2 Nephi 13:18 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of tinkling ornaments and cauls and round [tires 1ABCDGHKLPRST|tiers EFIJMNOQ] like the moon

Isaiah 3:18 (King James Bible) in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet and their cauls and their round tires like the moon

The misspelling tiers entered the LDS text in the 1849 British edition and remained in the LDS text until the 1920 edition (excluding the 1902 missionary edition, which was never used as a copy-text). The problem for the modern English reader is that many of the nouns listed in verses 18–23 are either obsolete or have a different meaning in modern English. Here the original King James tire refers to a head ornament and derives from the word attire (see definition 3 under the noun tire in the Oxford English Dictionary). The misspelling tiers remained in the LDS text for over seventy years simply because neither tires nor tiers made much sense to readers of the Book of Mormon; without checking either earlier editions or the King James Bible, readers would have had no clue that tiers was actually a misspelling. It is even possible that tier could have been interpreted as a form of tiar, a shortened form of tiara, especially since the original King James tires refers to a head ornament (see the discussion regarding tiar in the OED).

Summary: Maintain the correct spelling tires in 2 Nephi 13:18.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

References