Jacob 2:34 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and now behold my brethren ye know that these commandments [was 1|were ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] given to our father Lehi

Here the 1830 typesetter changed the singular was to plural were, even though a few verses earlier (in Jacob 2:28) he left the singular verb is in the nonstandard “and whoredoms is an abomination” (although there he did add the indefinite article an before abomination). As discussed under 1 Nephi 4:4, cases of nonstandard subject-verb agreement will be restored in the critical text.

Summary: Restore the nonstandard use of the singular verb was in Jacob 2:34 (“these commandments was given to our father Lehi”), the reading of the printer’s manuscript.

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

References