Isaiah 29:6 (King James Bible) thou shalt be visited of the LORD of Hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire
The 1830 compositor probably thought the use of with in the phrase “visited with the Lord of Hosts” seemed inappropriate, so he changed the preposition with to of, undoubtedly by reference to his King James Bible. It is quite possible that the reading of the printer’s manuscript (the original manuscript is not extant here) is in error, especially when we consider the multiple use of the preposition with that follows: “with thunder and with earthquake and with a great noise and with storm and tempest and with the flame of devouring fire”. When copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery may have accidentally introduced the with because of its many occurrences in the rest of the clause.
Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text, people are specifically “visited with” destructions of various kinds (13 times), including the following examples:
On the other hand, people are visited “with the Lord’s voice” (1 Nephi 19:11), “with the Lord’s Spirit” (Alma 17:10), “with assurances” (Alma 58:11), “with fire and with the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 11:35 and 3 Nephi 12:2), and “with the manifestations of the Lord’s Spirit” (Ether 4:11). These six examples are positive rather than negative, and all deal with the visitation of the Lord’s Spirit and influence rather than the Lord himself. There are no examples of people being directly “visited with the Lord”, either positively or negatively.
One possibility is that the original preposition in the Book of Mormon text was by (that is, the original text read “they shall be visited by the Lord of Hosts”). The preposition by occurs with negatives uses of the verb visit:
Notice in the first example that the preposition with is first used to refer to the visitation of the Lord’s voice (positively) and then to “the thunderings and the lightnings of his power” (negatively). The remainder of the passage continues the list of negative uses but switches from the preposition with to by. We should also note that there are also four positive uses of visit that involve the preposition by:
Of course, the original preposition in 2 Nephi 27:2 might have been of, in which case the original text read like the King James Bible. For 2 Nephi 27:2 the 1830 typesetter did not have access to the original manuscript, but nonetheless his emendation may represent the original text. In support of this reading, we do have one other occurrence of the preposition of with the verb visit, in Mormon 1:15 (“I was visited of the Lord”). Thus the Book of Mormon text allows either phraseology, “visited of the Lord” and “visited by the Lord”. The preposition of is the older agentive preposition in English and is commonly found in the King James text. For further discussion of mix-ups in the use of the prepositions of, with, and by, see 1 Nephi 11:31.
The Oxford English Dictionary (the online version) cites 74 instances of “visited by” but none of “visited of”. The archaic use of “visited of” (as found in Isaiah 29:6) must be relatively rare in the history of English. The OED also lists examples of “visited with”, but nearly all of these are used like the instances of “visited with” found in the Book of Mormon. One clear exception cited in the OED uses “visited with” in the sense of ‘visited by’:
(For the OED citation, see definition 8b under the verb study.) This example shows that “visited with X”, where X refers to people, did sometimes occur in Early Modern English.
In the original Hebrew text for Isaiah 29:6, the word for the King James of in “thou shalt be visited of the Lord of Hosts” literally translates as “from with”, so the with of the printer’s manuscript is not theoretically impossible. It should also be noted that originally the English preposition of meant ‘from’ (it is etymologically related to the adverb off ).
Despite this minor linguistic evidence in support of “visited with the Lord” in 2 Nephi 27:2, it seems more reasonable to assume that the with here is an error that took place in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text. The original text probably read “visited of the Lord”, but this use of the preposition of was sufficiently strange that it was accidentally replaced by the highly frequent with that immediately followed (five times in “with thunder and with earthquake and with a great noise and with storm and tempest and with the flame of devouring fire”). Thus the 1830 compositor was probably correct when he changed the with to the King James of.
Summary: Retain in 2 Nephi 27:2 the 1830 compositor’s emendation: namely, his change of with to of that restored the King James reading (“visited of the Lord of Hosts”); the additional with is probably the result of the many with’s that occur in the remainder of the clause.