Does the Word “Sea” Mean Other than Ocean?

The Book of Ether records the Jaredites as passing by a Sea in the Wilderness (Ether 2:7). Some have interpreted this to mean an inland sea and, as a result, claim that the word Sea in the Book of Mormon does not always mean an ocean. However, this is not an accurate understanding of the scripture involved.

As the Jaredites left the Valley of Nimrod, which was northward of their homeland, they were led toward "that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5). North of their homeland would be north of the basic area in Mesopotamia where the Great Tower had been built (Ether 1:33). In this area is a great, natural depression which now holds the man-made lake Tharthar, called Buhayrat ath Tharthar, about seventy-four miles north of Baghdad, situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This natural valley is about two hundred feet below the surrounding area and once known as Waddi Tharthar. A Waddi is a shallow, usually sharply defined depression in a desert region, the bed or valley of a stream that is usually dry except during the rainy season and often forms an oasis.

In this valley oasis, the Jaredites were commanded by the Lord “that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been. And it came to pass that the Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud, and gave directions whither they should travel” (Ether 2:5). Now, the following verses have been confusing to many Book of Mormon scholars when describing the “many waters” the Jaredites had to cross by building barges.

Hugh Nibley claims these bodies were left over lakes from the ice age stretching across the steppes of Asia heading toward the Pacific Ocean through China. However, as stated in the book “Who Really Settled Mesoamerica,” this is shown to be a direction of travel impossible for the Jaredites in 2200 B.C. In addition, others claim the waters the Jaredites crossed was the Caspian and Aral Seas, but again, such a requirement of building barges to cross several such seas would be totally unnecessary as pointed out in the above mentioned book.

The delta of the Tigris and Euphrates is a natural wetlands/marshland where numerous rivers, lakes, and waterways exist—"many waters" indeed. Today this area is occupied by the Marsh Arabs

The fact is, that in crossing over the shallow locations of the Tigris River near the Waddi Tharthar and then traveling down the northern banks toward the south, the Jaredites would have reached the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where they empty into the Persianl Gulf, in the area known as Shatt-al-Arab. At this confluence, miles of swamp and wetlands have always made up this delta. This marshland even today is crossed only by small boats, or barges, and cover numerous rivers, waterways, lakes, and marshes—truly, “many waters.”
Once this marshland is crossed, the Jaredites would have encountered, as they traveled southward, the Persian Gulf. While some refer to it as an inland sea, it is connected through the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman, which is an inlet of the Arabian Sea. Thus, this “sea in the wilderness” is actually part of the Arabian sea and an ocean, connected to the Indian Ocean and the southern Ocean which crosses the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The Lord commanded the Jaredites not to stop along this sea,” but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people” (Ether 2:7). And “the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13), where “they dwelt along the seashore for the space of four years.”

Where scholars and theorists tend to go wrong in reading the Book of Mormon is their lack of understanding that the term “many waters” as used in the Book of Mormon, refers to a continuous flow of water, whether connected through rivers, lakes, fountains marshes and deltas, or through sea and oceans that run into one another, called by separate names for man’s convenience, but really one great body of ocean that covers most of the world.

In this case, the “sea in the wilderness” is really an extension inland of the Arabian Sea, which Lehi called Irreantum, when arriving on the southern Arabian coast of present-day Oman. Whether using the term “many waters” or using the name Irreantum, which means “many waters” the point is that this water was all connected. The idea that the word “sea” in the Book of Mormon did not always mean ocean is a misunderstanding of the terms used in Joseph Smith's translation--for in 1829, in the New England area, the word "sea" meant "ocean."