NAHOM

NAHOM

Lehite GN		Old World burial place of ISHMAEL, probably in Arabia (1 Nephi 16: 34)

Surprisingly, evidence for Nahom as a Book of Mormon name is based primarily on historical, geographic, and archaeological—and only secondarily on etymological—
considerations. Three alter inscriptions containing NHM as a tribal name and dating from the seventh to the sixth centuries B.C—roughly the time period when Lehi’s 
family was traveling through the area---have been discussed by S. Kent Brown.100 Nhm appears as a place name and as a tribal name in southwestern Arabia in the 
pre-Islamic and early Islamic period in the Arab antiquarian al-Hamdani’s al-Iklíl101 and in his Sifat Jazírat al-‘Á rab.102 If, as Robert Wilson observes, there is 
minimal movement among tribes over time,103 the region known as “Nehem” may well have had that, or a similar, name in antiquity.   The Hebrew root nhm meaning 
“to groan” (of  persons),104 attested in Ezekiel 24:23 and Proverbs 5:11, may reflect the actions of the daughters of Ishmael in 1 Nephi 16:35 in “mourn[ing] 
exceedingly, because of the loss of their father, and because of their afflictions in the wilderness.” Were the name originally  “Neḥem,” the Semitic roots suggested in 
1950 by Hugh Nibley (the Arabic naḥama, “to sigh or moan;” and the Hebrew root nḥm, “comfort”)105 would also fit the context of 1 Nephi 16.

Cf. Book of Mormon NEUM, JAROM, JACOM


100 Brown, “New Light from Arabia on Lehi’s Trail,” in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, 
UT: FARMS, 2002), 55-125, esp. 81-82.


101 Al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Hamdani, al-Iklíl, ed. Nabih Faris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), 35, 94.

102 al-Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-‘Árab, ed. David H. Müller (Leiden: Brill, repr. 1968), 49, 1.9; 81, 1.4, 8, 11; 83, 1.8, 9; 109, 1.26; 110, 112.2, 4, 126, 1.10; 135,1.19, 22; 
167, 1.15-20; 168, 1.10, 11, where nhm is listed as either the name of a “region, territory” (Ar. balad) or a “tribe” (Ar. qabíla); Jawad ‘Ali, Al-Mufassal fi Ta’ ríkh al-‘Árab 
qabla al-Islām (Beirut: Dar al-‘Ilm lil-Malayan, 1969–73), 2:414, gives “Nhm” as the name of a “region” (Ar. ard) during the period of the “mukarribs and the [ancient] 
kingdom of Saba” (Ar. fī ayyām al-mukarribína wa-fī ayyām mulūk Saba’); he also gives “Nhm” as a place name, Al-Mufassal, 4:187 and 7: 462.

103 Robert Wilson, “al-Hamdani’s Description of Hashid and Bakil,” Proceedings from the Seminar on Arabian Studies 11 (1981): 95, 99-100.

104  D. J. A. Clines, ed, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 5:631.

105 Hugh W. Nibley, “Lehi in the Desert.” Improvement Era 53 (June 1950): 517; Nibley, Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1952), 
90-91; Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert/The World of he Jaredites/There Were Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 79