and woe unto them which shall do these things away and die for they die in their sins and they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God
The phrase “do these things away” seems rather odd to modern readers, and one might suspect a primitive error here. But it turns out that in Early Modern English this phrase meant ‘to put away,
dismiss, remove’. This transitive meaning is listed under definition 44a for the verb do in the Oxford English Dictionary. The last quotation cited in the OED with this meaning comes from
Edmund Spenser in 1596: “Do fear away and tell.” In the preceding text, Moroni uses this phraseology to refer to those who would deny the power and gifts of God, thus preventing the Spirit from
working in their lives:
- Moroni 10:24–25
- and now I speak unto all the ends of the earth that if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you it shall be because of unbelief and woe
be unto the children of men if this be the case for there shall be none that doeth good among you / no not one for if there be one among you that doeth good he shall work by the power and
gifts of God
Summary: Maintain in Moroni 10:24, 26 the use of the archaic phraseology “to do away”, which dates from Early Modern English and means ‘to put away, dismiss, remove’.
