Nephi's family is on a boat. They are sailing to the promised land. Nephi's brothers and the sons of Ishmael and their wives are starting to be merry, dance, sing, and speak "with much rudeness."
Nephi says that he, "began to fear exceedingly lest the Lord should be angry with us, and smite us because of our iniquity, that we should be swallowed up in the depths of the sea."
I noticed that the pronouns here seemed to include Nephi in the rudeness. However, in the previous verse, he did not explicitly say that he himself was rude. He also does not mention rudeness of his wife, his brother Sam and his wife, his parents Lehi and Sariah, and probably Nephi's sisters - I am sure he had them, even though they are obnoxiously not mentioned by name.
We had the missionaries over for dinner and I let them look at my questions ("Wow, we would be so overjoyed if some investigator came and asked us these questions because it would mean they are really thinking about the scriptures!"). They were not able to answer all of my questions, but they both agreed that they think that the answer to this is no.
No, Nephi was probably not involved in the rudeness, at least very much. It would be totally out of his character.
I wonder how this idea ties into that of "innocent bystanders." Like, if people are being generally wicked in an area, and the Lord decides to send a plague or a famine or a war (or whatever) to smite the wicked, does it include the righteous who are there? My intuition tells me yes, it does. That doesn't bode very well for my country, and the prophecies that state that we will be blessed inasmuch as we as a people are righteous. Actually, it's downright scary.
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