The noun rent refers only to the tear itself, not to the torn portion. The Oxford English Dictionary gives no examples of the noun rent referring to the torn part itself. The 1906 LDS large-print edition thus emended the text here in Alma 46:19 to read “the rent part” in both instances. This change was followed in the third printing (in 1907) of the 1905 LDS missionary edition and the 1907 LDS vest-pocket edition as well as all subsequent LDS editions (1911, 1920, and 1981). A nearby passage provides support for selecting the word part to emend the text in Alma 46:19, namely, in Alma 46:24: “a part of the remnant of the coat of Joseph was preserved and had not decayed”. Another possible emendation would be piece, as in Alma 46:12: “he rent his coat and he took a piece thereof and wrote upon it”.
The critical text will maintain this use of rent as a noun (with the meaning ‘rent part’), despite its difficulty. The original manuscript is not extant for these two occurrences of rent, but spacing considerations between extant portions of 𝓞 show that in both cases part could not have been in 𝓞 except by supralinear insertion. It is highly unlikely that Oliver Cowdery, when copying to the printer’s manuscript, would have omitted both instances of a supralinearly inserted part (or even both instances of part written inline). The two original instances in Alma 46:19 of rent without part or piece appear to be fully intended.
John Tvedtnes has pointed out that the Hebrew verb for ‘tear’, namely qa¯rafi, has a nominal form, qerafi, that means ‘a torn piece of garment’; see page 51 of Tvedtnes’s article “Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon: A Preliminary Survey”, Brigham Young University Studies 11/1 (1970): 50–60. Literally, this Hebrew noun could be translated into English as simply rent (that is, without the expected part or piece). There are several instances of this usage in the Hebrew Bible; the word piece in the King James text could be literally translated as rent:
Note that each King James passage also uses the verb rend, the same verb used seven other times in Alma 46 to refer to the tearing of garments (see Alma 46:12–13 and Alma 46:21–23).
There is also some evidence in Early Modern English for the use of the noun rent with the meaning ‘rent piece of cloth’ (original accidentals retained):
I owe this citation to Daine Stevens, a student in my winter 2007 course on textual criticism of the Book of Mormon. This passage can be found on Literature Online .
Summary: Restore in Alma 46:19 the original two occurrences of rent as a noun (that is, without an explicit noun such as part or piece); such usage, despite its unusualness, is fully intended and can be considered a literal Hebraism or an instance of language usage from Early Modern English.