Isaiah 51:16 (King James Bible) and I have put my words in thy mouth and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand
Here in 2 Nephi 8:16, the subject pronoun I is not repeated. In addition, the earliest Book of Mormon text has the verb form hath instead of the have of the corresponding Isaiah verse in the King James Bible. This nonstandard hath was edited to have in the 1837 edition.
The decision to use hath rather than the King James have seems to be related to the decision to delete the repeated subject pronoun I. As already noted, the inflectional ending -(e)th acts more as an indicator of the biblical style than as an ending restricted to the third person singular present. Even so, the sequence I hath seems odd for the Book of Mormon text. There are cases where the first person pronoun I takes the verb form hath, but only when there is some intervening text (as here in 2 Nephi 8:16). There are, for instance, two examples where the I and the hath are separated by an appositive:
These two instances of hath were later edited to have but only in the LDS text. For other examples of the use of the -(e)th ending with the first person singular present, see the discussion under 2 Nephi 4:15. For evidence regarding -(e)th as a marker of the biblical style, see infl tional endings in volume 3.
Summary: Maintain the earliest text for 2 Nephi 8:16 (“and hath covered thee”), even though the corresponding have of the King James text is grammatically correct; the omission of the repeated subject pronoun I is intended since it permits the replacement of have with hath.