Friday, October 28, 2022

John A. Tvedtnes on Isaiah 2:14//2 Nephi 12:14

Isa 2:14 in the KJV reads:

 

And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up.

 

2 Nephi 12:14 reads:

 

And upon all the high mountains and upon all the hills, and upon all the nations which are lifted up and upon every people.

 

While noting that this addition is without version support, Tvedtnes adds that

 

it fits into the general pattern of parallelism found in this and adjacent verses. Here, "nations" parallels "people", just as, in vss. 13-15, we have the parallels: "cedars//oaks", "mountains//hills", and "tower/fenced wall". . . . This new parallelism apparently carries on the addition of "nations" to the "proud and lofty" and "lifted up" parallels in vs. 12. (Note that the mountains, hills, rivers, streams, towers of Isa. 30:25 compare well with vss. 14-15 of Chap. 2. Indeed, there are many other comparisons which could be made between Chapters 2 and 30.) It would have been easy for an MT scribe to have deleted the BM material, for each parallel begins with w-clkl . . . ("and upon every"). It is true that, from the point-of-view of MT, "lifted up" belongs in parallel to "high" with "hills". But the latter adjective is deleted in LXXh, the Old Latin, and one MT ms. (John A. Tvedtnes, The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon [Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1981], 26)