Isaiah 14:3–4 (King James Bible) and it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow and from thy fear and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon
Here in 2 Nephi 24:3–4, the syntax text differs considerably from that of the King James text. In the King James Bible, the long clause in verse 3 that begins “that the Lord shall give thee rest” is a relative clause, with the result that the that-clause at the beginning of verse 4 of Isaiah 14 serves as the complement to the “come to pass” clause at the beginning of verse 3. Further, the King James reading has “in the day” rather than the Book of Mormon “in that day”. The King James interpretation is based on the reading of the Masoretic Hebrew text. A similar example of “in the day” being modified by a relative clause is found earlier in this long quotation from Isaiah 2–14:
For 2 Nephi 24:3–4, on the other hand, the Book of Mormon text treats the long clause in verse 3 (the one that begins with “that the Lord shall give thee rest”) as a that-clause complementing the initial “come to pass” clause, which may explain why the intervening prepositional phrase is “in that day” rather than “in the day”. In other words, the that which follows “in that day” appears to be a subordinate conjunction, not a relative pronoun. The consequence is the that-clause beginning verse 4 is not the complement to the “come to pass” clause that begins verse 3. Instead, the Book of Mormon text inserts an additional “come to pass” clause at the beginning of verse 4:
This same basic interpretation of the Hebrew text is found in the Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. In the Greek, verse 3 begins with “and it shall come to pass in that day”, which is followed by the equivalent of a that-clause, while verse 4 is an independent clause that begins with the conjunction and:
For the Greek, see Alfred Rahlfs’ Septuaginta. The translation here is based on Lancelot C. L. Brenton’s The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1970 [1851]). For further discussion, see pages 56–57 of John A. Tvedtnes, “The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon” (FARMS preliminary report, 1984).
There is one textual problem here in 2 Nephi 24:3: the earliest extant text reads “and it shall come to pass that in that day that the Lord shall give thee rest” (that is, the subordinate conjunction that occurs both before and after “in that day”). The printer’s manuscript originally read this way. In the original manuscript, the word pass is apparently followed by that (although only the initial t of the that is extant). That initial t is definitely not crossed out. Theoretically, it is possible that the rest of the that was crossed out, but since the that was copied into the printer’s manuscript, the most reasonable assumption is that this that was not crossed out in 𝓞. When we examine the space between extant fragments of 𝓞, we also find that there is room for only about half of the words in the nonextant portion “in that day that the”. In my transcript of 𝓞, I conjectured that Oliver Cowdery, the scribe in 𝓞, initially wrote “and it shall come to pass that the”— that is, he accidentally skipped “in that day” and started to write “and it shall come to pass that the Lord shall give thee rest”. The transcript in volume 1 of the critical text reads as follows:
2 Nephi 24:2–3 (lines 36–37 on page 78 of 𝓞)
( )
IN THAT DAY
shall rule over their oppressers & it shall come to pass (t ) HAT ^< > THAT THE
Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow & from th(y f ) EAR & FROM THE HARD
If “in that day” was supralinearly inserted, there is room for an extra the, which I proposed was originally written in 𝓞 and then crossed out. If this analysis is correct, then the following question arises: Did Oliver neglect to cross out the extra that ?
There are nine other occurrences of “come to pass” followed by “in that day”. Six of these are direct biblical quotes from Isaiah, and all have an italicized that after day in the King James Bible; for two of the Book of Mormon passages (each marked with an arrow), there is no that after day:
As noted above, there is a seventh occurrence inserted within the long Isaiah quotation:
Isaiah 14:4 does not have the first line; here the that (which comes after day in the Book of Mormon text) is found in the King James Bible and is set in roman type, not italics.
Finally, there are two other occurrences of this usage elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (one of which is a biblical quote from Micah):
Micah 5:10 has and instead of for, and LORD instead of Father; the that which comes after “saith the LORD” in the King James Bible is set in roman type rather than in italics.
In accord with the earliest readings, we therefore have the following summary of the usage in the Book of Mormon:
“and it shall come to pass that in that day”
one time (in 2 Nephi 17:21)
“and it shall come to pass in that day”
one time (in 2 Nephi 17:23)
“and it shall come to pass that in that day that”
one time (in 2 Nephi 24:3)
“and it shall come to pass in that day that” (the King James pattern)
seven times (listed above)
One example has omitted the italicized that of the corresponding King James reading (2 Nephi 17:23), and one other has moved the that to before the phrase “in that day” (2 Nephi 17:21). And 2 Nephi 24:3 has that both before and after “in that day”. Thus in two cases, the earliest text has a that before the phrase “in that day” (2 Nephi 17:21 and 2 Nephi 24:3). And for both these cases, the 1830 typesetter deleted the that from before the prepositional phrase “in that day”. In the first case, he simply omitted the that when he set the type. In the second case, he crossed out the that in the printer’s manuscript (found at the end of line 6 on page 79 of 𝓟). The thick lines of his crossout are in heavy, dark ink, although not quite as heavy as his inked punctuation marks found on these pages of 𝓟. It is possible that he crossed out the that in 2 Nephi 24:3 after consulting his King James Bible, which he used for other corrections on these pages of 𝓟 (see, for example, his supralinear insertion of “did excel” for 2 Nephi 20:10 in line 2 on page 76 of 𝓟).
As discussed under 2 Nephi 17:21, the critical text will accept the variant phraseology regarding the that for that passage. The question here in 2 Nephi 24:3 is whether the original text had that both before and after “in that day”; in other words, is the earliest extant text (the original reading in 𝓟 and the proposed corrected reading in 𝓞) the original text? We note that none of the other nine examples have that both before and after “in that day”. Furthermore, the lack of spacing between the extant portions of 𝓞 shows that Oliver Cowdery had some difficulty as he wrote down the text for the beginning of 2 Nephi 24:3. He made some mistake, which he corrected but perhaps only partially. All of this suggests that the earliest extant reading in 2 Nephi 24:3 involved some error and that the 1830 typesetter may have been correct in his decision to eliminate the extra that here in 2 Nephi 24:3.
Despite these arguments, there are other examples in the original Book of Mormon text of the subordinate conjunction that both before and after a simple prepositional phrase:
These examples argue that for 2 Nephi 24:3 the earliest reading in 𝓟 (as well as the proposed corrected reading in 𝓞) is possible. For this reason, the critical text will accept that earliest reading, but with the understanding that the extra that before “in that day” may be a mistake. For another possible case of that occurring both before and after a simple prepositional phrase, see Ether 15:17. For other examples involving the repeated subordinate conjunction that, see the discussion under 2 Nephi 1:17 as well as under that in volume 3.
Summary: Restore in 2 Nephi 24:3 the earliest textual reading (the original reading in 𝓟 and the proposed corrected reading in 𝓞): “and it shall come to pass that in that day that the Lord shall give thee rest”; the use of the demonstrative that in the prepositional phrase “in that day” appears to be intended, given the syntactic interpretation for the larger passage (2 Nephi 24:3–4).