Weather Report from the Valley of Lemuel Wm. Revell Phillips The
"promised land" for the children of Israel lay between a
powerful empire to the north in the valley of the Tigris-
Euphrates—Babylon—and a powerful empire to the south in the
valley of the Nile—Egypt. Each empire pressured and manipulated
the kingdom of Judah for its own interest. In 598 BC,
Nebuchadnezzar, as crown prince of Babylon, defeated Judah and
installed Zedekiah as king. Many Jews who had favored Egypt fled
to the Nile valley before the final wrath of Nebuchadnezzar fell
upon Jerusalem in 586 BC. One Israelite who had Egyptian
connections (see 1 Nephi 1:2) and fled before the destruction
was the prophet Lehi. He was a member of an expatriate Israelite
community in Jerusalem1 whose fathers may have fled the doomed
northern kingdom more than a century before. Lehi was neither of
the tribe of Judah nor a Levite priest, and his inspired warning
of Jerusalem's impending destruction fell upon deaf ears. He did
not follow the exodus to Egypt b