2 Nephi 23:4 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
the Lord of Hosts mustereth the [host 0|hosts 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of the battle

Isaiah 13:4 (King James Bible) the LORD of Hosts mustereth the host of the battle

Here Oliver Cowdery mistakenly copied the singular host as hosts, probably due to the influence of the preceding plural hosts in “the Lord of Hosts”. The original manuscript (extant here among the Wilford Wood fragments) clearly reads “the host of the battle”.

Summary: Restore in 2 Nephi 23:4 the singular host in “the host of the battle”, the reading of the original manuscript as well as the King James Bible.

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

References