Jared’s Journey to the Great Sea that Divideth the Land

The people who later became known as the Jaredites in Book of Mormon history, were originally under the leadership of Jared, and the spiritual guidance of his brother, Mahonri Moriancumer, typically referred to in the Jaredite record as the Brother of Jared. During the time of the confusions of tongues in the area of Babylon, in what is now Iraq, about 59 miles southwest of Baghdad, in was in the center of what was then called Mesopotamia, meaning “Land Between the River.” It was here on the Alluvial Plain between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, later to be called Sawad, that mankind first began to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organized government—notably Uruk, from which "Iraq" is derived.

Mesopotamia “the Land Between the Rivers”

This area, considered to have had civilized centers as early as 2300 BC, has been the early home of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It was the earliest center of agriculture, tool-making and architecture, as well as mass-produced goods, and the first written history, as well as the first evidence of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, written law, medicine, and organized religion.
    Somewhere along this period, in an area of Mesopotamia known as Shinar, the building of the Tower of Babel was commenced. At this time, everyone in this vast area spoke one language, commonly thought to have been Chaldaic or pure Hebrew—the first tongue or mother tongue spoken by Adam, Shem, and Noah, though some disagree with this point.
    However, in all of Mesopotamia, a single language was spoken—whether the language of Adam was preserved up until the confusion of tongues, or it had evolved into the Chaldaic claimed by many linguists, is doctrinally unknown. What is known, is that the people in Mesopotamia at this time had achieved much in art, architecture, agriculture and animal husbandry. There were flocks and herds of animals, abundant fowls of the air, plenteous fish, and vast regions of bees.

The Brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded

When the Brother of Jared inquired of the Lord regarding the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of the people, the people of Jared were agriculturists and herdsmen—they were not involved in the evil of building the tower to seek a way to heaven and bypass any further punishment of God, or to get to heaven without God. Obviously, those who built the tower were disobedient to God’s command to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1).
    The word “replenish” according to an 1828 definition means “to recover former fullness.” In other words, to fill the Earth as it had been filled with people prior to the Great Flood. However, the people of Shinar decided to dwell in one place, in Mesopotamia along the plain in Shinar—they did not disperse and replenish the Earth. So God confounded their language, forcing them to move into other areas “and scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:7-8).

The Route (dotted white lines) of Jared and his brethren to, first, “down into the valley which is northward,” then from the valley of Nimrod into the wilderness, across the “many waters” or the many rivers, lakes, and deep marshes to the south of Mesopotamia, near the sea in the wilderness

To the brother of Jared, the Lord said, “Go to and gather together thy flocks, both male and female, of every kind; and also of the seed of the earth of every kind; and thy families; and also Jared thy brother and his family; and also thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families” (Ether 1:41). The Jaredites began their enormous pilgrimage to a “land of promise” (Ether 2:7), beyond the vast sea or ocean or Great Deep (Ether 2:25) with its towering mountainous waves (Ether 2:24).

They did also prepare a vessel, in which they did carry with them the fish of the waters

As part of that pilgrimage, the Lord told them to take flocks of every kind, seed of every kind (Ether 1:41; 2:1), every kind of fish, fowls of the air, and honey bees (Ether 2:2-3), as well as herds (Ether 6:4). Obviously, they were going to a land where there would not be the animals, nor seeds for planting to replenish the vegetation, trees, and plants, as well as the animals, all of which had been destroyed by the Flood.
    Not only did the Jaredites land on an unoccupied and undergrown or barren land, they brought with them the only animals, birds, fish and plant seeds known to that land. When theorists, historians, anthropologists, and other “men of letters” write and discuss that the people of the Book of Mormon were not the only ones in the Land of Promise, that others were there before them, they might want to realize that if others had been there, the Jaredites would not have needed fish, birds, animals (herds and flocks) and honey bees, let alone seeds of every kind.
    After all, we have another example of a large number of people migrating elsewhere. When the Israelites left Egypt, they took what they already possessed, their flocks and herds (Exodus 12:32), including sheep, goats, and cattle (Exodus 12:38), but also took “yeast and bowls of leaven dough,” (Exodus 12:34,39) and asked their Egyptian friends and neighbors as Moses commanded them to do, for things made of silver and gold, as well as for clothing (Exodus 12:34-35).
    Interesting that they did not take seeds for plants and fruit trees, birds, fish, or bees, likely as they did not already possess them and that they would not be needed in an occupied land, i.e., Palestine. Neither did they leave their gold and precious things behind as Lehi did, but obtained even more to take with them—clearly they were going into an occupied land where money and wealth meant something. Where Lehi, with his animals and seeds of every kind went without wealth for it would not be needed in an unoccupied land.

The Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud

Regarding the Jaredites, who had been guided through the wilderness being led toward “that quarter where there never had man been” and “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). And upon their  voyage, they took with them sufficient food that they could subsist on the water, as well as food for their flocks and herds (Ether 6:4).
   Now, once reaching their land of promise following a 344-day voyage in the eight barges they built, the Jaredites commenced with their agricultural abilities (Ether 6:13,18). They also practiced their herdsman and husbandry skills (Ether 10:12), earlier, large numbers of their flocks and herds were driven southward by an epidemic of poisonous serpents into the narrow neck of land and to the Land Southward, “which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla (Ether 9:31,32). 
    Many of these animals that escaped into the Land Southward are mentioned by who stated: “Thus the land on the northward was called Desolation, and the land on the southward was called Bountiful, it being the wilderness which is filled with all manner of wild animals of every kind, a part of which had come from the land northward for food” (Alma 22:31), and were those that eventually worked their way downward to the area of Lehi’s landing, for Nephi says that the land there contained “beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men” (1 Nephi 18:25). They were also those wild beasts that filled the wilderness of Hermounts, which was wet and north of the city of Zarahemla (Alma 2:36).
    Now the herds and flocks of the Jaredites would have included camels, which made up a large number of the animals in and around Mesopotamia, which could be drive into the desert for transportation and as beasts of burden. In fact, the Jaredites would have had camels when crossing the deserts after leaving the Valley of Nimrod (Ether 2:4) in Mesopotamia, and “passing the sea in the wilderness” (Ether 2:7), which would have been the Persian Gulf, on their trek as the Lord led them through the wilderness (Ether 2:5) further to the “great sea that divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13), which had to be crossed to reach the land of promise, which God had preserve for a righteous people (Ether 2:7-8).

The wilderness of the Syrian Desert just southwest of Mesopotamia

Now, upon leaving Mesopotamia, the wilderness around these two rivers and the fruitful land in between, was the vast desert to the west and south, including the Syrian Desert and the Arabian Desert, the latter stretches down across the Arabian Peninsula, clear to the Rub’ al Khali, the largest sand desert in the world in the far south.
    Since northeast, north and northwest of Babylon in Mesopotamia at the time was occupied with other cities, farmlands, settlements, the only direction they could have taken “into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5), would have been to the south. So “that they did travel in the wilderness…being directed continually by the hand of the Lord” (Ether 2:6) and come to a “sea in the wilderness” (Ether 2:7), which would have been the Persian Gulf, often referred to as the Persian  Sea, and then into the wilderness of the desert and across as they headed to the great sea. 
    The only sea along this southern journey through the wilderness, which “the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13) would have been the sea of Arabia, along the southern shore of the Arabian Peninsula.
(See the next post, “Jared’s Journey into the Wilderness and the Climate of Their Seeds,” for the Jaredite arrival and their planting seeds and the husbandry skills that developed the animal known throughout the Land of Promise)