2 Nephi 27:3 Textual Variants

Isaiah 29:8 (King James Bible) and behold he drinketh but he awaketh and behold he is faint

Here the 1858 Wright edition replaced the biblically styled verb awake with the more modern English verb wake. The 1874 RLDS edition restored the original and textually correct awaketh, the King James verb form. Note that earlier in this verse the text reads “but he awaketh and his soul is empty”. This first case of awaketh was not changed to waketh in the 1858 Wright edition (or in any other), thus showing that the 1858 change in the second case was unintended.

The Book of Mormon text definitely prefers the verbs awake and awaken over the more modern verbs wake and waken. In fact, the only place where the text has the w-initial verbs is in an Isaiah quotation that also has the w-initial verbs in the King James translation:

• 2 Nephi 7:4 (𝓞 reads identically to Isaiah 50:4)
  • he [wakeneth 0|waketh 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] morning by morning he [wakeneth 0|waketh 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] mine ear to hear as the learned

Otherwise the Book of Mormon text allows only the a-initial verbs awake and awaken (43 times). The King James Bible, on the other hand, freely allows both the a-initial and w-initial verbs, although the a-initial verbs are considerably more frequent than the w-initial verbs (64 to 12).