In Isa 13:3 (KJV) we read:
I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones
for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.
2 Nephi 23:3, a quotation of Isa 13:3, the
text reads a bit differently:
I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones,
for mine anger is not upon them that rejoice in my highness.
The Book of Mormon translation removes the
"even" and renders the phrase "for mine anger, even them is not upon them that rejoice in my
highness." As Brant Gardner wrote about this variant reading:
John Tvedtnes notes: “At first glance, it appears as though Joseph Smith
mistook the King James Version ‘for’ to be the English conjunctive ‘for’ (Heb. Ky) rather than the dative ‘for’ (Heb. l-), which would not be possible in
Hebrew” (“Isaiah Textual Variants in the Book of Mormon,” FARMS Reprint Series, 1981, 52). A clearer translation of the
Masoretic Hebrew text reads: “to/for mine anger, the rejoicers of my highness”
(Ibid.)
Although Tvedtnes reports this reading, he argues or an alternative
hypothesis that relies heavily upon the scribal error:
Upon closer examination, however, one notes that the King James
Version/MT (Masoretic text) is gibberish at this point and requires some
correction. We probably have a case of double haplography [haplography is a
deletion in a manuscript occasioned when two lines being copied end in the same
word or words, allowing the eye to skip the intervening text]. To illustrate,
let us reproduce here the Hebrew of MT and a Hebrew translation of [the Book of
Mormon]:
MT: l-‘py clyzy g’wty
BM: l’’py cl clyzy g’wty
The MT scribe, or a predecessor, has—perhaps after a long tiring day of
work—made two deletions here. Firstly, he deleted the Hebrew letter aleph (‘)
from the negative particle, thus producing the preposition l-. Because the earliest Hebrew writing has no spaces to divide
words the mistake would have been easier. The second deletion involved the
preposition ‘l (“upon”). Both of
these cases of haplography occurred because of the proximity of other identical
alphabetical elements of those who were deleted (‘being followed by’ and cl being followed by cl). The reconstructed Hebrew sentence based on the
reading of the BM (with “for” added at the beginning for English style) thus reflects an older version of
Isaiah for [the brass plates] than for the MT (especially notable since the
MT/King James Version is nonsensical anyway). (Ibid., 52-53, brackets added).
Blenkinsopp does not consider the text “nonsensical” as Tvedtnes
asserts, but does note that it is metrically deficient, which may support
Tvedtnes’s argument that the text is defective (Isaiah 1-39, 276). (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of the
Book of Mormon, Volume 2: Second Nephi-Jacob [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford
Books, 2007], 300-1)
