The three brief verses we have of Nephi’s lament clearly were not the complete text, nor the complete context. Nephi is engaged in a process of mourning for the sins of the people, and this mourning apparently took on a vocal as well as visual form. Since Nephi was elevated on his tower by the road leading to the chief market, he was right in the visual/audial path of the throngs that would move back and forth to market. Thus they would naturally notice this unusual mourning on the tower. Clearly those who heard it deemed it unusual, and they gathered others to come and see and hear the spectacle on the tower.
Welch suggests that the nature of Nephi’s lament was in the visual and audible form of a lament for one who had died:
“Several clues indicate that Nephi may have attracted attention to his message by carrying on as if someone had just died.
1. Nephi was in “great mourning” (7:11) and “lamentation” (7:15). Mourning generally means more than just feeling sorry or crying privately. One can imagine Nephi dressed in traditional Nephite mourning attire (whatever that might have been), gesticulating on top of his tower perhaps in motions of bereavement. Onlookers would have wondered immediately who in the important aristocratic household of the great Alma’s descendants had just died.
2. He continued with this conduct for a fair amount of time—at least long enough for people to go tell many others in town who then turned out in multitudes (see 7:11). If during this time Nephi was conducting a recognizable mock mourning or funeral ceremony, this would have been quite a curiosity.
3. Whatever he did, it was something of a public spectacle that worked the crowd into a state of awe, for Nephi told them they indeed had “great need to marvel” (7:15).
4. The tower would probably have been a pyramid or similar structure. Typically, such mounds were used for burials, as well as for prayer. If Nephi’s tower was the family burial site, his reference to the righteousness of his ancestors in his allegorical funeral for the Nephite nation would have been all the more poignant.
5. If Nephi was mourning and lamenting, the crowd would have wondered, of course, who had died. It would have struck them personally, therefore, when Nephi began decrying their iniquities (see 7:13-14). Moreover, since he speaks later of “murder” (7:21; 8:26), it is possible that he spoke the word “murder” as he poured out his soul to God while the crowd was gathering.
6. Nephi surprised the crowd when he asked them, “Why will ye die?” (7:17). Unless they repent, he told them, God will turn them into “meat for dogs and wild beasts” (7:19), and their souls will be hurled to everlasting misery (see 7:16). Nephi predicted slaughter and utter destruction at the hands of enemies (see 7:22, 24) and prophesied that the people would be “destroyed from off the face of the earth” (7:28).
7. Nephi then cited examples of people who had been delivered from death (see 8:11-19) and spoke of other destroyed peoples. Thus, the themes of death and deliverance from death characterize Nephi’s words throughout this speech.
8. Nephi concluded by being specific. For one person in particular, Nephi’s funeral may have been more than mere allegory. Nephi announced prophetically the death of the chief judge in Zarahemla (see 8:27). His death not only would have validated Nephi’s words in general, but also would have presented a corpse, symbolically representing all the people of Zarahemla and potently completing the allegorical message of this apparent funeral sermon.” (John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992], 242.)