Yahweh’s army consists of his “sanctified ones” and his “mighty ones.” Both groups are the righteous and recovered remnant. The unrighteous have not survived. Consequently, Yahweh’s anger is turned outward. The righteous remnant has no reason to fear Yahweh’s wrath.
Variant/Translation: The KJV Isaiah text reads, “I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.” The Book of Mormon translation removes the “even” and renders the phrase “for mine anger, even themis not upon them that rejoice in my highness.” John Tvedtnes notes: “At first glance, it appears as though Joseph Smith mistook the King James Version ‘for’ to be the English conjunctive ‘for’ (Heb. ky) rather than the dative ‘for’ (Heb. l-), which would not be possible in Hebrew.” A clearer translation of the Masoretic Hebrew text reads: “to/for mine anger, the rejoicers of my highness.”
Although Tvedtnes reports this reading, he argues for an alternative hypothesis that relies heavily upon the scribal error:
Upon closer examination, however, one notes that the King James Version/MT (Masoretic text) is gibberish at this point and requires some correction. We probably have a case of double haplography [haplography is a deletion in a manuscript occasioned when two lines being copied end in the same word or words, allowing the eye to skip the intervening text]. To illustrate, let us reproduce here the Hebrew of MT and a Hebrew translation of [the Book of Mormon]:
MT: l- ’py lyzy g’wty
BM: l’ ’py l lyzy g’wty
The MT scribe, or a predecessor, has—perhaps after a long tiring day of work—made two deletions here. Firstly, he deleted the Hebrew letter aleph (’) from the negative particle, thus producing the preposition l-. Because the earliest Hebrew writing has no spaces to divide words, the mistake would have been even easier. The second deletion involved the preposition l (“upon”). Both of these cases of haplography occurred because of the proximity of other identical alphabetical elements to those which were deleted (’ being followed by ’ and l being followed by l). The reconstructed Hebrew sentence based on the reading of the BM (with “for” added at the beginning for English style) thus reflects an older version of Isaiah for [the brass plates] than for the MT (especially notable since MT/King James Version is nonsensical anyway).
Blenkinsopp does not consider the text “nonsensical,” as Tvedtnes asserts, but does note that it is metrically deficient, which may support Tvedtnes’s argument that the text is defective.
The more technical explanation is interesting because it uses the Book of Mormon text to reconstruct an earlier Hebrew text than the Masoretic and find a logical reason for the production of the error in the Masoretic text. Finding a reasonable reading for a possibly damaged MT text (Tvedtnes’s “nonsensical,” and Blenkinsopp’s “metrically deficient”) makes Tvedtnes’s explanation more persuasive. However, it works if and only if (1) the plate text accurately represented Hebrew, even though the brass plates appear to have been written in Egyptian (Mosiah 1:4), and (2) the wording on the plates has been accurately translated into English. That is a question to be examined, not an assumption that should be brought in to explain the text. It is equally possible, if not more probable, that Tvedtnes’s first discarded hypothesis is correct—that Joseph made a mistake in reading the English text.
Blenkinsopp’s translation reads: “I have issued the command to those sworn to my service; I have summoned my warriors eager and proud, to serve as instruments of my anger.” The Book of Mormon text resolves two “problems” in the KJV text. The first is the italicized word even which is removed similar to the deletion of other italicized words in the Book of Mormon’s rendition of KJV texts. (See commentary accompanying 2 Nephi 8:19.) The second “problem” of the text is making sense of the calling of the sanctified and mighty, and the phrase “for mine anger.” The resolution of the problems allows Joseph to shift the focus of the “anger” onto those who don’t rejoice in the Lord. However, the text appears to use the phrase, “them that rejoice in my highness,” as a description of those who are sanctified and mighty. In order to accept the Book of Mormon reading, we must have Isaiah break the logical flow of his call to come to the mountain of the Lord and make an aside about the wicked, to whom he had not previously referred and which do not appear in the next verses. This verse is best read as an example of the way in which Joseph interacted with the text during his translation. It tells us that, when dealing with the Isaiah texts, he was using his own understanding, not the original text, to work out the meaning. That the Book of Mormon Isaiah texts are not a new translation should be fairly obvious, simply indicating part of the methodology of the overall translation of the text from the plates.