Hugh Nibley
"He was eleven years old, and he was taken by his father to a land southward to Zarahemla-the big city, the big capital. He was impressed as a little kid, he says. The land was covered with buildings, and he [had] never seen anything like that. 'The people were as numerous almost, as it were the sand of the sea.' Now this is important for the Book of Mormon, you see. We talk about such vast numbers-well, we'll see what vast numbers are. When they gather all their forces for a big war down here, how many do they have in the army? Thirty thousand-that's just one division (v. 11). In our army 27,000 would make a division. He calls that as numerous as the sands of the sea. Well, as an eleven-year-old, he's impressed. You'd be impressed with these things. So we have to be very careful and not be simplistic when we read the Book of Mormon. When this kid tells us that people in Zarahemla were as numerous as the sands of the sea, how many hundred trillion people are there? It doesn't mean that at all. It's a metaphor here, as it were the sands of the sea." (Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Lecture 104, p. 192-3)