In his Preserved in Translation: Hebrew and Other
Ancient Literary Forms in the Book of Mormon, Donald W. Parry wrote the
following which reminded me of the Hebraism one finds in the earlier readings of Alma 46:19):
Book of
Mormon Echoes of Biblical Hebrew: Numbers Without a Noun
In Biblical Hebrew a number might be given without
an accompanying noun. For instance, Genesis 45:22 states that Joseph “gave three
hundred of silver” to Benjamin. For clarity the King James translation supplied
the word pieces, distinguished by
smaller type in a different font (later italicized) to show it was not part of
the original text. Other biblical examples are “ten shekels weight of gold” (Genesis 24:22) and “he measured six measures of barley” (Ruth 3:15).
In the Book of Mormon, Laban is described as
a “mighty man” who can “command fifty, yea, even he can clay fifty” (1 Nephi
3:31). Do the two instances of fifty refer
to men, warriors, princes, or commanders of armies? We can guess, but the
translation does not specify. The verbs command
and slay in the parallelism
heighten the principal idea that further dealings with Laban will put Lehi’s
sons in jeopardy of their lives. One mighty enough to slay fifty is certainly more powerful and dangerous than one who
can command fifty.
Other Book of Mormon examples that follow the
Hebrew pattern of omitting nouns in expressions involving numbers include “by
the words of three, God hath said, I will establish my word” (2 Nephi 11:3), “my
little band of two thousand and sixty fought most desperately” (Alma 57:19);
and “it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and
sixty” (Alma 57:25). (Donald W. Parry, Preserved
in Translation: Hebrew and Other Ancient Literature Forms in the Book of Mormon
[Provo/Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young
University/Deseret Book, 2020], 36)
