Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Note on the Text of 2 Nephi 24:2 (= Isaiah 14:2)

  

Isa 14:2 (KJV)

2 Nephi 24:2

And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

And the people shall take them and bring them to their place, yea, from far unto the ends of the earth. And they shall return to their lands of promise, and the house of Israel shall possess them. And the land of the Lord shall be for servants and handmaids. And they shall take them captives unto whom they were captives, and they shall rule over their oppressors.

 

The MT reads “to their place” (‎אֶל־מְקוֹמָם). However, 1QIsaa Col. XII, line 2 readsאל אדמתם ואל מקומם, which provides some support for the Book of Mormon. Here is an image from The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa): A New Edition, ed. Donald W. Parry and Elisha Qimron (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 32; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 24:

 



 

Commenting on this issue, Donald W. Parry noted that:

 

The scroll’s scribe was possibly impacted by the double manifestation of אדמה in the immediate context, first attested in v.1 and then again later in v. 2. Or, 1QIsaa’s reading may be a conflation, based either on its Vorlage or another manuscript that read אל אדמתם. A targumic witness has לארעהון, which equals אדמתם, and another targumic reading attests לאתרהון, which corresponds to מקוממ, thus showing a tradition existed for both מקומם and אדמתם.

 

This plus of 1QIsaa, together with an earlier plus in this verse (עמים רבים, see commentary above), serve to embroider Israel’s position of supremacy among the Gentiles and emphasizes the land in the context of Israel’s election or chosenness. (Donald W. Parry, Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants [Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible 3; Leiden: Brill, 2020], 121)

 

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