Isaiah 3:6 (King James Bible) thou hast clothing be thou our ruler and let this ruin be under thy hand
The additional not in the Book of Mormon text reverses the polarity of the original Isaiah text. John A. Tvedtnes (page 29, “The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon”, FARMS preliminary report, 1984) has suggested that the not is intrusive here in 2 Nephi 13:6. One possible source for the not could be the frequent use of negative words in the next verse:
We have already seen one case where not seems to have intruded into the text from a following not: namely, in 2 Nephi 12:9, where it appears that early in the transmission of the Book of Mormon text an extra not was inserted at the end of one line because the immediately following line ended in a not. The text for Isaiah 2:9 reads as “and the great man humbleth himself / therefore forgive them not”, but in the corresponding part of the printer’s manuscript (the original manuscript is not extant for this verse) the passage reads as “and the great man humbleth himself not / therefore forgive him not”.
From a semantic perspective, the original King James reading of Isaiah 3:6—that is, without the not —makes sense because of the prophetic inevitability of the ruin of Jerusalem, as noted in verses 7–8: “make me not a ruler of the people / for Jerusalem is ruined”; the man wants his brother, not himself, to be in charge when the ruin comes, so in essence he says to his brother, “let this ruin be under thy hand, not mine”.
Nonetheless, one can see some textual motivation for reversing the polarity. Perhaps the man is trying to avoid being so blunt with his brother; thus one could interpret the earliest Book of Mormon text as the man wishing his brother good luck: ‘and may this ruin not come under thy hand’. In other words, one could intentionally add the not to avoid stating the inevitable. We should also note that (unlike the case in 2 Nephi 12:9) the immediately following clause in 2 Nephi 13:7 does not contain a negative (“in that day shall he swear saying”), which reduces (but does not eliminate) the chances of accidental contamination in 2 Nephi 13:6. The safest solution is to follow the earliest textual source and retain the not in 2 Nephi 13:6 since there is a distinct possibility that the additional not in the Book of Mormon text is intentional.
Summary: Retain the not in 2 Nephi 13:6 (“and let not this ruin come under thy hand”), the reading of the earliest textual source (the printer’s manuscript); the larger context for this passage permits a coherent interpretation for the extra not.