1 Nephi 17:53 Textual Variants

The original manuscript has the verb shock, but on the basis of the following two verses, it appears that the verb should actually be shake:

• 1 Nephi 17:54–55
  • and it came to pass that I stretched forth my hand unto my brethren and they did not wither before me but the Lord did shake them even according to the word which he had spoken and now they said we know of a surety that the Lord is with thee for we know that it is the power of the Lord that hath shaken us

Note in particular that the parallelism between the language of verses 53 and 54 virtually requires that the verb in verse 53 be shake, not shock:

Verse 54 ends by specifically stating that “the Lord did shake them even according to the word which he had spoken”, which definitely implies that the Lord must have told Nephi that he would shake them. The suggestion that shock in verse 53 should be replaced by shake was first made by Brian Best (personal communication).

There is a close phonetic similarity between shock and shake. Oliver Cowdery apparently misheard the first occurrence of the verb shake ; he may have even expected shock over shake. In any event, he heard the next two occurrences of the verb correctly. (It is highly unlikely that the first shock is correct and that Oliver somehow misheard two following cases of shock as shake.)

The verb shock never appears elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text, or in the King James Bible for that matter. Unlike shock, the word shake is used numerous times in the Book of Mormon text, including a situation earlier in Nephi’s account that is similar to this one:

• 1 Nephi 2:14
  • and it came to pass that my father did speak unto them in the valley of Lemuel with power being filled with the Spirit until their frames did shake before him

Of course, shock and shake are semantically similar (but in English derive from different words). There is one definition of shock in the Oxford English Dictionary with the meaning ‘shake’, namely definition 3b for the second verb shock: ‘to shake (a building, etc.) with an earthquake shock’ (with two citations from the 1700s). Although this use of the verb shock is listed as obsolete, the related noun shock retains this sense of shaking with respect to earthquakes. Except for earthquakes, there is no evidence for a general extension of the meaning ‘shake’ for shock, one that would be necessary in 1 Nephi 17:53; thus the occurrence of shock in the original manuscript for this verse remains anomalous.