2 Nephi 19:4 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for thou hast broken the yoke of [his 1ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRST| J] burden and the staff of his shoulder the rod of his oppressor

Isaiah 9:4 (King James Bible) for thou hast broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder the rod of his oppressor

The 1888 LDS edition accidentally dropped the adjectival pronoun his before burden. This error was not continued in any subsequent edition (especially since the 1888 edition was never used as a copy-text). Obviously, the missing his breaks the parallelism of the passage (“the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder / the rod of his oppressor”).

Summary: Maintain the repeated, parallel use of his in 2 Nephi 19:4.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

References