1 Nephi 1:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
thou [wilt 1ABCDEFGHIJKLNPRST|will MOQ] not suffer those who come unto thee that they shall perish

The history of the text shows some variation in the endings for the modal verbs will and shall. When the subject is the second person thou, we have for instance cases of both wilt and will.

In this particular case, the 1905 LDS edition replaced “thou wilt” with “thou will”. This change was followed by the 1907 and 1911 editions, but the original reading was restored in the 1920 edition. The 1905 change was most probably a typo that resulted from the typesetter’s unfamiliarity with biblical usage. In normally spoken and written modern English, the modal verb form will is invariant. There is, for instance, no distinct third person singular form (as in the impossible “he wills come”). And the archaic form wilt (as in “thou wilt”) is restricted to special religious and poetic language. For a complete listing of the textual variation between “thou wilt” and “thou will”, see infl al endings in volume 3.

Summary: Here in 1 Nephi 1:14, the earliest textual sources support “thou wilt”, the expected biblical usage.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References