Hugh Nibley
“’And they durst not spread themselves upon the face of the land…’ If they tried to do it that way, then they exposed themselves everywhere. So they couldn’t raise grain; that would take too much time and effort. They didn’t want to do it anyway. They would be ‘sitting ducks’ if they tried to go out and farm that way, because that’s what they had been doing to the Nephites all these years. So what would they do? What a picture! They decided they would have to make one big [military] push.” (Teachings From the Book of Mormon, Lecture 81-3, p. 301)