What did "cut off from the presence of the Lord" mean to Nephi?

"Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord": My last post catalogues instances and variants of that sentence in the Book of Mormon and speculates as to its origin. In this post and the next one, I want to explore what exactly is being threatened in the last clause. What does it mean to be cut off from the Lord's presence?

The only biblical reference to being cut off from the presence of the Lord is in the Holiness code of Leviticus. For reasons explained in my earlier post "The Nephites knew nothing of an 'Aaronic priesthood,'" I do not believe that Lehi or his descendants had the Book of Leviticus in anything like its present form; their "five books of Moses" (1 Ne. 5:11) and "law of Moses" (1 Ne. 4:15 and passim) were not the same as the Torah we know. Still, Lehi and Nephi came out of the same general cultural milieu that later produced Leviticus, so that book can give us some clues as to what the phrase may have meant to them. Here is the passage in question, reporting the Lord's words to Moses:

Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the Lord. Say unto them,Whosoever he be of all your seed among your generations, that goeth unto the holy things, which the children of Israel hallow unto the Lord, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from my presence: I am the Lord. . . .

The soul which hath touched any [unclean thing] shall be unclean until even, and shall not eat of the holy things, unless he wash his flesh with water. And when the sun is down, he shall be clean, and shall afterward eat of the holy things; because it is his food (Lev. 22:2-3, 6-7).

If I am right that Leviticus was produced long after Moses's time, then it is actually describing later Temple regulations and projecting them back in time to the Tabernacle of Moses. Here, the idea seems to be that those who enter the Tabernacle/Temple are entering the presence of "the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims" (1 Sam. 4:4). A priest who "goeth unto the holy things" while ritually unclean will be cut off from that presence -- meaning, I think, that he will lose his access to the Temple and his right to function as a priest. Among the "holy things" which a priest would "eat of" was the shewbread -- literally "bread of the presence" -- reinforcing this interpretation that the "presence of the Lord" has to do with the Temple and what pertains to it.

It seems very likely that Nephi also understood the "presence of the Lord" in this way. Consider this passage, where he describes what he sees as a fulfilment of the Inasmuch Promise:

And it came to pass that the Lord did warn me, that I, Nephi, should depart from [Laman and Lemuel] and flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me. . . . And we did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. . . . And it came to pass that we began to prosper exceedingly, and to multiply in the land. . . .

And I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon’s temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine. . . .

And behold, the words of the Lord had been fulfilled unto my brethren, which he spake concerning them, that I should be their ruler and their teacher. Wherefore, I had been their ruler and their teacher, according to the commandments of the Lord, until the time they sought to take away my life. Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence (2 Ne. 5:5, 7, 13, 16, 19-20).

Nephi says that Laman and Lemuel have been "cut off from the presence of the Lord" -- but the narrative only tells us that they were cut off from the presence of Nephi. However, Nephi makes a point of mentioning that he built a temple "like unto Solomon's" only after separating from Laman and Lemuel. A few verses later (2 Ne. 5:26), he ordains his younger brothers Jacob and Joseph as priests (because Nephi knew nothing of Aaron or of the rule that only his descendants could be priests). If Laman and Lemuel had not rebelled against Nephi, they too would have had access to this temple. In fact, Nephi might have ordained them to be priests instead of Jacob and Joseph (just as Moses, according to later legend, had ordained his own elder brother). Having rebelled, though, they were, like the priests in Leviticus who profaned the holy things, "cut off" from the House of the Lord, in which his presence dwells.

Later Nephites, beginning with Nephi's own brother Jacob, would expand the meaning of being "cut off from the presence of the Lord," as I will discuss in my next post. I think this is what it meant to Nephi himself, though, and why he considered the threat of cutting-off to have been fulfilled when his people separated themselves from the Lamanites.