History: Isaiah 2:10 also refers to hiding in caves, or “the cavity of a rock”: “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.” George M. Lamsa, lecturer and author specializing in viewing the Bible from an Eastern and Aramaic perspective, comments: “‘Enter into the rocks, and hide in the dust’ is an Eastern saying, which means, ‘Flee for your life, be ashamed and confounded.’” Both Isaiah’s and Lamsa’s idiom certainly derive from the large number of Palestinian caves which have historically been used as hiding places in time of war. Thus, Nephi and his brothers find typical shelter for those being pursued through the desert near Jerusalem.
Archaeology: In 1961, workmen building a road discovered a burial cave about twenty miles southwest of Jerusalem with some unusual graffiti. The site is known as Khirbet beit Lei, or the “ruin of the House of Lei.” LDS interest in the cave focuses on the name and the representations of three human figures scratched onto the cave wall with a crude stylus, as well as two crudely rendered ships. An inscription (possibly accompanying the drawing) reads:
“Yahveh (is) the God of the whole earth;
the mountains of Judah belong to
him, to the God of Jerusalem.”
“The (Mount of) Moriah Thou has favoured,
the dwelling of Yah, Yahveh”
“(Ya)hveh deliver (us)!”
The style of the letters varied greatly. “‘In view of the nature of the graffiti,’ says [Joseph] Naveh [archaeologist, and original excavator of the cave], we assume that all the inscriptions and drawings belong to a short period of time, and they were incised by a number of persons.” He concludes that “the form of the burial cave and the script date to before 587 B.C., during the preexilic period.”
The most fascinating interpretation of the graffiti comes from Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, emeritus, of Harvard University. Cross suggests that the graffiti came from chance visitors and dates the inscriptions at around 600 B.C. He comments:
It is very difficult to avoid the speculation that inscription A [the first two lines of Cross’s translation above] is the citation of a lost prophecy, and that it and its companion inscriptions were written by a refugee fleeing the Chaldeans who conquered Judah and destroyed the holy city in 587 B.C. Most documents, especially manuscripts and papyri, found in Palestinian caves were left behind by men in such circumstances. The same may be true of these graffiti. Perhaps such speculations are built on too flimsy a foundation of facts; at all events we should suppress the temptation to suggest that the oracle and the petitions may have been the work of a prophet or his amanuensis fleeing Jerusalem.
Of course the LDS community’s interest was keen in a cave near Jerusalem associated with the name Lei, containing inscriptions related to a fleeing refugee and sailing vessels.
Is this the cave where the brothers hid? Probably not. There is no indication that they knew they would be embarking on a sea journey at the time they returned for the brass plates. The cave is not in the plausible line of the family’s flight from Jerusalem toward the Red Sea. The inscriptions of the Jerusalem cave might be from a fleeing prophet, but that would describe Lehi, not his sons. Even though the chances of having found the very cave Nephi says they hid in is so slight, it still offers excellent archaeological and cultural support for the Book of Mormon. Certainly hiding in a cave was a known tradition, placing the four brothers in very good ancient company. Dana M. Pike, associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University concludes:
Some Latter-day Saints have claimed that the Khirbet Beit Lei tomb, in which these inscriptions were found, served as the temporary hiding place of Nephi and his brothers after they fled from Laban (1 Ne. 3:27) and that these texts and pictures were inscribed by Nephi. However, there is no real basis for such a claim. In addition to the obvious challenges of just reading and dating the inscriptions and the linguistic challenge of relating the name Beit Lei with the name Lehi, this burial chamber seems much too distant from Jerusalem to be a reasonable candidate for the brothers’ hiding place.