These two verses are a part of a long passage in which Joseph of Egypt first quotes the Lord (verses 7–13), then continues in his own words (verses 14–15). In two places the pronominal my and thy seem to be mixed up. In verse 12 (where Joseph is still quoting the Lord), the earliest text (here the printer’s manuscript) has my loins instead of what we expect, thy loins. Otherwise in this long quotation (verses 7–13) there are seven examples of thy loins:
The exceptional case of my loins in verse 12 (set above in italics rather than bold) violates the contrastive parallelism in verse 12. We expect two matching pairs of thy loins and the loins of Judah; thus the use of my loins in the first matching pair seems wholly inappropriate:
Thus in the 1837 edition, this one exceptional occurrence of my loins within the long quotation of the Lord’s words (verses 7–13) was replaced by thy loins.
The difficulty of the larger passage is further complicated in verse 14 by the single occurrence of thy loins after the Lord’s quote has ended. Joseph’s own words are now being quoted, yet the earliest text (once more the printer’s manuscript) has the anomalous thy loins in verse 14, as if the Lord is still being quoted:
This apparent anomaly motivated Orson Pratt, in his editing for the 1849 LDS edition, to change thy loins in verse 14 to my loins. This reading has been maintained in all subsequent LDS editions, but the RLDS editions have retained the earlier thy loins.
It is difficult to see how these two inconsistent readings could somehow be reinterpreted as sudden, brief switches in who’s being quoted. In verse 12 we would have to assume that for the first part of the verse Joseph was suddenly quoting himself (“wherefore the fruit of my loins shall write”), but then equally as suddenly Joseph would switch back to quoting the Lord (“and that which shall be written by the fruit of thy loins”). Or in verse 14 we would have to assume a quote shift within the same clause: “for this promise of which I have obtained of the Lord of the fruit of thy loins shall be fulfilled”. It should be noted here that the 1966 RLDS edition (which uses quote marks) does not set apart the phrase “of the fruit of thy loins” as a quote within a quote, although it should have if the editors of that edition had fully disambiguated this use of thy loins. (The 1966 RLDS edition represents a thorough modernization of the biblical language of the Book of Mormon. Its many changes precluded it from being included in the computerized collation. For further discussion of this edition and the kinds of changes it introduced into the text, see volume 3.)
This kind of quote shifting seems very much out of place, especially since Joseph’s quotation of the Lord’s words are both opened and closed by the clause “saith the Lord”:
A similar framing of a quotation is found when Joseph’s own words are directly quoted:
From a narrative point of view, the two mix-ups of thy loins and my loins are clearly inappropriate.
Further support for emending the text in these two places comes from manuscript errors that show the mixing up of the possessive pronouns my and thy. We have five examples of the scribes mixing up my and thy. And four of the examples occurred as Oliver Cowdery copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Of particular interest here is the occurrence of preceding pronominal forms (set in bold) that may have primed the scribe to initially write the wrong form of my or thy:
In the last two examples, the noun phrase my people prompted the repetition of the same phrase.
Looking once more at our two passages in 2 Nephi 3:12, 14, we see the possibility of priming (although the effect in the second case appears to be marginal):
In the second case, the many occurrences of thy loins in the quotation of the Lord’s words (verses 7–13) was probably the main reason for the repetition of thy loins in verse 14. The preceding single word thee in verse 13 seems too isolated to have accounted for the thy in verse 14.
We do not have the original manuscript for 2 Nephi 3, but the evidence from scribal errors suggests that the two anomalous cases (of my loins in verse 12 and thy loins in verse 14) are scribal errors. The edited versions of these two phrases appear to reflect the reading of the original text (and maybe even the original manuscript).
Summary: Maintain the two edited readings in 2 Nephi 3 that make the use of my loins and thy loins consistent with who is being quoted: thy loins in verse 12 (the Lord is speaking to Joseph of Egypt) and my loins in verse 14 (Joseph of Egypt is speaking); scribal errors and internal consistency argue for these two emendations.