Joseph Smith’s deletion of be for the 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon represents an attempt to deal with the awkwardness and rarity of the clause “there shall be none come”. Yet Joseph Smith’s alteration of this clause to “there shall none come” is also awkward. There are no other occurrences of “there shall none” in the Book of Mormon, although there are four in the King James Bible:
Yet in each of these biblical examples, “there shall none” is followed by the helping verb be and the past participle of a main verb, not by the infinitive form of the main verb as in the example “there shall be none come” in 2 Nephi 1:6.
When we look for other cases in the Book of Mormon text of the be verb followed by none, we find cases where none can be followed by an infinitive phrase (5 examples) or by a relative clause (14 examples). As an example of the infinitive phrase, consider the following nearby example:
Such an example suggests the possibility that the word to might be missing from the original manuscript for 2 Nephi 1:6; in other words, the text might have read “there shall be none to come into this land save they should be brought by the hand of the Lord”. Yet this suggested emendation seems at least as awkward as the original reading.
An example of “be none” followed by a relative clause occurs later on in the text:
This example suggests that the relative pronoun that (or which or who) might be missing in 2 Nephi 1:6; in other words, the original reading in 2 Nephi 1:6 could perhaps be emended to “there shall be none that come into this land save they should be brought by the hand of the Lord”. This proposed reading seems much less awkward.
Nonetheless, there is one example in the text that suggests that the reading of the original manuscript for 2 Nephi 1:6 is actually correct:
We do not have the original manuscript for Helaman 14:5, but we have two independent copies of that verse (namely, the printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition); that is, this verse is in that portion of the text from Helaman 13 through Mormon where the original manuscript was used to set the 1830 edition. The 1830 edition here reads “and behold there shall a new star arise”, but the printer’s manuscript reads “and behold there shall be a new star arise”, an awkward phrase to be sure, but precisely parallel to 2 Nephi 1:6. Both of these passages have the same pattern, “there shall be”:
The most probable explanation is that in Helaman 14:5 the original manuscript had the be and it was omitted by the 1830 typesetter. It seems unlikely that the unexpected be was accidentally added when copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟. See the discussion under Helaman 14:5.
Summary: Restore the original reading in 2 Nephi 1:6 (“there shall be none come into this land”); although awkward and unusual, this reading is supported by the reading of 𝓟 in Helaman 14:5 (“there shall be a new star arise”).