Commenting on the use of “wild beasts of the islands” in the KJV of Isa 13:22 (cf. 2 Nephi 23:22), David P. Wright wrote:
Isa. 13:22//2 Ne. 23:22: “Wild
beasts of the islands.” The Hebrew would is not connected with “coast, region”;
it should be rendered simply “wild/desert beasts” or specifically “jackals” or “hyenas.”
(David P. Wright, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Or, Joseph Smith in Isaiah,”
in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and
Brent Lee Metcalfe [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002], 172)
This may be
another case (common throughout the essay) of Wright imposing modern meanings of words/phrases back into the 1830 Book of Mormon and the 1611 KJV. As Albert Banes, a
19th-century commentator, wrote:
22. And the wild beasts of the islands (אִיִּים);
see Notes, ch. 11:11; 41:1, on the word rendered ‘islands.’ The word denotes
islands, or coasts, and as those coasts and islands were unknown and
unexplored, the word seems to have denoted unknown and uninhabited regions
in general. Bochart supposes that by the word here used is denoted a
species of wolves, the jackal, or the thoes.
It is known as a wild animal, exceedingly fierce, and is also distinguished by
alternate howlings in the night (see
Bochart’s Hieroz. i. 3. 12). The word
wolf probably will not express an erroneous idea here. The Chaldee renders it,
‘Cats.’ (Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament: Isaiah, 2
vols. [London: Blackie & Sons, 1851], 1:261, emphasis in bold added)
Note on 11:11:
And from the islands of the sea. This expression probably denotes
the islands situated in the Mediterranean, a part of which were known to the
Hebrews. But, as geography was imperfectly known, the phrase came to denote the
regions lying west of the land of Canaan; the unknown countries which were
situated in that sea, or west of it, and thus included the countries lying
around the Mediterranean. The word translated ‘islands’ here (אִיִים)
means properly habitable dry land, in
opposition to water; Isa. 42:13: ‘I will make the rivers dry land;’ where to translate it islands would make nonsense. Hence, it means also land adjacent to
water, either washed by it, or surrounded by it, that is, a maritime country,
coast, or island. Thus it means coast
when applied to Ashdod (Isa. 20:6); to Tyre (Isa. 22:2, 6); to Peloponnesus or
Greece (called Chittim, Ezek. 27:6). It means an island when applied to Caphtor or Crete (Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7). The
word was commonly used by the Hebrews to denote distant regions beyond the sea, whether coasts or islands, and
especially the maritime countries of the West, to them imperfectly known
through the voyages of the Phenicians; see Note on ch. 41:1; comp. Isa. 24:15;
40:15; 42:4, 10, 12; 51:5. (Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old
Testament: Isaiah, 2 vols. [London: Blackie & Sons, 1851], 1:236)
Note on 41:11:
O islands (אִיִּים). This word properly
means islands, and is so translated
here by the Vulgate, the LXX., the Chaldee, the Syriac, and the Arabic. But the
word also is used to denote maritime countries; countries that were situated on
sea-coasts, or the regions beyond sea (see Note on ch. 20:6). The word is
applied, therefore, to the islands of the Mediterranean; to the maritime
coasts; and then, also, it comes to be used in the sense of any lands or coasts far remote, or
beyond sea (see Ps. 72:10; Isa. 24:15; Notes on ch. 40:15; 41:5; 42:4, 10, 12;
49:1; Jer. 25:22; Dan. 11:18). Here it is evidently used in the sense of
distant nations or lands; the people who were remote from Palestine, and who
were the worshippers of idols. The argument is represented as being with them, and they are invited to
prepare their minds by suitable reverence for God for the argument which was to
be presented. (Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament: Isaiah, 2
vols. [London: Blackie & Sons, 1851], 2:79)
