”For behold, it came to pass that YHWH spoke unto my father, yes, even in a dream, and said unto him, Blessed are you Lechi because of the things which you have done. And because you have been faithful and declared unto this people the things which I commanded you, behold, they seek to take away your life.” (1 Nephi 1:6 Hebraic version)
In the first year of the reign of the new king, Zedekiah, many prophets began to teach that Jerusalem, the great city, the “holy” city, should be destroyed. This caused Lehi to pray to the Lord on behalf of his people. His payer of intercession for his people led to his own prophetic vision, where he saw and heard much, including how the great and not-so-holy city Jerusalem should be destroyed along with many of its inhabitants, while others should be taken captive to Babylon. Lehi began to warn the people of the things which he saw and heard in this vision. As a result of what he went around saying, the people sought to have his life taken away. Then Lehi had another dream in which the Lord called him “blessed” for what Lehi had been doing in teaching the people of the destruction of Jerusalem, even though it made the people mad for him to talk like that. He did it anyway and for his reward from the people he was serving, they wanted him to die.
Not exactly the reaction he was hoping for. In fact, that’s likely the worst reaction they could have had. It certainly was not what he had in mind when he prayed for them with all of his heart. Even though it really pissed them off, he did it anyway and he kept doing it, until the Lord told him he had done enough. Now he needed to depart. Leave the people he had prayed for and lived among all of his life. Give up the land he had always known, to go into the wilderness in search of a new land.
Did Lehi succeed in his preaching? For us, being removed from the situation and the consequences of his teaching, it can be easy to say “yes! because he did what the Lord asked him to do!” But in the moment, to Lehi, it didn’t feel like a victory. He was praying on behalf of his people because he genuinely loves them. His message is not merely one of destruction. It’s also of a path to redemption. He teaches them how they can get out from under the threat of destruction and be spared. That’s what he wanted. That’s what he was hoping for. He taught them to repent and they would not be destroyed! It would require them to change their lifestyle and they would be saved.
But the people did not latch onto his message. In fact, they not only would not agree with him, they did not even listen enough to take him seriously. They treated him with contempt. He could hardly say anything before they would argue that he was already wrong, even before he could make his real point. He couldn’t get anywhere with them. They would not repent. In fact, they fought against him vigorously, often before he could really get a word out. Why would they be so aggressive against him? It’s almost like they knew what he was going to say. They had already been prepared with arguments against him. They could shoot him down before he could make a point because they had been so rigorously trained about various ways to reject anyone who came and taught anything like what he was teaching. They had refined their arguments and taken a firm stance about what they would do when anyone tried to challenge them as Lehi was doing. Rather than hear Lehi out and have a thoughtful discussion about it, they shot him down right out of the gate. They doubled down on their chosen way of life, defending themselves and their position so strongly that they thought Lehi should be the one to be destroyed for not “repenting” of his views. They were hard in their hearts. They had made up their minds. They weren’t going to change no matter what Lehi said. Despite their harsh treatment and rigorous defense about why Lehi was “absolutely wrong”, Lehi would not “repent” of his views or change his teachings. They could kill him and he would not take back his words. He was sure that his teaching came from God. To them, it must have appeared that Lehi was the one being hard and stubborn, unwilling to yield to their logic, reason and authority, even when they openly warned him that he would be killed if he persisted.
This is what led Lehi to contemplate what he should do.The Lord heard Lehi’s plea for help and warned him in a dream to flee Jerusalem. Even though the people utterly rejected what Lehi taught among them, the Lord called him “blessed” for doing what the Lord wanted him to do. He had tried to warn the people even though it wasn’t effective. In fact, he was so “ineffective” that his own family did not really believe him, much less the people. His wife didn’t stop him, but she was not really on board with him either. His oldest sons did not believe him. In fact, they thought the arguments about him being dead wrong were true. His younger sons didn’t know what to think about it. They didn’t really care that much… until it would directly affect them because now he would be taking them away from Jerusalem, away from their home and friends. When they saw that his weird views would end up affecting them so dramatically, then they began to care. But before then, they were not on board with him either.
So up to this point, nobody that close to Lehi believed he was onto something. He wasn’t exactly supported in his views at home. When he told the people of Jerusalem what he thought, they let him know in no uncertain terms that he was dead wrong.
It’s in this environment that the Lord calls him blessed. The Lord is perhaps the only one who has given him any peace or assurance about anything he has been doing lately. It may be the only assurance he gets, but the peace that Lehi receives from the Lord, is enough.