Text: Nephi has a specific purpose for these plates: to record “the things of God.” Other material about his people’s political and cultural life appears on the large plates, to which unfortunately we have no access. Presumably here Nephi recorded in detail the events that must be pieced together tentatively from sketchy clues: the Lehites’ first contact with the natives and negotiations for land, intermarriage with the locals, the establishment of manufacture and trade, and instruction from the locals about the flora, fauna, agricultural methods, and clay deposits for pottery.
Unfortunately, even the lost 116 pages of the Book of Lehi would probably not have related a great deal of information on these points, since Mormon abridged that record and did not see such information as relevant for his purpose either. The absence of such data is not a condemnation of the Book of Mormon; it is part of the book’s explanation about itself.
The Book of Mormon is a high-context document. (See Behind the Text: Chapter 1, “Text and Context.”) Such documents assume a shared body of information which the reader will use to fill in the missing information and meanings but which the author considers obvious—hence, unnecessary to record.
Variant: Joseph Smith altered verse 32 for the 1837 edition. “And if my people beare pleased with the things of God they bewill be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these plates.”