Mosiah 29:39
1830 Edition
Therefore it came to pass that they assembled themselves together in bodies throughout the land, to cast in their voices concerning who should be their judges, to judge them according to the law which had been given them; and they were exceedingly rejoiced, because of the liberty which had been granted unto them.
Changes
Simple English
So they gathered in groups throughout the land. They voted for who should be their judges. These judges would judge them by the law they had been given. They were very happy about the freedom they had been given.
Paraphrase
So they gathered in groups throughout the land to vote on who should be their judges—people who would make decisions according to the law. They were thrilled about the freedom they'd been given.
Notes
"Another seemingly anachronistic issue in the Book of Mormon is a republican form of government. When the Puritans settled in the New World they drew up a document known as the Oath of a Freeman. The word 'freeman' was commonly used in Joseph Smith's day. Als, members of the Smith family had been involved in America's fight for freedom from England in 1776, and in the war of 1812. Thus the concept of liberty and freedom were part of Smith's environment....Also in Smith's day it was common to refer to America as the 'land of liberty,' a phrase found in the Book of Mormon." -Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Joseph Smith's Plagiarism of the Bible in the Book of Mormon, p. 11-12.
See also Alma 51:6-7 for use of the phrase, "freemen."
LDS author Grant Hardy writes, "In 1831, Alexander Campbell, one of the book's first critics (and certainly the first one to read it carefully), famously observed that it seemed to weigh in on all the popular religious questions of the day, including 'infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry , the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the right of the man.' This is a fair list, and references to these topics-or their analogous counterparts-can be found throughout the Book of Mormon." -Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, p. 184