1 Ne 2:15 And my father dwelt in a tent
This is the shortest verse
in the Book of Mormon. It may seem to carry little meaning. However, Hugh
Nibley writes:
¡°The editors of the Book of Mormon
have given a whole verse to Nephi's laconic statement, ¡®And
my father dwelt in a tent¡¯ (1 Nephi 2:15), and rightly so, since Nephi
himself finds the fact very significant and refers constantly to his father's
tent as the center of his universe. To an Arab, ¡®My
father dwelt in a tent¡¯ says everything. ¡®The present inhabitants of
Palestine,¡¯ writes Canaan, ¡®like their forefathers, are of two classes:
dwellers in villages and cities, and the Bedouin [tent-dwellers]. As the life
and habits of the one class differ from those of the other, so do their houses
differ. Houses in villages are built of durable material; . . . on the other
hand, Bedouin dwellings, tents, are more fitted for nomadic life¡¦¡¯¡±
¡°So with the announcement that his ¡®father dwelt in a tent,¡¯ Nephi serves notice that
he had assumed the desert way of life, as perforce he must for his journey: any
easterner would appreciate the significance and importance of the statement,
which to us seems almost trivial. If
Nephi seems to think of his father¡¯s tent as the hub of everything, he is
simply expressing the view of any normal Bedouin, to whom the tent of the sheikh is the sheet anchor of
existence.¡± (Lehi in the Desert and the
World of the Jaredites, pp. 57-58)