1 Nephi 12:23 speaks of the descendants of Laman and Lemuel becoming “a dark and loathsome, and filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations”.
This verse has been interpreted by some to indicate a physical darkening of the skin of those descendants as a curse from God.*
HOWEVER…
Jacob, in Jacob chapter 3, writes of skin being TOTALLY unrelated to degree of righteousness or of being favored by God.
And furthermore, and perhaps even more instructive and many generations later, as the descendants of Laman and Lemuel continue to live separately from “Nephites” (descendants of Nephi, Zoram, Jacob, Joseph and the people of Zarahemla) we read about an encounter between two groups of Nephites that is worth considering.
In Mosiah 7, when King Limhi, a “Nephite” who is not a descendant of Laman and Lemuel but who is very concerned about any possible further killing and other violence done by those descendants, encounters Ammon, Amalaki, Helm and Hem, outside his city wall (men who are ALSO NOT descendants of Laman and Lemuel (a.k.a. not “Lamanites”) but are rather from the the same city that Limhi’s grandfather came from) he immediately has them arrested and would have put them to death immediately except that he wanted to ask them some questions before doing so. (vs. 10-11)
Limhi has had tons of negative experiences dealing with descendants of Laman and Lemuel in his geographic location, (that story is retold starting in Mosiah 19) yet, it seems, he can’t tell right off, by their appearance, whether Ammon and his cohort might be some of those descendants.
Apparently he fears violence from Lamanite interlopers onto his people’s territory, but he cannot tell, just by looking at them, whether or not they are Lamanites (the people who have warred against them and are currently oppressing them) or Nephites, (the people that he has been sending people out to try to find. (See Mosiah 21).
So, if dark is not a reference a visible transformation, or a change in physical characteristics, what might “dark” refer to in 1 Nephi 12:23?
The index at the end of the book has a slough of references to dark and darkness. They refer to darkness as subjection to temptation, confusion, lack of comprehension, being fooled by traditions and/or prejudice, unawareness of the goodness of God, failing to repent, hiding sin, choosing to harm self or others, refusing to be open to divine revelation, repressing truth, anything that debases self or others, the effect of unbelief in God, and seeking to do evil.
And all of those are, of course, what Laman and Lemuel’s children and further descendants had to be wary of as they started their lives in this new (to them) part of the world. Any child or grandchild of people who do not value the teachings of God (whether or not they recognize that those teachings are from God) is going to be a bit more susceptible to the challenges listed above and less aware of how to recognize and receive God’s grace and power to overcome them.
Sometimes they succumb to those challenges. Other times they rise and overcome them.
So that leads to the question, in this verse (1 Nephi 12:23) is Lehi talking about a curse of change in appearance decreed by God, or is he relaying a a concerned warning by a loving, God: a reference to the naturally occurring spiritual and emotional challenges or pitfalls ahead that they, or you, or I will encounter as we choose to ignore God, and that may well make things more difficult not only for them, or you, or I, but also for their (and our) descendants to choose Him and His ways of peace?
It seems to me that the evidence points pretty solidly to the latter.
*(Note, the Church of Jesus Christ eliminated any reference to “skin of blackness” in chapter headings in 2020, making it clear that this description of change of pigment was erroneous and was not what was being described in 1 Nephi 12).
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