Mormon 5:24 Textual Variants

Heather Hardy (personal communication, 12 November 2007) suggests that the word justice here could be an error for judgment, especially given the two instances elsewhere in the text of “to come out in judgment against someone” (but no others of “to come out in justice against someone”):

• Alma 60:32
  • behold can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites
• Moroni 9:15
  • woe unto this people come out in judgment / O God and hide their sins and wickedness and abominations from before thy face

It should be noted that both these passages, along with Mormon 5:24, refer to God’s judgment or justice in a negative context.

If justice is an error for judgment here in Mormon 5:24, it must have occurred during the dictation of the text, either as a misreading by Joseph Smith or as a mishearing by Oliver Cowdery (the presumed scribe in 𝓞 for this part of the text). Since both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞 for this passage and they both read justice, 𝓞 itself undoubtedly read as justice. There is scribal evidence for miswriting justice in place of judgment, namely, once when

Oliver Cowdery was copying the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

• 1 Nephi 22:21
  • wherefore he shall execute [ judgment 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|justice > Judgment 1] in righteousness

Despite this evidence from scribal practice and usage elsewhere in the text, there is clear evidence that the Book of Mormon sometimes associates the word justice with judgment. In one passage, the association is with the more specific righteous judgment and is found in a parallel structure:

• Alma 41:14
  • yea ye shall have mercy restored unto you again ye shall have justice restored unto you again ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again and ye shall have good rewarded unto you again

And in two cases, the single words justice and judgment are closely associated. One case is in a quote from the King James Bible where both words are used in a positive context:

• 2 Nephi 19:7 (Isaiah 9:7)
  • of the increase of government and peace there is no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever

The other case is found in a negative context:

• Alma 60:13
  • for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked

There is also plenty of support for the semantic relatedness of justice and judgment in the Old Testament, as in the following examples that refer to the people, kings, and the Lord as exercising justice and judgment, sometimes in parallel constructions:

• Genesis 18:19 and they shall keep the way of the LORD to do justice and judgment
• 2 Samuel 8:15 and David executed judgment and justice unto all his people
• Job 8:3 doth God pervert judgment / or doth the Almighty pervert justice
• Job 36:17 judgment and justice take hold on thee
• Psalm 89:14 justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne
• Psalm 119:121 I have done judgment and justice
• Proverbs 21:3 to do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice
• Isaiah 59:9 therefore is judgment far from us / neither doth justice overtake us
• Isaiah 59:14 and judgment is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off

Don Brugger (personal communication) provides the following citation from , which gives the title for an anonymously written book published in London in 1649:

• A Brief Warning Concerning the Just Judgement of God:
  And His Eternall Justice, Against the Unjust and Wicked Designe of the Souldiers of England, who Have Deprived of Life, and Murthered Their King.

Thus the expression “to come out in justice against someone” is possible and will therefore be maintained in Mormon 5:24. To be sure, justice could be an error for judgment in this passage, but it is also possible that it is correct.