The original text here reads believeth. In the 1837 edition, the third person singular ending -(e)th was dropped. One reason may have been that Joseph Smith, the editor for that edition, viewed none as having a plural referent. And since the inflectional -(e)th ending should occur only with third person singular subjects, believeth was replaced by believe. In the original text, third person plural subjects frequently took the -(e)th ending. See the discussion regarding rebelleth in the 1 Nephi preface, plus the general discussion under infl al endings in volume 3.
In the original text, there are eight examples of none that take a verb ending in -eth. In three of the cases, there are other elements in the sentence that show that the none should be interpreted as a singular:
In these cases, the -(e)th ending has remained unedited.
For three cases, the none could be interpreted as either singular or plural. In one of these cases, the -(e)th ending was deleted—namely, the instance here in 2 Nephi 6:14. For the two other cases of possible ambiguity, the -(e)th ending has been left unchanged:
In the last example, the fact that the King James Bible is being quoted may have prevented the -(e)th from being edited.
Finally, there are two cases where the none occurs in a plural context. In the first case, two occurrences of the -(e)th ending have been deleted; in the other case, the -(e)th ending has remained:
Thus the editing of -(e)th with respect to none has never been consistently carried out, probably because it is so difficult for English readers to notice the supposed grammatical violation, given that in the Book of Mormon the -(e)th ending acts more as a marker of the biblical style than as a third person singular ending. Of course, the critical text will in each of these cases maintain the original usage.
Over the last two centuries, some grammarians have claimed that none can be interpreted only as a singular. As noted under none in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, this claim is wholly untenable, both in earlier English and in current usage. And we can see from the examples listed above that the Book of Mormon text has examples of both singular and plural none. More striking perhaps are the following pairs of examples involving the be verb:
Clearly, the Book of Mormon text allows variation in number for none.
Summary: Restore the original inflectional ending in 2 Nephi 6:14 (“and none will he destroy that believeth in him”); the editing here implies that none was interpreted as a plural, but the singular is also possible.