I did not understand the Laban episode until I read Nephi and the Birth of Sovereignty.

Now that I understand how status works, I understand the Laban episode better.

New sovereignty means a new status system.  If the old status system is maintained, its not a new sovereignty, only the old one with different names written in on the mental org chart.

Independence means thinking differently.

We learn about the content of the old Jerusalemite status system in Nephi Ch. 2:4.  It consists of what Lehi leaves behind.

He left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness.

Gold and silver and precious things are meaningless in the wilderness, and house and inherited land can’t be moved.

Laman and Lemuel still belong to the old status system and complain about missing”their inheritance, and their gold, and their silver, and their precious things.”  (1 Nephi 2:11).

Their father wishes them to change to the new one, and asks his two sons to be respectively like a river flowing into the Red Sea (away from Jerusalem) and like a valley formed by that river.  In other words, having a different orientation.  (By the way: as Heraclitus reminds us, rivers are symbols of purposeful change.  Asking Laman to be like the river is asking him to be ever-repenting.  Asking Lemuel to be like the valley is asking him to be centered around and formed by the process of repentance.)

Then the brothers go back for the brass plates.  After failing by simply asking for it, they decide to get it in terms of the Jerusalem status system.  They go down to the land of their inheritance, gather their gold and their silver and their precious things (1 Nephi 3:22) and offered it to Laban (1 Nephi 3:24).  He takes it and uses his status as a man with retainers to try to have them killed.  They have reached a nadir in the Jerusalem status system.  Their attempt to acheive God’s purposes within that system fail.

Nephi wins by forgetting about gold and silver.  Instead he follows the Spirit.  He kills Laban, dresses up as him (claiming his status), but then subverts Laban’s status system by going into Laban’s treasury and taking only the brass plates.