Isaiah 2:9 (King James Bible) ( 1 ) and the mean man boweth down (2 ) and the great man humbleth himself (3 ) therefore forgive them not
This verse shows three difficulties, each one involving a word difference between the King James text and the earliest text of the Book of Mormon. 𝓞 is not extant, but 𝓟 originally read as follows:
This reading could be interpreted as meaning something like ‘the low men bow down / but the great man does not humble himself / therefore do not forgive him’. The original parallelism of the King James text obviously contradicts this interpretation.
The Book of Mormon passage has undergone two textual changes. First, the 1830 compositor changed the plural men to man, perhaps by reference to a copy of the King James Bible. Second, Joseph Smith, in his editing for the 1837 edition, negated the first clause in the verse. Thus the current text reads as follows:
In the current text, the first two clauses now manifest parallelism (albeit negatively rather than positively), but the third clause uses the singular him, it would seem, to refer to only the great man rather than both the mean man and the great man.
Thus there are three textual difficulties here: (1) the plural men in the first clause, (2) the not at the end of the second clause, and (3) the him in the third clause. In the following, I consider whether each of these words might be the result of error in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text.
First, the plural men (the reading of the printer’s manuscript) may be an error for the singular man. The original manuscript is not extant here, but we do know that the Book of Mormon text has sometimes undergone a switch between man and men. For examples, see the list under 1 Nephi 15:35. Here in 2 Nephi 12:9 the preceding word is mean /min/, which may have influenced /mæn/ to be misheard as /men/. Another possibility is that the e in the spelling of mean may have led Oliver Cowdery to write men since he had just written an e after the word-initial m in mean.
We should note here that in 𝓟 the occurrence of boweth with the plural subject men is not an argument against men since the original text of the Book of Mormon freely allows the -(e)th ending to occur with plural subjects. (See the discussion regarding rebelleth in the 1 Nephi preface or, more generally, under infl al endings in volume 3.) Nor can we argue from parallelism that the plural men in one line cannot be allowed to occur with the singular man in the other line. In verses 11 and 17, we have two examples of such a mixture of man and men in parallel lines:
In fact, in all three passages the original Hebrew text avoids lexical parallelism: the first occurrence of man is always √adam while the second occurrence (either man or men) is either the singular or plural of √i¸s. We should note, however, that in verses 11 and 17, there has never been any removal of the mixture by replacing man with men or vice versa.
The two examples in 2 Nephi 12:11, 17 show semantic parallelism whenever √adam and √i¸s occur together, which brings us to the second difficulty in 2 Nephi 12:9: the occurrence of not in the second clause but its omission in the first clause. Such a reading obviously violates the semantic parallelism that seems to be required in this passage. Thus in his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith inserted not in the printer’s manuscript so that the first clause would agree with the second clause, which has a not in the earliest Book of Mormon text (but not in the corresponding Isaiah passage). We note that the third clause does end with not in both the Book of Mormon and Isaiah texts.
From the point of view of parallelism and consistency, there are two possible emendations for the earliest Book of Mormon text: (1) there were three not ’s, one in each clause (as in the current text); or (2) there was only one not, in the last clause (as in the King James Bible). The first reading works if the reader interprets the first two clauses as a refusal to bow down and humble oneself before God, while the second reading works if the reader interprets the first two clauses as bowing and humbling oneself before idols instead of God. The immediately preceding verse (2 Nephi 12:8) suggests that in the language of the King James Bible the second interpretation is the intended one since it refers to the worshipping of idols (“their land also is full of idols / they worship the work of their own hands / that which their own fingers have made”).
This interpretation suggests that the not in the second clause is an error, possibly in anticipation of the not at the end of the third clause. This error could have occurred in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text, perhaps while copying the text to the printer’s manuscript or even while taking down Joseph Smith’s dictation. Of course, it is also possible that the original manuscript (which is not extant here) had three not ’s, one for each clause, so that the original reading of the printer’s manuscript represents a simple loss of the not in the first clause and Joseph Smith’s 1837 emendation represents a restoration of the original Book of Mormon text.
Elsewhere in the manuscripts, we have examples of not being added and deleted. The more common change is to drop the not, but there are also a few examples of not being incorrectly added in the manuscripts:
Thus Oliver Cowdery could have inserted the not in the second clause in 2 Nephi 12:9 while copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, perhaps in anticipation of the not in the following (third) clause. According to this analysis, the text here for 2 Nephi 12:9 was originally in agreement with the King James text, with only one not (at the end of the third clause). And the King James reading also makes sense, given the reference in the previous verse to worshipping idols.
Finally, let us consider the third difficulty. All of the Book of Mormon sources have him in the third clause, while the King James Bible (as well as the Hebrew) has them. In the literal Hebrew, “the mean man” is simply man; similarly, “the great man” is also simply man. But as noted above, different words are used for man in the Hebrew: namely, √adam for the first man and √i¸s for the second man. The King James translation shows this lexical difference by representing the first man ( √adam) by “the mean man” and the second man ( √i¸s) by the opposite, “the great man”. Here the word mean means ‘low’, with perhaps some perceived connection between √adam and √adama ‘ground, soil’. David Calabro (personal communication) points out that a similar contrast involving √adam and √i¸s is found in the Psalms:
The phrase “both low and high” literally reads in the Hebrew as “both sons of man [ √adam] and sons of man [ √i¸s] ”.
The Hebrew for Isaiah 2:9 uses the third person plural pronoun them, thus supporting the interpretation that the text is referring to two different (symbolic) individuals, not a single individual. We definitely expect semantic parallelism in 2 Nephi 12:9, especially since other pairs of √adam and √i¸s are used this way (as in Isaiah 2:11, 17 and Psalm 49:2).
It is quite possible that the Book of Mormon him is actually an error for them. Even the original manuscript (which is not extant here) could have read him, but such a reading in 𝓞 could still represent them since Joseph Smith in his dictation often pronounced unstressed him and them indistinguishably as /ßm/. Here are two examples in the original manuscript showing Oliver Cowdery struggling to decide whether /ßm/ should be him or them:
Also see the discussion under 1 Nephi 10:18–19.
As noted above, the probable source (in the printer’s manuscript) for the intrusive not at the end of the second clause was the not at the end of the third clause. Similarly, the semantic source (in the printer’s manuscript) for the him in the third clause may be the himself that is found near the end of the second clause. Hearing /ßm/ in Joseph Smith’s dictation, Oliver Cowdery may have assumed that the word was him because of the preceding himself.
The earliest text for 2 Nephi 12:9 can therefore be understood as the result of three early errors in transmission of the Book of Mormon text: mean men instead of mean man, an extra not at the end of the second clause, and him instead of them. The earliest extant reading (in 𝓟) is not impossible; nonetheless, it does not make sense within the larger context of idol worshipping. Ultimately, the nonparallelism of the first two clauses as given in 𝓟 seems implausible. Since each of the three difficulties in this verse can be explained as the result of scribal error, the critical text will accept the King James text as the original text for 2 Nephi 12:9.
Summary: Emend the earliest extant text in 2 Nephi 12:9 (the reading of the printer’s manuscript) so that it reads identically with the King James text: namely, we accept the 1830 compositor’s emendation of men to man, remove the not at the end of the second clause, and replace the him of the third clause with them.