Isaiah 14:5 (King James Bible) the LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked and the scepter of the rulers
Here the King James Bible and the Hebrew original provide a close parallelism between “staff of the wicked” and “scepter of the rulers”. In the Hebrew, both wicked and rulers are plural, but staff and scepter are both singular. The Book of Mormon scepters could be an error, given Oliver Cowdery’s tendency to add and delete plural s ’s. We do not have the original manuscript here.
On the other hand, there is an apparent motivation for the change to scepters: each ruler would have his own scepter, which implies scepters for plural rulers. But staff can remain singular since it is possible to interpret the English wicked as “wicked one”, a singular. Or, one could reason, it is not as necessary for every wicked person to have a staff as for every king to have a scepter. Since this interpretational difference is possible, the critical text will retain the plural scepters in 2 Nephi 24:5.
We also note that the italicized and of the King James text is omitted in the Book of Mormon text. Without the and, the text does not read as naturally, but it is nonetheless possible (note also that the original Hebrew is missing the and ). The critical text will accept this minor difference as well.
Summary: Maintain in 2 Nephi 24:5 the reading of the earliest extant source—that is, the plural scepters and the lack of the italicized King James and.