Isaiah 51:4 (King James Bible) and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people
The additional noun thing in the early Book of Mormon text seems to be an error based on the two different meanings of light, the adjective meaning ‘not heavy’ versus the noun referring to ‘something shining’. In the King James Bible, “a light thing” means either ‘something small’ or ‘something easy’, including the following cases:
Especially important to the analysis of 2 Nephi 8:4 is the following example from Isaiah:
Except for the word shouldest /shouldst, this passage is quoted without change in the Book of Mormon:
In all of these King James biblical passages having “a light thing”, the Hebrew equivalent is verbal rather than nominal and has the meaning ‘to be a small matter’ or ‘to be easy’. In each case, the corresponding Hebrew verb form has the consonants n-q-l (based on the root q-l-l ).
On the other hand, in the King James examples of “a light to/of X” (where X is a group of people), thing is never used with light:
In all three of these citations, the Hebrew word for light is the noun √fflor ‘light’, which always refers to shining rather than smallness or easiness.
Of particular importance here is the fact that Isaiah 49:6 contains both “a light thing” and “a light to X”:
This example suggests that a possible source for “a light thing of the people”, the earliest reading in 2 Nephi 8:4 (quoting Isaiah 51:4), is the nearby passage in Isaiah 49:6 with its occurrence of “a light thing”. This connection, however, holds only for English with its homonymy of the two etymologically unrelated words, light ‘not heavy’ and light ‘something shining’. The source of the confusion cannot be traced to the original Hebrew because there both the words (n-q-l and √fflor) are completely different, both phonetically and orthographically. The error in 2 Nephi 8:4 seems possible only because the English word light has two different meanings.
The problem, then, is in accounting for the addition of thing to light in 2 Nephi 8:4. As already noted, the word thing may have been added under the influence of “a light thing” that was dictated earlier in 1 Nephi 21:6. The question is whether the additional thing was actually in the original text or added in the early transmission of the text by Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery. Unfortunately, 𝓞 is not extant for this verse. The printer’s manuscript does suggest that Oliver had some difficulty copying the text here in 2 Nephi 8:4. He initially wrote “a light thing the people” in 𝓟, then supralinearly inserted the of (with no change in the level of ink flow, which suggests an immediate correction). The of was probably in 𝓞.
In the manuscripts, there is no scribal evidence for the accidental addition of thing or things. We do have cases where words and sayings were accidentally replaced by things (1 Nephi 3:28 and 2 Nephi 6:8 for words, and Mosiah 13:25 and 3 Nephi 16:4 for sayings ). There is one instance where scribe 2 of 𝓟 appears to have accidentally omitted things (see 3 Nephi 21:4). But there is no manuscript evidence for the addition of thing or things except possibly here in 2 Nephi 8:4.
When Joseph Smith came to editing this passage for the 1837 edition, he decided to delete the additional thing. He clearly did not like the 1830 reading “for a light thing of the people”. However, he did not simply restore the original King James text. Apparently, he didn’t like the of either, so in his editing for the 1837 edition, he changed the preposition of to for (“for a light for the people”). In the Hebrew the word people directly follows the noun light, which in English implies a genitivelike construction for the following word. The King James Bible ordinarily uses the preposition of in translating such cases, as in Isaiah 42:6 (“for a light of the Gentiles”). On the other hand, in Isaiah 49:6, the King James Bible translates the same exact phrase as “for a light to the Gentiles”. Joseph Smith’s preposition for in 2 Nephi 8:4 seems semantically equivalent to to. This additional editing suggests that when Joseph made these two editing changes (deleting thing and changing to to for), he did not necessarily consult a King James Bible, although he may have; both changes seem to be motivated by a simple desire to clean up a difficult reading. For evidence that suggests Joseph Smith may have used a King James Bible in his editing of 2 Nephi 6–8, see the discussion regarding “which have said” under 2 Nephi 8:23.
Ultimately, the addition of thing in 2 Nephi 8:4 seems to be an error influenced by the language in 1 Nephi 21:6 (Isaiah 49:6). Otherwise, there seems to be no motivation for the addition of thing in 2 Nephi 8:4. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith apparently thought that “a light thing” was incorrect. The critical text will emend 2 Nephi 8:4 so that it agrees with the original King James language in Isaiah 51:4 (“for a light of the people”).
Summary: Accept Joseph Smith’s removal of the anomalous word thing from the phrase “for a light thing of the people” (that is, the reading of the earliest text for 2 Nephi 8:4 is probably an error); the original preposition of should be maintained.