The brass plates prove to be extremely important in the social and cultural history of what would become Nephi’s people. First, acquiring the plates establishes Nephi’s leadership, beginning the fulfillment of the prophecy that Nephi would rule his brothers. The large quantity of folk and biblical literature showing the younger son triumphing over the older is so popular that we might think of this pattern as the norm. The popularity, however, can be accounted for by fairly universal pressures on younger sons in the ancient world where primogeniture was the standard method of inheritance, thus requiring inventive action on the part of younger sons to make their own way. Nephi’s story may match common themes but it was nevertheless a very real disruption of the expected social order. In fact, the ascendancy of Jacob over Esau and that of Joseph over his brothers stress that these events were exceptions, not the rules.
Second, the brass plates were, in my opinion, Nephi’s model for his own plates. They were metal and written in “Egyptian” which is the “language” Nephi used in his record. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 5:14–16.)
Third, the plates contained the theology from which Nephite religion developed. Nephi, his brother Jacob, and some later leaders quote prophets whose words are found on the brass plates.
Fourth, the brass plates were a social anchor, stabilizing Nephite culture by linking it indissolubly to certain practices from the law of Moses. Omni 1:17 makes it clear that Nephite culture remained stable while the Mulekite culture, being without records, lost both its language and its faith in the true God (though this would certainly be true only from the Nephite perspective).
Fifth, the brass plates function as sacred object. They are part of the set of royal objects passed from Benjamin to Mosiah2 (Mosiah 1:16). It is possible that they were also the stuff of folk legend, for Nephi suggests that “these plates of brass should never perish; neither should they be dimmed any more by time” (1 Ne. 5:19).
History: Lehi’s Jerusalem contained a large number of people whose recent ancestors had been dispossessed of their lands in the north during the Assyrian captivity. Not all of the ten tribes were lost. Some of those people moved to the relative safety of the southern kingdom. Lehi and his family were among those who relocated. Laban may have been one of them as well. It was also a period of increased scribal activity surrounding the preservation of records that was perhaps occasioned by the loss of so much to the Assyrians and also to Hezekiah’s direct encouragement. With so much scribal activity, Aaron P. Schade, a Ph.D. candidate in Northwest Semitic epigraphy at the University of Toronto, suggests that “Laban’s possession of a scriptural record is thus not surprising.”
The story of Laban and the brass plates is a structured repetition of attempts and failures, followed by a final success. The purpose of reporting these repeated attempts is to emphasize the event’s importance rather than simply to recite “the facts.” By repeating the elements in similar ways, the story becomes typological and symbolic. In telling the story of Laban and the brass plates, Nephi shapes his narrative to make it more than history. Literary critic Richard Dilworth Rust notes:
There is significant repetition in the hero’s task given Nephi and his brothers—retrieving from Laban the scriptural records that would preserve for Lehi and his family “the language of our fathers,” the law, and “the words… of all the holy prophets. . . since the world began” (1 Ne. 3:19–20). This quest follows what Leland Ryken in How to Read the Bible as Literature calls “the storytelling principle of threefold repetition: a given event happens three times, with a crucial change introduced the third time.”
In the first of the three visits to Laban, and apparently without a plan, Laman futilely asks Laban to relinquish the records. Next, the brothers follow Nephi’s plan to offer their gold, silver, and other precious things for the plates of brass, only to have Laban take all this wealth from them and then try to have them pursued and killed. The third time, Nephi goes alone with no plan: “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do” (1 Ne. 4:6). Then the Lord’s plan goes into effect. This marks the “crucial change” Ryken speaks about.
Each of these efforts is put into motion by a pledge, and the pledges become more and more intense. At the initial request to get the plates, Nephi says to his father, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded” (1 Ne. 3:7). After Laman’s failure, Nephi increases his initial commitment to go and do what the Lord commanded and applies it to all the brothers: “As the Lord liveth, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the thing which the Lord hath commanded us” (1 Ne. 3:15). When the next plan fails and the older brothers are reproved by an angel for beating their younger brothers, Nephi calls for them all to “be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord” and affirms the power of God by alluding to the great miracle of the Israelites crossing through the Red Sea (1 Ne. 4:1–2). The emphasis has moved from “I will go and do,” to we will not leave until “we have accomplished,” to the Lord is “mightier than Laban and his fifty” and “the Lord is able to deliver us, even as our fathers, and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians.” (1 Ne. 4:1, 3)
I certainly believe that these events took place. However, I agree with Rust that, when Nephi wrote them down, he crafted them so that the events themselves become part of the metamessage of Nephi’s entire work. He is intent upon showing the works of God; to do that he tells the remarkable story of God’s dealings with Lehi’s family. By highlighting repeated events in the history, Nephi can increasingly bring God into the process. In retrieving the plates, the brothers failed when they were on their own. But as they continued to try, Nephi’s resolve and dedication increased, approaching the point when God would intervene on their behalf. The crucial change in their efforts came at the point that the structure itself predicts—the third attempt—which is also when the Spirit becomes part of the process. Nephi’s message is more than his story; it is a metaphor for human ineffectiveness without God, yet with the power to accomplish even the impossible when God is behind the enterprise. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 5:10 for a discussion of “brass.”)