16 And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statutes and the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning.
In all the hardships and dangerous experiences Lehi and his
family have been through since they left Jerusalem, the thing that has been
Lehi’s anxiety, the thing that has concerned him from the beginning is that his
children, and especially these wayward ones, that they keep the commandments of
God. All of the physical harm that could come to them was not as dangerous as breaking
the commandments. The term used here is “statutes,” which means, or at least
implies, established laws of God in this case. In other words, he’s referring
to the Ten Commandments. This was the established law of God at the time. Then
of course there is the rest of the Law of Moses, which came from God. How could
they keep these statutes if they didn’t know them? Of course they had been
taught from their early childhood, but it was obvious that they didn’t love the
law or the scriptures, as Nephi did. Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life showed him
that these wayward sons wanted a different path for themselves other than the
one next to the iron rod. I suppose the anxiety of every righteous parent is
that their children keep the commandments. Mortal life and death are not as
weighty as eternal life and death.
