2 Nephi 7:4 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
he [wakeneth 0|waketh 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] morning by morning he [wakeneth 0|waketh 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] mine ear to hear as the learned

Isaiah 50:4 (King James Bible)
he wakeneth morning by morning
he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned

Again in 2 Nephi 7, Oliver Cowdery miscopied the original text, which in this instance is identical to the King James text. In this verse Oliver twice replaced the verb waken with the more common verb in English, wake. There are no other occurrences of the verb waken in the Book of Mormon text. There are examples, however, of the related verb awaken (5 times in the original text, but 11 times in the current LDS text and 9 times in the current RLDS text).

The source for the reading of the original manuscript is a large fragment in the Wilford Wood collection that clearly reads wakeneth for both instances.

Summary: Restore wakeneth (the reading of the original manuscript) both times in 2 Nephi 7:4, thus making the text here agree with the King James Bible.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References