3 Nephi 20:17 Textual Variants

Micah 5:9 (King James Bible) thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries and all thine enemies shall be cut off

Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 twice miswrote thine as their. Oliver Cowdery, when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, made the proper corrections. The thine occurs in the corresponding King James reading in Micah 5:9. But one difference between the King James text and the Book of Mormon has to do with the noun hand: in the King James reading, we have “thine hand” because of the h-less pronunciation of hand in Early Modern English, which shows up quite frequently in the King James Bible (which has 147 instances of “thine hand” but only 40 of “thy hand”). Although the overall number of occurrences is less, the Book of Mormon text prefers “thy hand” over “thine hand” (4 to 2), so in each case we follow the earliest textual sources. The Book of Mormon preference for thy over thine may be due to the fact that the h of hand is pronounced by the vast majority of modern English speakers.

This same kind of variation between thy and thine before h-initial words is found in other biblical quotations in the Book of Mormon. In all the following cases, the form thy consistently occurs in the Book of Mormon text, while the King James text has the archaic use of thine:

book of mormon king james bible

• 2 Nephi 24:13 / Isaiah 14:13 thy heart thine heart
• 3 Nephi 13:17 / Matthew 6:17 thy head thine head
• 3 Nephi 20:17 / Micah 5:9 thy hand thine hand
• 3 Nephi 20:19 / Micah 4:13 thy horn thine horn
• 3 Nephi 21:16 / Micah 5:12 thy hand thine hand
• 3 Nephi 21:17 / Micah 5:13 thy hands thine hands
• 3 Nephi 22:2 / Isaiah 54:2 thy habitations thine habitations
• 3 Nephi 22:5 / Isaiah 54:5 thy husband thine husband

Nonetheless, sometimes the King James thine before an h-initial word is retained in the Book of Mormon text:

• 1 Nephi 21:21 / Isaiah 49:21 thine heart thine heart
• 2 Nephi 8:22 / Isaiah 51:22 thine hand thine hand

Cases involving variation within the Book of Mormon text itself will always be discussed in this volume. See, for instance, the discussion regarding thy versus thine under 3 Nephi 12:43. In all of the invariant cases within the Book of Mormon text, the critical text will accept the earliest Book of Mormon reading even if it differs with a corresponding King James reading, thus “thy hand” here in 3 Nephi 20:17. For vowel-initial words like adversaries and enemies, of course, thine occurs in both the Book of Mormon and King James texts. For a complete discussion, see under possessive pronouns in volume 3.