The preposition to in “like to yourselves” (the earliest reading, found in the printer’s manuscript) was changed to unto by the 1830 compositor, probably because the Book of Mormon text otherwise has only the preposition unto in this construction and the compositor was used to setting “like unto”. In fact, later on in this verse, the same expression is found and here the preposition is unto: “that they may be rich like unto you”. In the original Book of Mormon text, there are 89 occurrences of “like unto” followed by a noun phrase (as in this example from later on in Jacob 2:17) but only one of “like to” followed by a noun phrase (here at the beginning of Jacob 2:17). There is also one example of “like to” followed by a verb (“I was like to be cast off ”, Mosiah 27:27), but there the meaning is quite different.
In the King James biblical text, we can have either “like unto” or “like to” followed by a noun phrase, with the first one dominating: 86 occurrences of “like unto” and 13 of “like to”. For instance, in the book of Matthew, the initial occurrence of the clause “the kingdom of heaven is like (un)to ” has to, but the remaining six have unto:
In the original Greek, there is no explicit preposition in these cases, only the dative inflectional ending; thus the choice of the English-language preposition in the King James text was decided by the translators.
This same choice between the prepositions to and unto is found in other English texts. The Oxford English Dictionary gives citations of the adjective like with either preposition (cited here with original accidentals):
The OED lists the use of unto as “now archaic” (that is, by the end of the 19th century, at the time of publication for this part of the OED). The Book of Mormon text, like the King James Bible, prefers the archaic usage, “like unto”.
One could view the unique occurrence of “like to” in Jacob 2:17 as the result of an error in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text. The original manuscript is not extant here, so it is possible that an original unto was replaced by to. Elsewhere in the manuscripts, we have numerous examples where Oliver Cowdery (the scribe here in 𝓟 and presumably in 𝓞 since nearby fragments are in his hand) accidentally replaced an original unto with to:
So the reading “like to yourselves” in Jacob 2:17 may be an error. Nonetheless, the preposition to is clearly possible, and therefore the critical text will restore it in this expression.
Summary: Restore the original to in Jacob 2:17 (“think of your brethren like to yourselves”); this is the only occurrence of “like to ” in the Book of Mormon text and could be due to a scribal error on Oliver Cowdery’s part; this use of to is common in the English of Joseph Smith’s time, although the Book of Mormon clearly prefers unto in the expression “like (un)to ”.