Isaiah 9:3 (King James Bible) thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil
The Book of Mormon text omits the not of the King James text. This extra not in the King James Bible seems completely out of place with the following two lines that directly emphasize the joy of the people. The Masoretic Hebrew text has the not, but scribes interpreted the negative word for ‘not’ (/loƒ/ in Hebrew) as an error for “for him” or “to him” (/lo¯/ in Hebrew, which is phonetically close to /loƒ/). The traditional note in the Masoretic text says that the consonants l√ (/loƒ/ ‘not’) should be read as lw (/lo¯/ ‘for him’). Most modern translations follow the Hebrew note but choose to translate the “for him” indirectly; thus the Revised Standard Version renders the line as “thou hast multiplied the nation / thou hast increased its joy”. Here the its before joy is an interpretation that derives from the more literal “for him” (the him refers to nation, a masculine noun in Hebrew). Thus one could literally translate the reinterpreted Hebrew as “thou hast multiplied the nation / for it thou hast increased the joy”.
Sidney B. Sperry referred to this Masoretic reinterpretation many years ago, originally in his Our Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah: Stevens and Wallis, 1947), pages 176–177. John A. Tvedtnes has also referred to this scribal reanalysis of the text (see page 46 of his “The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon”, FARMS preliminary report, 1984); he lists other early biblical versions for which the not is missing.
The Book of Mormon text agrees with the suggestion of the traditional Masoretic note except that the “for him” is ignored. Perhaps the straightforward omission of the not is simply the result of the Book of Mormon tendency to add or delete individual words in the Isaiah quotations in order to make a semantically coherent interpretation out of the King James text. The critical text will continue to follow the Book of Mormon text with its omitted not here in 2 Nephi 19:3.
Summary: Retain in 2 Nephi 19:3 the earliest textual reading, which omits the inexplicable not of the corresponding King James passage.