Mosiah 3:11 Textual Variants

There seems to be an extra and between behold and the rest of the sentence here in Mosiah 3:11. The construction “behold and” occurs elsewhere in the text, but the other examples are always followed by the imperative:

• Mosiah 15:26
  • but behold and fear and tremble before God for ye had ought to tremble
• Mosiah 20:19
  • and now behold and tell the king of these things that he may tell his people that they may be pacified towards us
• Alma 5:52
  • behold and remember the Holy One hath spoken it

Mosiah 3:11 is different in that the initial behold is conjoined with a sentence that has an explicit subject and an indicative verb form, atoneth.

There is one instance in the printer’s manuscript when Oliver Cowdery initially added an and after behold:

• 1 Nephi 15:12
  • [& 01|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRT|And PS] behold [are 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|& >% are 1] we not broken off from the house of Israel

Here Oliver immediately caught his error, erased the ampersand he had written after behold, and wrote are. In this instance, the source of his error was probably the preceding ampersand that came before behold. On the other hand, in Mosiah 3:11 the word preceding behold is the conjunction for, not and.

Although the usage is quite strange for this passage and could represent an early error in the text, the critical text will retain the original reading since it is not altogether impossible. Note that no printed edition has ever edited out the extra and.