Isaiah 10:13 (King James Bible) and I have removed the bounds of the people and have robbed their treasures and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man
For this verse, when we compare the Book of Mormon text with the King James Bible, we have two pairs of visually similar words: moved versus removed, and borders versus bounds. These differences could well be due to early errors in the transmission of the text (as suggested by John A. Tvedtnes in “The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon”, FARMS preliminary report, 1984, page 49), either when Joseph Smith read off the text or as Oliver Cowdery wrote it down in 𝓞 or copied it from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Once more, the original manuscript is not extant here.
In this passage, the words border and bound mean the same thing (namely, ‘boundary’). For speakers of Early Modern English, this meaning of ‘boundary’ for bound was common. See the definitions for both border and bound in the Oxford English Dictionary, which uses the word boundary to define both words: border ‘the boundary line which separates one country from another’ (definition 2b for border) versus bound ‘the boundary line of a territory’ (definition 2a for bound ). In the Hebrew for Isaiah 10:13, the corresponding word means ‘boundary’. So in a modern English translation, we would expect either boundaries or borders rather than the archaic bounds. Of course, the substitution of borders in 2 Nephi 20:13 may be an early error in the Book of Mormon transmission; but since it works here, the critical text will accept borders, the earliest reading, in 2 Nephi 20:13.
In Early Modern English, remove and move were closer in meaning than in today’s English. See, for instance, definition 2a for the verb remove in the OED (‘to move from one place to another’), plus the citations in sources from the early 1800s with this meaning (such as “Elizabeth was now removed to Canterbury”). The King James Bible also uses remove in this way. Consider the following examples from Isaiah that are quoted in the Book of Mormon:
In two nonbiblical passages, the Book of Mormon text refers to “removing a mountain”, where remove has the meaning ‘move’:
The concluding sentence in the Ether example shows that the verb remove (used twice in this passage) means ‘moved’ (“and if he had not had faith / it would not have moved”). The use of remove in referring to moving mountains is related to the language of the New Testament:
Finally, there are a few cases in the Book of Mormon where remove has the normal meaning of ‘to take away’:
The first of these examples is particularly relevant since in that case Oliver Cowdery initially wrote move rather than remove in 𝓟. Although the original manuscript is not extant for the word remove, it is obvious that move is incorrect. Later (probably when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞) Oliver supralinearly inserted the re with somewhat heavier ink flow. The initial error in 𝓟 for Alma 46:40 supports the argument that the move in 2 Nephi 20:13 could be an error for remove.
In the original Hebrew for Isaiah 10:13, the verb form for “I have removed” is √asıır, which means ‘I got rid of ’, not ‘I moved’. Thus the King James use of the verb remove in this passage should be interpreted as meaning ‘to get rid of, to eliminate’, not ‘to move’. Within the context of the passage, the text is saying that the king of Assyria has gotten rid of the borders of the people so that he could invade the land, conquer the people, and plunder their treasures (“and have robbed their treasures and I have put down the inhabitants”).
As noted in the discussion under 2 Nephi 20:10 regarding the word founded, the critical text will accept word differences between the earliest Book of Mormon text and the corresponding King James quotation, providing the Book of Mormon word makes sense within the context of the passage. Based on this principle, the word borders is an acceptable substitute for bounds, but moved is not appropriate for removed. Therefore, the critical text will partially emend the text here in 2 Nephi 20:13 to read “and I have removed the borders of the people”. The word removed is the King James word, and this emendation assumes that removed was mistakenly replaced by moved in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text. On the other hand, the change from bounds to borders could have been intentional. Since borders works in this passage, the critical text will accept it even though it too may represent an early error in the transmission of the text.
Summary: Emend 2 Nephi 20:13 so that the inappropriate moved (the earliest reading in the Book of Mormon sources) is replaced by the King James removed; on the other hand, the Book of Mormon borders can be retained since it is equivalent in meaning to the King James bounds, even though borders may be an early error in transmission just like moved seems to be.