3 Nephi 24:1 Textual Variants

Malachi 3:1 (King James Bible) behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me

Here we have another typo by the typesetter for the 1841 British edition (and once more the correct reading is restored in the subsequent 1849 LDS edition). In fact, the 1841 typesetter made several typos in the quotation of Malachi 3–4, as noted in the analysis for five more variants listed below (here in 3 Nephi 24 and 25). In this instance, the typesetter replaced the determiner the before way with the possessive pronoun my, probably because of the preceding use of my in “I will send my messenger”. The corresponding King James passage in Malachi has the before way. The critical text will maintain the original reading, “he shall prepare the way before me”. It should be noted, however, that in theory something like “he shall prepare my way before me” is possible, as in 2 Nephi 4:33: “but that thou wouldst clear my way before me”.