Mosiah 14:9 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
because he had done no evil

Isaiah 53:9 (King James Bible) because he had done no violence

In this passage the Book of Mormon text substitutes evil for violence. The Masoretic Hebrew word here originally referred to a violent act, but this meaning was extended to also refer to wickedness as well as physical violence—that is, the word came to be used more generally to refer to any wrongful act. (See, for instance, the definition that refers to the “rude wickedness of men” under ‚ha¯ma¯s ‘violence, wrong’ in Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952], page 329.) The Greek Septuagint translated the word here in Isaiah 53:9 as a lawless act, which is more consistent with the Book of Mormon’s use of the word evil.

Summary: Retain the use of evil in Mosiah 14:9 (“because he had done no evil”), the consistent reading of the Book of Mormon textual sources; the word evil just as readily reflects the meaning of the Hebrew word translated as violence in the King James Bible.

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

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