Isa 9:9 (Hebrew 9:8) in the KJV reads:
And the people shall know, even
Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and
stoutness of heart.
The Book of Mormon version, as found in 2 Nephi 19:9, reads
differently:
And all the people shall know,
even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, that say in the
pride and the stoutness of heart.
The KJV is singular, but the Book of Mormon text is plural. The
Septuagint is a plural, not singular. The following is the text from Göttingen:
καὶ γνώσονται πᾶς ὁ λαὸς τοῦ
Εφραιμ καὶ οἱ ἐγκαθήμενοι ἐν Σαμαρείᾳ, ἐφʼ ὕβρει καὶ ὑψηλῇ καρδίᾳ
λέγοντες
In Targum Jonathan to the Prophets, “inhabitants” is also in
the plural:
וְאִתרָרַבוּ
עַמָא הָדֵין כוּלְהֹון אַפרַיִם וְיָתֵיב שֹמְרֹון
בִרבוּ וּבִתקֹוף לֵב לְמֵימַר׃
Bruce Chilton translates the text thusly in The Isaiah Targum (trans. Bruce D. Chilton;
The Aramaic Bible 11; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1990), Logos Bible Software edition:
and all this people are puffed up,
Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, who say in pride and in strength of heart:
The Peshitta also has a plural. Here is the Syriac of the
text as found in The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English Translation: Isaiah
(trans. Gillian Greenberg and Donald M. Walter; The Antioch Bible; Piscataway,
N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2012), 42:
This is translated in ibid., 43:
They will know (it), all the
peoples, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, with pride and with arrogant
heart, saying:
As an example of his coping against this and its
implications, David P. Wright offered the following argument against the
work of John A. Tvedtnes in light of the Peshitta and Targum:
This is not to say that the
underlying Hebrew of these versions had a plural. Elsewehre the LXX has a
plural where the MT has singular yōšēb (e.g., Isa. 5:3 [though 1QIsaa has the
plural yōšēbê
here] 8:14 [BHS notes some manuscripts have a plural]; 10:24; 20:6; 22:21;
24:17; 26:21). . . . While it cannot be denied that the Hebrew texts underlying
these versions may have had a plural noun in some cases, this evidence makes it
reasonable to suppose that in several places the versions construed a singular
as a plural. (David P. Wright, “Joseph Smith in Isaiah: 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], 195)
With respect to Isa 5:3, here is the text from 1QIsaa
from Col. IV, lines 14-15:
ועתה יושבי
ירושלם
15 ואיש יהודה שפוטונה ביני ובין כרמי
Here is the note at Isa 8:14 that Wright references:
b pc Mss Vrs בֵי—
This is rather typical of Wright’s essay. It is “all or nothing.”
One can believe that the Book of Mormon is a purely 19th-century
production, as Wright does, while giving Joseph Smith credit for having some
readings in the Isaiah text of the Book of Mormon that find ancient textual
support. However, Wright, often unable to do this, has to engage in a lot of
special pleading and conjecture to avoid the conclusion that, at least in this
passage, the Book of Mormon has a superior reading than the King James version of
Isaiah.
