This passage shows a striking semantic oddity. In conjoining the predicates, the text ends up saying that “my heart ... writeth them”, which seems implausible. We expect something like “I write them” (as in “I write the things of my soul” found at the beginning of the verse). But the use of writeth rather than write complicates the issue and implies that the original subject is actually my heart rather than an I that might have been dropped from the original text.
The following verse repeats the conjoined use of “my soul delighteth” and “my heart pondereth”:
The parallelism between verses 15 and 16 (both have “my soul delighteth” and “my heart pondereth”) suggests that the last predicate in verse 15 (“and writeth them”) should be considered separate. In verse 15, Nephi seems to have added “and writeth them” as an attempt to return to his earlier thought at the beginning of the verse (“and upon these I write the things of my soul and many of the scriptures”). Thus one could argue that Nephi meant to say “I write them” rather than “my heart writeth them”.
In fact, one could argue that the original text in verse 15 actually read “and I writeth them”. The -(e)th ending can occur with the subject pronoun I. For instance, the earliest text has examples of “I saith” in the historical present. (See the discussion under 1 Nephi 11:3 and more generally under historical present in volume 3.) More significantly, there are a couple of other examples in the earliest text where the subject pronoun I occurred with a verb ending in -eth:
In the first of these, the proximity of the third-person appositive “the Lord God” facilitates the use of the third person singular ending -eth. But the second example (“I even I remaineth alone”) shows that the verb with the -eth ending can immediately follow the subject pronoun I. The -eth ending serves as a marker of the biblical style, and therefore “I writeth” is a possibility. In neither of these other examples is there a nearer verb with the -eth ending that could have triggered its extension. But in the case of 2 Nephi 4:15, the use of “I writeth” could have been facilitated by the fact that the two preceding verbs (delighteth and pondereth) end in -eth. In any event, “I writeth” is a distinct possibility for the original text here. For further discussion of the -(e)th ending, see infl al endings in volume 3.
There is also manuscript evidence that Oliver Cowdery sometimes accidentally omitted the subject pronoun I:
Thus we have clear evidence from scribal errors that the original text in 2 Nephi 4:15 could have read “and I writeth them”. The standard “and I write them” is also possible, but in going from “and I write them” to “and writeth them”, there would then have to be two textual changes (the loss of the I and the addition of the -eth ending).
On the other hand, David Calabro points out (personal communication) that poetic license may actually allow expressions such as “my heart writeth them”. Very often in the scriptures, the heart is treated as if it is equivalent to the soul or the mind. Such metaphorical usage is to be expected in Nephi’s poetic expression here in 2 Nephi 4:15–35 (frequently referred to as the psalm of Nephi). Not only do we have these two instances in 2 Nephi 4:15–16 of “my heart pondereth” (something we expect more of the mind), but there are also poetic expressions in the psalm of Nephi that allow the heart to speak and to physically communicate in other ways:
If the heart may speak and otherwise physically express itself, perhaps such expression can be poetically extended to include the writing down of that expression. In other words, the expression “my heart … writeth them” is possible. And the fact that the verb form is writeth suggests that my heart is the subject, while use of the intervening “pondereth them and” allows the reader to make the metaphorical jump from pondering to writing.
Since the use of “my heart pondereth them and writeth them” can be explained as an instance of poetic language, the critical text will accept this difficult reading. It should be pointed out that this difficult reading is found in every one of the textual sources; the fact that no edition has ever removed this difficulty suggests that the supposed difficulty arises only when we consider the immediate juxtaposition of “my heart” and “writeth them”.
Summary: Despite its difficulty, the current reading in 2 Nephi 4:15 (“and my heart pondereth them and writeth them”) is an acceptable extension of Nephi’s poetic expression; there is some possibility that the original text had I before writeth, but without additional evidence, it is safer to accept the unanimous reading of all the textual sources.