Isaiah 7:18 (King James Bible) for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria
It appears that the prepositional phrase “of the rivers” could have been easily lost in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text since the scribe’s eye could have readily skipped from the first of to the second one. On the other hand, the omission of this prepositional phrase increases the parallelism of the poetic couplet by matching regions of land (“the uttermost part of Egypt” and “the land of Assyria”):
for the fly that is in the uttermost part of Egypt
and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria
Since the Book of Mormon text often increases the parallelism in the Isaiah quotations, it is probably best to assume that the omission of the phrase “of the rivers” is intentional.
Summary: Maintain the reading of the earliest textual sources for 2 Nephi 17:18; omitting the prepositional phrase “of the rivers” increases the parallelism in this passage.