(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)
It’s been a long and busy day, and it’s not over yet. But I’m determined not to miss an entry. Not yet, anyway. (There will eventually be some travel days where it just won’t be possible to post.) So I’m going to content myself with a very brief note on today’s reading, 1 Nephi 21.
The first verse already piques my interest:
And again: Hearken, O ye house of Israel, all ye that are broken off and are driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people; yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad, who are of my people, O house of Israel. Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far; the Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.
It’s easy to see why Isaiah 49:1 (= 1 Nephi 21:1) would catch Nephi’s attention.
His own family had been “broken off and . . . driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors of [God’s] people.”
They were now most definitely “scattered abroad,” and scattered about as far as they could go without actually beginning to return.
They were also, so far as they could tell (not having the benefits of modern maps and Google Earth satellite photography) dwelling upon an “isle,” or certainly on a “coastland” (as the underlying Isaianic Hebrew word in might also be translated).
It wasn’t difficult, I suspect, for Nephi to “liken” this particular passage of scripture to himself.
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