In our Book of Mormon, which was translated by Joseph Smith, there is a distinction to be made between the remnant of the house of Israel or Jacob and the “Jews.” Scholars have pointed out that the use of the term “Jew” in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic to the time of the text, and it is. A “Jew” is a reference to one who was one of the remaining two tribes in the southern kingdom after the destruction and dispersal of the northern kingdom. However, by Joseph Smith’s time, it was the common word for the people of the Bible, and understandably part of the way he understood what he was translating.
When Joseph translates, a distinction that was on the plates survives in the way he uses vocabulary. That distinction is between his own people, who are lineally of the same people as those of the Old World. The distinction that is made in the Book of Mormon is that the New World “people of the Book” are a branch of, or more typically, a remnant of, the house of Israel. The Old World branch is designated as the Jews.
What we have at this point in Mormon’s writing about the future of his text is Mormon writing first and foremost to the remnant, or to the future descendants of his own people. When he mentions the intended reader of his text in verses 9 and 10, he declares that the text is form “the remnant of these people” (verse 9), or “their seed” (verse 10). Only after directing the text to those people does Mormon add, almost parenthetically, and in both cases, “also unto the Gentiles.”
Now Mormon adds a third intended audience, and that is the Jews proper. The Book of Mormon is intended for a wide audience, but Mormon presents the order as remnant, Gentile, Jew. It is interesting that the actual order of presentation was Gentile, remnant, Jew, which was the prophesied order (such as in 3 Nephi 21).