In this highly compressed verse, Lehi concludes his blessings, “waxed old” (making it clear that some time passed between the blessings and death), and died. It is interesting that we hear nothing about Sariah once the text moves to the New World. We may assume that Sariah had died prior to the separation of the brothers because she is not mentioned in the group that went with Nephi, and certainly her years of living with Lehi would have made her favor the gospel as Nephi knew it.
This death was not only the passing of a patriarch but the death of the family as Nephi had known it. The restraints that had kept the warring family together, though in uneasy tension, were gone. The consequences followed quickly in Nephi’s narration—and probably chronologically as well.
Culture: Nephi gives us no information about Lehi’s burial, since it is not essential to his purpose. We cannot be certain about the method of burial. We would expect the new arrivals to continue their Old World model for funerary rites. However, the new circumstances may have required alteration of practices.
One of the points of correspondence between the two worlds would have been the rapid burial of the body. In the Old World, the lack of embalming and the warm climate encouraged rapid burial. The conditions of coastal Guatemala added high humidity to the heat. Lehi was probably buried within a day of his death.
Abraham’s burial was in a cave, and cave or tomb burials would have been the norm for the wealthy. Lehi would certainly have expected such a burial had they remained in Jerusalem, but it is unknown if there were caves available or, if so, that they would be used for that purpose in the New World. Karen Bassie-Sweet, professor of anthropology at the University of Calgary, describes the ritual uses of caves for Maya culture:
The rites associated with caves were initiations related to social incorporation, such as baptisms or the entrance to adolescence or adulthood, and sociopolitical ceremonies, such as investitures and ascensions. Other rites involving exorcism and the cure of illness were also carried out in caves. As well, many mythological events were thought to have occurred at caves. A cave was the location of the birth of gods and races. The sun and moon were said to be born from a cave. The Aztec believed they originated from Chicomostoc (Seven Caves). A womb/vagina is represented in many Mesoamerican birth metaphors by a cave.
The ways that Mesoamericans conceived of caves appear to be antithetical to the idea of a cave as a burial chamber. While there are human remains in some underground locations, such as the cenotes (natural cisterns) of Yucatan, those are more properly sacrifices than burials. The cultural sensitivity of the Mesoamericans concerning caves suggests that Lehi was not buried in a cave.
Nevertheless, Lehi may not have been buried according to the Mesoamerican custom of the time. Archaeologist Marcus C. Winter describes human burials between 1500 and 500 B.C. in the valley of Oaxaca, some three hundred kilometers north of Lehi’s plausible landing place: “The usual context is a shallow grave within 10 m or less of a house, or sometimes in a convenient bell-shaped pit that happened to be open at the time. This spatial association of burials with dwellings and pits suggests that the buried individuals were probably occupants of the nearest house. Adult individuals of both sexes (sometimes accompanied by dog burials), children, and infants have been found in the context of household clusters.” In contrast with the Mesoamerican practice of burials in household clusters, biblical burials were separated from dwellings, no doubt for purposes of ritual purity. This practice suggests that while Lehi may not have been buried in a cave due to the sensitivity of the indigenous peoples, he would probably have been buried away from the houses of his family. He was probably buried in the ground with some ceremony, in a location farther from their dwellings than would have been the Mesoamerican custom. For both Mesoamerica and Israel at this time, bodies were buried without coffins.
The Old World custom was for dramatic mourning to accompany a death for a period of seven days. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 16:33–35.) Although Sariah was probably not alive at this point, Lehi’s daughters and daughters-in-law would doubtless expect that Lehi deserved a “proper” mourning, even in the New World, and regardless of the changes they may have made in the burial place.
Variant: Joseph Smith changed the verse to read “and it came to pass that my father Lehi… ” in the 1837 edition. He apparently did not consult the original manuscript for this change, but made it on the expectation that Nephi typically referred to Lehi as “my father, Lehi.”