Literature: This passage emphasizes the point structurally. Nephi begins with a paired set (v. 36), and then replicates the pattern:
creates earth to be inhabited
created children to inhabit it
raises up a righteous nation
destroys wicked nation
leads righteous into lands
removes wicked from the lands
In these three verses, Nephi creates a poetic parallel between Israel’s entry into its promised land and the Lehites’ entry into their promised land. He makes his point by a logic of progression. Because Yahweh creates the land and his children to inhabit it, we must understand that Yahweh wants his children to inhabit land. Because there are both righteous and wicked nations, the righteous (having Yahweh on their side) will prevail. Verse 38 continues the concept in verse 37 by showing that Yahweh leads his chosen people to that land. This concept is part of the historical example—but directly applicable to Nephi’s construction of the ship which will take them to their promised land.
Nephi could not have known (unless by unrecorded revelation) when he spoke these words whether the new land to which they would be led would be inhabited; but the parallelism makes that hypothesis. It further assumes that Yahweh will remove the obstacle of the wicked from the Lehites’ promised land just as he removed the wicked from the Israelites’ promised land. The analogy does not continue into the details of the entrance of the Israelites and the Lehites into their promised lands, as the Israelites enter by conquest, and the Lehites appear to have a peaceable entry. However, the method is not Nephi’s point. It is rather the overall parallel. By the time he wrote the words, of course, Nephi knew that the land was inhabited. He may have crafted this particular parallel to sharpen the prophecy’s fulfillment.