Acts 3:25 (King James Bible) ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers saying unto Abraham and in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed
Ostensibly, the biblical source for this passage, at least the words of the Lord to Abraham, is in the Old Testament:
But the actual Book of Mormon quotation follows the King James reading for Acts 3:25, although the specific words of the Lord to Abraham differ by only a single word (nations versus kindreds) when we compare Acts 3:25 with Genesis 22:18. More significantly, the larger passage in 3 Nephi 20:22–26 paraphrastically follows the overall language of the Acts passage (Acts 3:22–26), as in verse 25 for both sources (with the differences shown in bold):
| 3 Nephi 20:25 | Acts 3:25 |
|
and behold ye are the children of the prophets and ye are of the house of Israel and ye are of the covenant which the Father made with your fathers saying unto Abraham and in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed |
ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers saying unto Abraham and in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed |
In other words, 3 Nephi 20:25 is more of a quote from Acts 3:25 than from Genesis 22:18.
Clearly, the phrase “unto Abraham” belongs with the preceding saying in both 3 Nephi 20:25 and Acts 3:25. Even so, the compositors for the 1830 edition and the 1902 LDS edition interpreted “unto Abraham” as part of the Lord’s words to Abraham, thus ending up with the very awkward reading “unto Abraham and in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed”.
Summary: Maintain the current punctuation in 3 Nephi 20:25; in Acts 3:25 (and with support from Genesis 22:18), the phrase “unto Abraham” belongs with the preceding saying, not the following clause that actually quotes the Lord’s words to Abraham.