, 2019).