Narrative: Nephi uses the same narrative technique for this journey as for the first journey: “I, Nephi, and my brethren… ” (compare 1 Ne. 3:9).
Culture: Notice that Yahweh identified the person to whom they should make their entreaty, probably because Yahweh had prepared Ishmael to receive their message. Other than that, it is not possible to determine why Ishmael’s family was the one selected. Obviously the two families knew each other, since the mention of Ishmael’s name was sufficient to identify him to Lehi and his sons. Ishmael must have been a faithful and spiritually attuned man, for simply on the basis of the brothers’ explanation, he left his possessions, mobilized his family, and departed for the wilderness with them. Erastus Snow gives us a little more information about Ishmael, and parenthetically, about Lehi’s family: “The Prophet Joseph informed us that the record of Lehi, was contained on the 116 pages that were first translated and subsequently stolen, and of which an abridgment is given us in the first Book of Nephi, which is the record of Nephi individually, he himself being of the lineage of Manasseh;… Ishmael was of the lineage of Ephraim, and… his sons married into Lehi’s family, and Lehi’s sons married Ishmael’s daughters.”
Although the two patriarchs were from different tribes, it is nevertheless possible that they were related. Ariel E. Bybee, a Ph.D. candidate in Early Christianity and Patristics at Duke University, notes:
The daughters of Ishmael were patriarchally descended from Ephraim, while Lehi’s family was of the tribe of Manasseh (1 Ne. 5:14, Alma 10:3). However, it is not known whether some sort of blood relationship existed between the two families through Sariah or the wife of Ishmael. The Israelite tradition of cross-cousin marriage makes this kinship both possible and likely.
History: Nibley provides some important information about the phrase, “the land of Jerusalem”:
One important aspect of the early land organization and control remains to be mentioned, and that is the control of an area, already noted, by a “mother city,” to whom the other cities were “daughters.” Rome was originally the name of a city and nothing else, yet at all times all land under control of that city was called Roman and its inhabitants if they were free at all had to be citizens of Rome and had to go to Rome every year to vote, just as if they lived there. Finally all the civilized world became Rome and its inhabitants Romans. It is only in scale and not in nature that this differs from other cities. Socrates, Sophocles, and Euripides were all Athenian citizens and described themselves as men of Athens… yet they were born and reared and lived in villages many miles apart… none of them actually in the city. In the same way, while the Book of Mormon refers to the city of Jerusalem plainly and unmistakably over sixty times, it refers over forty times to another and entirely different geographical entity which is always designated as “the land of Jerusalem.” In the New World also every major Book of Mormon city is surrounded by a land of the same name.
The land of Jerusalem is not the city of Jerusalem. Lehi “dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days” (1 Ne. 1:4), yet his sons had to “go down to the land of our father’s inheritance” to pick up their property (1 Ne. 3:16, 22). The apparent anomaly is readily explained by the Amarna Letters in which we read that “a city of the land of Jerusalem, Bet-Ninib, has been captured.” It was the rule in Palestine and Syria from ancient times, as the same letters show, for a large area around a city and all the inhabitants of that area to bear the name of the city. It is taken for granted that if Nephi lived at Jerusalem he would know about the surrounding country: “I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about” (2 Ne. 25:6). But this was quite unknown at the time the Book of Mormon was translated—the Amarna Letters were discovered in 1887.
This concept of a city surrounded by lands of the same name will apply to locations in the New World as well.