When Nephi wrote his record, this sentence came immediately after his discussion of Jehovah’s instructions to him. There was no chapter break. Nevertheless, when Orson Pratt broke up Nephi’s longer chapter into smaller ones, he recognized that there is a change in the story at this point. What Orson Pratt missed was that Nephi used his father’s tent as a dividing phrase.
In 1 Nephi 2:15 we saw the short sentence “and my father dwelt in a tent.” That phrase ended the section of Nephi’s writing where the main figure had been his father, Lehi. After that transition, Nephi becomes the focus of all the stories.
The first introduction to these Nephi-oriented stories is found in 1 Nephi 2:16-24, when Nephi indicated that he had prayed for confirmation of his father’s prophetic call. Nephi received a revelation in response, and it was a revelation that served to call Nephi as the prophet of the new people in the new world. The prophetic revelation spoke of the choice land promised to Nephi. It spoke of Nephi as the ruler and teacher over his brothers. It spoke of how, when the Lamanites would not accept him, they would be a scourge to Nephi’s people. At the end of that content, Orson Pratt ended both the revelation and the chapter.
Nephi ended that story one verse later—a verse that simply says “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, returned from speaking with the Lord, to the tent of my father.” We can tell that Nephi made his conceptual division at this point because he mentions his father’s tent. He finishes speaking with Jehovah. That is important information. Where he went after that would generally be less interesting.
Nephi uses the return to his father’s tent as a literary phrase marking the boundary of a story. Returning to the tent ends the story of the revelation. It is also a transition, because it places Nephi before his father. With Nephi at his father’s tent, he is in place to begin the next story, which will be the story of the retrieval of the plates of brass.