The text here clearly seems to be missing its direct object (“I will raise up X unto the fruit of thy loins”). In every other case where there is some reference to raising up a prophet, a seer, or Moses, the direct object is there:
The phraseology in these passages derives from Moses’s prophecy in Deuteronomy, as given in the King James Bible:
In particular, the language in 1 Nephi 22:20 and 3 Nephi 20:23 seems especially close to Deuteronomy 18:15—much of the phraseology is virtually identical. In fact, as David Calabro points out (personal communication), the language in the case of 3 Nephi 20:23 agrees word for word with the King James version of Acts 3:22, which derives from Moses’s statement in Deuteronomy 18:15:
1 Nephi 22:20 differs from Acts 3:22 only in that it lacks the phrase “of your brethren”.
Verses 11 and 17 of 2 Nephi 3 show considerable similarity with the first and second clauses of 2 Nephi 3:18, except that the first clause in 2 Nephi 3:18 seems to be missing its direct object:
| 2 Nephi 3:18 | 2 Nephi 3:11 |
| I will raise up unto the fruit of thy loins | but a seer will I raise up out of the fruit of thy loins |
| 2 Nephi 3:17 | |
| and I will make for him a spokesman | and I will make one a spokesman for him |
In addition, the second clause in 2 Nephi 3:18 uses the pronoun him, but there is no referent for him. On the other hand, in 2 Nephi 3:17 the referent for him occurs in the first clause of that verse (“I will raise up a Moses”). Moses’s spokesman was, of course, his brother Aaron.
Thus usage elsewhere in the text argues that 2 Nephi 3:18 should be emended. The first question is, what was the original direct object? There are several specific noun phrases that could serve as the direct object in 2 Nephi 3:18:
| a prophet | 1 Nephi 10:4, 1 Nephi 22:20, 3 Nephi 20:23 |
| a seer | 2 Nephi 3:6, 11 |
| a Moses | 2 Nephi 3:17 |
The possibility that the missing direct object in 2 Nephi 3:18 is a Moses was originally proposed by Robert T. Baer (personal communication, 14 June 1989). His proposed emendation brought to my attention this problem of the missing direct object.
Although a Moses is used in the previous verse, it is not used generically in that verse; instead, a Moses in 2 Nephi 3:17 specifically refers to Moses himself, not some future Moses-like prophet. (Note, for instance, the reference in 2 Nephi 3:17 to the power in Moses’s rod and the Lord’s giving of the Ten Commandments by his own finger; see Exodus 4:17 and Exodus 31:18.) But in 2 Nephi 3:18, the text is referring to some other leader—not Moses, but obviously one who will be like Moses. Generic extensions of proper nouns (such as in the modern-day expression “he’s an Einstein”, meaning ‘he is a genius like Einstein’) are not found in the Book of Mormon text.
The noun phrase a prophet is less likely than a seer since the noun phrase a seer is the one used in 2 Nephi 3 (verses 6, 7, and 11). The phrase a prophet is found only in other books within the text, 1 Nephi and 3 Nephi.
Finally, if one of these three noun phrases were to be accidentally lost when copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, the most probable noun phrase would have been a seer. It is the shortest of the three, and it has no ascenders and descenders, only small letters of x-height.
An even more promising possibility is that the direct object is a pronoun, not a full noun phrase like a seer. And the best candidate for such an emendation would be the indefinite pronoun one: “I will raise up one unto the fruit of thy loins”. This single word would be more easily lost since it is shorter and less semantically prominent than a seer. Like a seer, the pronominal one has no ascenders or descenders. But unlike a seer, one is only a single word.
Let us also consider a number of supporting arguments for one as the emendation. First, the pronoun one can be used in contexts similar to this one. In the following passage, the original verb was an intransitive use of raise (equivalent to rise in standard English), with one acting as the head of the semantic subject. Even so, the pronoun one occurs right after the verb raise up since the subject is delayed (with there acting as filler for the initial subject position):
(For further discussion of raise as an intransitive verb, see 2 Nephi 3:24 as well as raise in volume 3.) We also have the following transitive example in the King James Bible where the pronominal one acts as the direct object and also follows the verb raise up:
So the use of one in 2 Nephi 3:18 is possible, even though this pronoun does not occur as the direct object in any of the nine examples (listed at the beginning of this discussion) involving the transitive verb raise up.
As a second argument, we have examples of Oliver Cowdery accidentally omitting the pronoun one. In each case, the resulting text did not make much sense and Oliver quickly corrected his error (the one is always supralinearly inserted, but the level of ink flow is unchanged):
Thus there is clear evidence that occasionally Oliver had difficulty copying down one in both 𝓞 and 𝓟.
Finally, there is the error involving one that Oliver Cowdery made in 2 Nephi 3:18:
The initial writing of the pronoun one was undoubtedly influenced by the nearly identical phraseology in the previous verse:
Yet the intrusive one later in verse 18 may have also been primed by the one that I am proposing followed raised up only a few words before in the same verse. In other words, we have two one’s that could have influenced this error later on in verse 18:
Of course, this third argument for one is not conclusive since the preceding “and I will make one a spokesman for him” in verse 17 is alone sufficient to have caused Oliver Cowdery in verse 18 to have initially written “and I will make one”.
Taken all together, these additional arguments provide support for one as the direct object for the phrasal verb raise up in 2 Nephi 3:18. Of course, a seer also remains a possibility.
Now let us turn to the second question: where should the direct object be placed? Thus far I have assumed that the missing direct object (either one or a seer) should come after the phrasal verb raise up. There are two other reasonable positions for the direct object: (1) at the very beginning of the sentence or (2) between the verb raise and its adverbial particle up.
With respect to the first alternative, if the direct object came at the beginning of the clause (as in seven of the eight possible examples listed at the beginning of this discussion), then the finite verb should have come before the subject (as in all seven of those examples), thus “a seer will I raise up”. Note especially the three examples in 2 Nephi 3 that involve a seer; each has the inverted word order characteristic of fronted direct objects in English, with the modal verb shall or will coming before the subject:
Since in 2 Nephi 3:18 the word order is “I will raise up”, it is very unlikely that the direct object came at the beginning of the sentence. The awkward word order of “a seer I will raise up” is uncharacteristic of Book of Mormon language. Similarly, the other possibility (“one I will raise up”) is extremely awkward, if not impossible.
Now let us turn to the second alternative, where the direct object would come between raise and up. For this position, we would normally expect the direct object to be a personal pronoun, as in the following three examples for which “raising up” refers to the resurrection:
When we get a direct object that represents new information (such as a noun phrase), we expect that direct object to come after the entire phrasal verb, which means after the adverbial up, not before:
All these examples suggest that the missing direct object in 2 Nephi 3:18 should come after raise up. This conclusion also applies to one as well as to a seer since one would function in this passage as an indefinite pronoun carrying some new information. We also recall the word order of Isaiah 41:25 (“I have raised up one from the north”).
As David Calabro points out (personal communication), this example from Isaiah 41:25 could also be used as evidence that the earliest text in 2 Nephi 3:18 is actually correct. In the original Hebrew, the direct object for the transitive verb raised up is left unstated. The King James translators added the word one; thus the use of italics in the King James text shows that one was not in the original Hebrew. Also note that in the King James Bible the following lines use the pronoun he to refer to this unstated one (although in the Hebrew the pronoun he is not explicitly stated but is clearly understood from the verb form alone):
The King James usage parallels the proposed text for 2 Nephi 3:18 (which has the one followed by the object pronoun form him):
Thus we could interpret the earliest extant reading in the Book of Mormon (where the one is left unstated) as a literal Hebraism. If such a Hebraism is accepted for the Book of Mormon text, then inserting one could be taken as a revision of the text that would facilitate the reader’s understanding.
Given all this evidence, the most plausible solution in my opinion is that there was a one in the original text for 2 Nephi 3:18 and that it was accidentally lost in the early transmission of the text. Evidence from consistent usage elsewhere in the text as well as scribal errors argues that the original text had one after the phrasal verb raise up.
Summary: Emend 2 Nephi 3:18 to read “I will raise up one unto the fruit of thy loins”; the indefinite pronoun one is the most probable choice for the missing direct object, although a seer is also possible; in either case, the conjectured direct object should be placed after raise up.