Jacob 4:7 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
nevertheless the Lord God sheweth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace and his great condescensions unto the children of men that we have power to do these things

Although here in Jacob 4:7 the invariant form is the singular weakness, its meaning may very well be the plural ‘weaknesses’. As discussed under 2 Nephi 31:18, there is some evidence that the word witness, as a verb, seems to have twice stood for ‘witnesses’, the third person singular present, in the original Book of Mormon text (also see under 3 Nephi 16:6). Contextual evidence suggests that the noun wilderness may stand for ‘wildernesses’ in Alma 34:26 (see the discussion there). As explained under 2 Nephi 31:18, words ending in -ness commonly failed to take the expected inflectional -es ending in earlier English; such bare forms appear to have occasionally occurred in the original Book of Mormon text.

Don Brugger (personal communication) points out that a later passage in the book of Ether seems to uniformly use the form weakness to stand for ‘weaknesses’:

Note especially the use in this passage of weak things, a plural form, that seems to act as a plural substitute for weakness ‘weaknesses’. In other words, the clause containing weak things could be interpreted as meaning ‘then will I make weaknesses become strengths unto them’.

Summary: Maintain weakness in Jacob 4:7, with the understanding that this form may mean ‘weaknesses’.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

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