The Economy of the Lord

Contrary to popular belief among many, all three Book of Mormon groups that were led to the Land of Promise, left from the same shore in southern Arabia. First, the Jaredites, who made their way across the desert from Mesopotamia to the shore where they languished for four years before building the submersible barges that took them across the “Great Deep.” Next came the Lehi Colony, the forebears of the Nephites and Lamanites, who left from this same shore after building a ship in a place they called Bountiful. Then came the Mulekites about ten years later, who were also led across the desert to this southern Arabian shore where they obviously built a ship and sailed to the Land of Promise.

While we only know for certain the path Lehi took across the desert, moving southeast along the eastern shore of the Red Sea and then turning eastward and crossing a most inhospitable desert to the seashore. In the economy of the Lord, the other two colonies arrived at this same area from which they journeyed across the oceans to the Land of Promise. An area along the southern Arabian coast the Jaredites first prepared and the other two groups enjoyed.

When the Lehi Colony reached the shore, they found a land of “fruit and honey” and all things that were “prepared of the Lord that we might not perish” (1 Nephi 17:5), and they called it Bountiful “because of its much fruit” (1 Nephi 17:6). Now, in an area where there is little record of previous occupation after the Flood, one might ask who prepared this area with fruit and honey that the Lehi Colony might not perish? Living today among grocery stores and convenient fast food outlets, we often forget that anciently, newcomers to unoccupied areas sometimes starved for lack of food before seeds could be planted and crops harvested.

1500 years before the Lehi Colony arrived along the seashore, the Jaredites had spent four years there, planting and harvesting and feeding a colony that would have numbered around 150 people—24 couples, each with four children would be 120, and given the Jaredites tendency toward very large families (Ether 6:20; 7:2), the numbers could have been closer to 200 (with 7 children per family). In any event, the honey bees the Jaredites took with them (Ether 2:2), would have multiplied in great numbers and some left behind when loading the barges, which would suggest why there are numerous ancient honey-combed caves along this single area of the Arabian coast from which the Lehi Colony is said to have set sail. And, of course, the Jaredites would have planted from their “seeds of every kind” (Ether 2:3), which would explain the abundance of fruit in the area the Nephites called Bountiful.

This economy of the Lord is the same type of thinking that led the group Brigham Young took across the plains to Utah, to plant some seeds along the way, so that the second group, led by my great grandfather some months later, could harvest to supplement their food supplies enroute.