One wonders here whether the adverbial up shouldn’t follow the verb phrase “yieldeth himself ”. Elsewhere the text consistently uses up when anyone “yields something into someone’s hands”:
The last example provides clear evidence for Oliver Cowdery accidentally omitting the adverbial up (in this case, when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟). Thus it is very possible that 1 Nephi 19:10 may have also involved the loss of the up, especially since both examples involve a reflexive pronoun as the direct object:
| 1 Nephi 19:10 | Helaman 1:32 |
| yieldeth himself … | did yield themselves up |
| into the hands of wicked men | into the hands of the Nephites |
In addition to these examples involving “into someone’s hands”, we more generally get the adverb up whenever the transitive verb yield specifically refers to surrendering something (including one’s self ):
In the example from 3 Nephi 4:16, the printer’s manuscript is missing the up, but the 1830 edition has it. In this example, Oliver Cowdery apparently dropped the up when copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟, while the 1830 typesetter (also copying from 𝓞 here in 3 Nephi) retained it. This analysis provides one more example where Oliver omitted the up when copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟. (See 3 Nephi 4:16 for discussion.)
When the transitive verb yield has the figurative sense of voluntarily yielding to someone else’s power, no up occurs. In all these instances the implication is one of willingness and agreement to submit, even to be of the same mind:
Of course, with regard to 1 Nephi 19:10, Jesus wasn’t of the same mind as those who had him arrested, but it is true that he did submit and allowed himself to be arrested. Under such an interpretation, somewhat different from the five examples listed just above, the figurative sense of surrendering could be applied to 1 Nephi 19:10. Thus it may not be absolutely necessary that up occur in this passage.
David Calabro has suggested (personal communication) that we could examine this problem from a syntactic point of view. If we consider just the cases where yield takes a reflexive pronoun as the direct object, the usage is evenly divided between up and no up (excluding, of course, the case in 1 Nephi 19:10):
This equivalence in syntactic usage argues against the need to emend the text in 1 Nephi 19:10.
If this passage in 1 Nephi 19:10 is to be emended, then there is the question of where the up should go: before or after the parenthetical phrase “according to the words of the angel”, or even after the phrase “as a man”? We have three possible emendations:
The last two possibilities seem particularly awkward. The example from 3 Nephi 4:16 (“to yield themselves up according to their wishes”) supports placing the up right after himself in 1 Nephi 19:10—that is, before the parenthetical phrase “according to the words of the angel”. If this passage is to be emended, the up should probably be placed right after himself (the first case listed above).
Given the complexity of the proposed emendation in 1 Nephi 19:10, it is probably safest to keep the text as it is. On the one hand, we have evidence that Oliver Cowdery sometimes omitted the up when it should occur with yield. Semantically, 1 Nephi 19:10 refers to Jesus surrendering himself to the Jewish authorities, where a sense of submission is possible (which would not require the up).
Summary: It is difficult to determine whether 1 Nephi 19:10 should be emended to read “yieldeth himself up”; since the current text without the adverb up will work, it is perhaps best to leave the reading of the original manuscript unchanged, even though the lack of up could easily be due to scribal error.