1 Nephi 12:17 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil which blindeth the eyes and [hardenest > hardeneth 0|hardeneth 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] the hearts of the children of men and leadeth them away into broad roads

The inflected form of the verb harden shows the scribal tendency to replace the biblical inflectional -eth ending with the second person singular ending -est. In this instance, scribe 2 of 𝓞 immediately caught his error and corrected it by overwriting the st with th (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Notice the correct use of the -eth ending for the nearby verbs blindeth and leadeth. For discussion, see 1 Nephi 11:2 as well as infl al endings in volume 3.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References