Nahom

The place in the wilderness where Ishmael was buried. Unlike the river Laman and the valley of Lemuel — names Lehi himself bestowed — the text does not present Nahom as a name the travelers gave. It reports only that the place “was called Nahom” (1 Nephi 16:34): a name the family received, not one they coined.

In 1 Nephi

Arrival and the death of Ishmael (1 Nephi 16:33–34)

After the broken-bow episode, the group resumes travel: “we did again take our journey, traveling nearly the same course as in the beginning; and after we had traveled for the space of many days we did pitch our tents again, that we might tarry for the space of a time” (1 Nephi 16:33). The next verse records, without preamble or elaboration:

“Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom.” (1 Nephi 16:34)

The text gives no cause of death, no duration of illness, and no description of the burial rites. The entire notice is one clause. Nahom is named only here in 1 Nephi; it does not appear again.

Mourning and murmuring at Nahom (1 Nephi 16:35–36)

The death is followed immediately by an account of his daughters’ response:

“the daughters of Ishmael did mourn exceedingly, because of the loss of their father, and because of their afflictions in the wilderness; and they did murmur against my father, because he had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, saying: Our father is dead; yea, and we have wandered much in the wilderness, and we have suffered much affliction, hunger, thirst, and fatigue; and after all these sufferings we must perish in the wilderness with hunger.” (1 Nephi 16:35)

Their complaint names grief and accumulated suffering together. It echoes, in condensed form, the murmurings of earlier chapters: the wilderness journey has meant deprivation, and the death of a father in this place sharpens the despair. The murmuring continues in the following verse: “they did murmur against my father, and also against me; and they were desirous to return again to Jerusalem” (16:36). Laman then calls for Lehi and Nephi to be killed (16:37); the text presents the daughters’ mourning and Laman’s conspiracy as sequential but does not fold the daughters into the conspiracy itself.

The crisis is resolved when the Lord speaks and chastens the group, and the journey resumes (16:39).

The turn eastward (1 Nephi 17:1)

The first verse of chapter 17 marks the directional shift from Nahom: “we did again take our journey in the wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth” (1 Nephi 17:1). The phrase “from that time forth” links the eastward turn directly to the Nahom narrative that has just closed. Nahom is therefore the hinge point in the journey’s geography: all prior travel was “nearly a south-southeast direction” (16:13) or “nearly the same course” (16:33); from Nahom onward it is nearly eastward, leading eventually to Bountiful.

The “was called” detail

The text’s phrasing at 1 Nephi 16:34 is passive: the place “was called Nahom.” Compare the naming of earlier places in the same journey:

For every other named location in the journey, the text credits an active namer. At Nahom alone, it uses the passive construction — a name already attached to the place rather than bestowed by the travelers.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. The passive “was called” construction at 16:34 appears to indicate that Nahom was a pre-existing place-name rather than one coined by the group. Whether that distinction carries narrative weight — whether the text intends to signal that the travelers were passing through named territory — is not stated. The observation that the phrasing differs from every other named location in the journey is textual; the inference that this signals pre-existing inhabitation or a known toponym is interpretive.

Key references

Related

People: Ishmael · Lehi

Places: Places & Geography · Bountiful

Navigation: Index · Connections

Sources

The Book of Mormon (1 Nephi). All quotes are drawn verbatim from the frozen source files in raw/. Primary chapters: raw/1-nephi-16.md, raw/1-nephi-17.md.