Jeffrey R. Chadwick discusses Lehi's land of inheritance; concludes it was north of Jerusalem in the lands that were historically controlled by the tribe of Manasseh.

Date
2004
Type
Book
Source
Jeffrey R. Chadwick
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

Jeffrey R. Chadwick, "Lehi's House at Jerusalem and the Land of His Inheritance," in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem, ed. John W. Wech, Jo Ann H. Seely, and David -Rolph Seely (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2004), 81-130

Scribe/Publisher
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies
People
Jeffrey R. Chadwick
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

. . .

Conclusions about Lehi’s House at Jerusalem

Finally, I give some tentative conclusions about Lehi, his family, and his house at Jerusalem—tentative, again, because of the series of assumptions on which they are based:

1. Since his tribal heritage was Manasseh, but he had “dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days” (1 Nephi 1:4), Lehi was probably a descendant of Manassite refugees who had fled south to Judah with others of the northern kingdom when the Assyrians attacked, destroyed, and deported Israel in 724–722 BC.

2. Because they settled at Jerusalem, Lehi’s great-grandparents were part of the refugee camp that was surrounded by a new, seven-meter-wide city wall that King Hezekiah had built to protect the neighborhoods on the western hills and to annex them physically to the older parts of Jerusalem. The refugee camp area became known as the Mishneh, a “second” or “additional” part of the city.

3. Protected by Jerusalem’s wall, Lehi’s great-grandparents and their fellow Jerusalemites were not deported by the Assyrians in Sennacherib’s 701 BC attack on Judah. While the rest of Judah was thoroughly destroyed and over 200,150 other Judeans were taken away into captivity, Lehi’s ancestors were spared to live on, resulting in Lehi’s eventual birth in Jerusalem.

4. Lehi’s great-grandparents and grandparents were under the necessity of finding a way to make a living in Jerusalem, being landless sojourners to the area. They seem to have taken up the practice of metalsmithing, a high-tech vocation that did not require farm land outside the city. This vocation seems to have been passed down through the generations to Lehi and Nephi themselves, who were apparently expert in working both precious and industrial metals.

5. Lehi was probably born around 645 BC, a contemporary of both the prophet Jeremiah and King Josiah (born 648 BC). He would have been a young man when Assyrian occupation forces finally departed Judah after 630 BC and an adult by the time of Josiah’s Passover in 622 BC—a witness to the renewed independence and resurgence of Judah under King Josiah.

6. Lehi would probably have inherited the house and plot of land owned by his grandparents and parents in the Mishneh or would have acquired a lot nearby in the same neighborhood. In either case, by the time he was an adult, the Mishneh had transformed itself from an eighth-century BC refugee camp to an upscale quarter of the city where wealthy types like Shallum the royal clothier and Lehi himself lived, as well as possibly Laban (a Josephite captain of fifty) and Ishmael the Ephraimite.

7. With the evolution of the Mishneh into a wealthier neighborhood and the likelihood that industrial work would not have continued to be carried out in such surroundings, it is possible that Lehi’s metalsmithing and marketing operation was located well to the south of his residence, in the Makhtesh quarter of Jerusalem, where commercial and industrial enterprise were apparently operating during Josiah’s reign (Zephaniah 1:10–11).

8. Since the Middle Gate of Jerusalem was in use in Lehi’s day, just before 600 BC, it could very well have been the gate he used to exit the city as “he went forth,” perhaps circling the Temple Mount on its north side and crossing the Kidron Valley to ascend the Mount of Olives, where he “prayed unto the Lord . . . in behalf of his people” (1 Nephi 1:5). If so, it was likely through the same Middle Gate that “he returned to his own house at Jerusalem; and cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen” (1 Nephi 1:7).

9. The Middle Gate may well have been the portal through which Nephi entered Jerusalem on the night he “crept into the city and went forth towards the house of Laban,” who, being also of northern descent, may have lived in the Mishneh as well. In that event, it was probably just outside that northern city wall that Nephi had directed his brothers to “hide themselves without the walls” (1 Nephi 4:5).

Thus, when modern visitors to Jerusalem’s Old City walk through the restored Jewish Quarter, photograph the seven-meter-wide remains of Hezekiah’s wall, descend into a nearby basement to inspect the tower of the Middle Gate, and rest for lunch in the pleasant open-air plaza near the Rambam Synagogue, they are in the very area of the ancient Mishneh of Jerusalem where Lehi’s house was most probably found.

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