Jacob 2:10 Textual Variants

Here the typesetter for the 1841 British edition accidentally replaced the word commands with commandments. Normally, the text refers to “the commandments of God” or to “the commandments of the Lord”, but Jacob himself sometimes uses the more immediate and forceful expression “the commands of God”:

• Jacob 2:16
  • and O that ye would listen unto the word of his commands
• Jacob 4:5
  • even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac

The only other occurrence of “the commands of God” in the current text is an error:

• Alma 30:7
  • for it was strictly contrary to the [commandments 0|commands 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of God that there should be a law which should bring men onto unequal grounds

In this instance, Oliver Cowdery is responsible for miscopying commandments as commands. (See Alma 30:7 for further discussion of this example, plus a list of other cases where Oliver accidentally wrote commands instead of commandments in the manuscripts.) Of course, commands is generally used to refer to the orders of military generals, but Jacob is the only Book of Mormon writer who uses the plural commands to refer to the commandments of God. There are other references to the command of God (that is, in the singular), although all but one of these refer to something being done “at God’s command”:

• Mormon 5:23
  • know ye not that ye are in the hands of God know ye not that he hath all power and at his great command the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll
• Ether 4:8–9
  • for unto them will I shew no greater things saith Jesus Christ for I am he which speaketh and at my command the heavens are opened and are shut and at my word the earth shall shake and at my command the inhabitants thereof shall pass away even so as by fire
• Moroni 7:30
  • for behold they are subject unto him to minister according to the word of his command