Most children really fear the conversations with their parents when they know that their parents are unhappy with them, and they know in their hearts that the parents are right. The longer those conversations continue, the worse a child feels. Imagine, then, the brother of Jared who appears to be chastened by the Lord for three hours!
The only thing we are told about the Lord’s reason for chastising the brother of Jared is that Jared had “remembered not” to call upon the name of the Lord. This would seem to be a straightforward indication that the brother of Jared had forgotten to pray, but that is an unsatisfying answer. The brother of Jared is a man who has called upon the Lord before and been worthy of prophetic answer. He is a man who calls upon the Lord now, and receives a direct communication. It is doubtful that even the most spiritually attuned prophets would receive a direct communication from the Lord during every prayer, and even if we were to assume that such a prophet might not have had a formal prayer (though difficult to conceive) it is virtually certain that he would follow the admonition of the later Alma:
Alma 34:27
27 Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.
The chastisement of the Lord was probably not for forgetting to pray at all, but for a very specific prayer that should have been prayed and was not. The brother of Jared would not have forgotten about the Lord, would not have thought less of the Lord, but he might have neglected to ask an important question. The Jaredites have been somewhere for four years. When the Lord comes to chastise the brother of Jared, the theme of the instructional part of that revelation is that they get on to going to the promised land. This suggests that the reason that the brother of Jared was being chastised was because he had allowed the Jaredites to settle into a land that was not their land of promise. This was not the place where the Lord wanted this people, and the brother of Jared had neglected to ask the Lord about continuing the journey. This is the message that the Lord has for them, and must have been the reason that the chastising comes.
Geographic: The Jaredite band is in the wilderness for four years. They are now ready to embark towards the promised land. Allen champions the Pacific crossing, while this commentary sees the Atlantic crossing as more probable. Allen presents his arguments in his book, Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon. (Joseph L. Allen. Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon. S.A. Publishers, 1989, pp. 258-262). In addition to Allen’s problem of finding a place where one water-journey might end right were the next begins, some of his analysis depends upon his reading of Ixtlilxochitl as requiring that the “first settlers” came from Asia (Joseph L. Allen. Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon. S.A. Publishers, 1989, p. 260). Unfortunatley, that reading both misunderstands what Ixtlilxochitl is saying, and places way too much historical accuracy on a very questionable source.
The reading suggested here is that the chastisement would be directly related to the inaction. If the Jaredites were traveling during those years, as Allen proposes, then the Lord would not have had to remind them to get on to the task, for they would already be about that task as they traveled to a departure point. It is more probable that the time in the wilderness was spent without significant travel, and that the command of the Lord comes at this time to tell them to get going.