Jacob 1:19 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
wherefore by laboring with our [mights 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|might RT] their blood might not come upon our garments

The original text of the Book of Mormon has numerous instances of plural mights where in modern English we expect the singular might. The plural form, in fact, is the normal one in the original text, providing we are dealing with a plurality of people and there are no adjoining conjuncts that are semantically related to might. In all, there are 12 instances of mights in the earliest textual sources. Besides the one here in Jacob 1:19, we have these instances:

Each instance is of the form “ mights”, where the preposition is either with or in and the plural possessive pronoun is our, your, or their.

The editors for the 1920 LDS edition changed all but one of these instances of mights to the expected singular, might. The only surviving case of mights in the LDS text is in Jacob 5:72; undoubtedly this exception was simply missed in the editing for the 1920 edition. The critical text will retain all 12 cases of the original mights.

On the other hand, there are seven cases where the earliest text reads might instead of mights. In two of these cases (each marked below with an asterisk), Oliver Cowdery initially wrote the plural mights when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. In both cases, he erased the plural s, so we can tell that these two corrections were immediate. And in one of the two (in Alma 58:13), the original manuscript is extant and reads in the singular, thus showing in that case that Oliver’s correction in 𝓟 restored the original singular might. All of these examples show that in the earliest extant text the singular might is also found in plural contexts:

Of course, when dealing with only one person, the text has only might:

Finally, when there are adjoining conjuncts that are semantically related to might (words like strength, mind, dominion, power, and majesty), we get only the singular might, irrespective of whether there is one person or many:

Mormon 4:8 does not fit in well in this list. Nonetheless, there is a connection (although not conjunctive) with the previous strength (“of their own strength”). Also note the use of own (“in their own might”); this is the only occurrence of might that is modified by own.

Summary: In accord with the earliest textual evidence, maintain all 12 cases of original plural mights (including here in Jacob 1:19); the earliest text also has seven cases of singular might in plural contexts, so either singular might or plural mights is possible whenever the context allows plurality.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

References