By “darkness,” Nephi means the secret combinations. He emphasizes that they are not of God—regardless of how they might be presented. By definition, secret combinations work in “darkness” or secrecy, but God does not work in secret. Ancient Mediterranean society regarded secret acts with distrust and abhorrence. Malina and Rohrbaugh comment on this attitude in Jesus’s birth narrative: “Life in Mediterranean societies typically has very little privacy. Everything honorable is expected to be done in public because only dishonorable people have something to hide. Thus, in villages the doors to houses are always open during the day, and a show is made of doing one’s business in public. The fact that Herod operates secretly here signals the reader that he is acting dishonorably. The honorable magi, however, refuse to cooperate in the scheme.” Secret combinations are therefore inherently abhorrent to the Nephites because they are secret and, therefore, dishonorable. Of course Yahweh, being the essence of honor, does not work in darkness.
Narrative: Verse 23 directly addresses Nephi’s “beloved brethren.” The text that follows is internally consistent in discussing how Yahweh works in contrast with the specific ways he does not work. Nephi uses “I say” five times between verses 23 and 28, almost once per verse. Each verse reads more as preaching than prophecy. The rest of the chapter has discussed a prophetic vision, but these verses oppose some particular situations. Nephi has seen these situations in his vision, but his purpose here is not to recount, but to warn and admonish. Where he began chapter 25 by referring to his people in the third person, he is now addressing his future readers directly.
These situations occur in the context of the Gentiles’ “envyings, and strifes and malice” (v. 21), but they read more as an aside than as continuations of the other descriptions Nephi has given of the future. All of the other examples specific descriptions of events. These verses pause in the description to deliver a polemical sermon.