Laman¹ was the eldest son of Lehi and Sariah, and brother to Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Jacob, Joseph, and unnamed sisters. As firstborn he stood to receive the birthright, but Lehi told him he would forfeit the ruler’s blessing if he rebelled: that blessing would pass to whoever kept the Lord’s commandments (1 Ne. 2:21-22).
Laman murmured against his father from the start, objecting that Lehi was a visionary man who had led the family out of Jerusalem and left behind their land, gold, and silver to perish in the wilderness (1 Ne. 2:11-12). In Lehi’s dream, Lehi looked toward the head of the river and saw Laman and Lemuel there, but they would not come to him and partake of the fruit (1 Ne. 8:17-18); Lehi closed the account by saying he “exceedingly feared for Laman and Lemuel; yea, he feared lest they should be cast off from the presence of the Lord” (1 Ne. 8:36)—the very fate that later came to pass. He and Lemuel refused to accept Nephi, their younger brother, as a ruler over them (1 Ne. 18:10). When Nephi set out to build a ship, they mocked him as a fool and would not believe he was instructed of the Lord (1 Ne. 17:17-18).
While crossing the sea, Laman and Lemuel bound Nephi with cords and treated him harshly; the compass stopped working and a storm threatened to drown them, and only when they were about to be swallowed up did they repent and loose him (1 Ne. 18:11, 1 Ne. 18:20-21). Earlier rebukes had likewise been short-lived: an angel had stood before Laman and Lemuel as they beat Nephi and Sam with a rod (1 Ne. 3:29), and the voice of the Lord had chastened them in the wilderness until they turned away their anger and repented (1 Ne. 16:39).
Laman had once proposed to Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael that they kill both Lehi and Nephi (1 Ne. 16:37). After reaching the promised land and after Lehi’s death, his hostility toward Nephi returned, and the Lord warned Nephi to flee into the wilderness with those who would follow him: his family, Zoram, Sam, Jacob, Joseph, and his sisters (2 Ne. 5:5-6). This separation divided the people into Nephites and Lamanites; those who would not hearken were cut off from the presence of the Lord, which was the curse (2 Ne. 5:20). Nephi writes that a “skin of blackness” came upon Laman’s descendants that they might not be enticing unto his people (2 Ne. 5:21).
In his final blessing Lehi promised Laman’s children that if they were cursed, the cursing may be taken from them and answered upon the parents’ heads, and the Lord would be merciful to their seed forever (2 Ne. 4:6-7). Centuries later the Lamanites at times exceeded the Nephites in righteousness, as in the sixty-second year of the judges, when the more part of them became a righteous people, steady in the faith (Hel. 6:1).