Mosiah 13:25 Textual Variants

The original text of the Book of Mormon had a number of examples of the now-archaic infinitive clause structure “for to ”. Out of 15 original examples, Joseph Smith edited 13 to the modern English “to ” (that is, by deleting the for). For discussion of one example that Joseph edited, see Mosiah 20:1; for a complete list of all 15 examples, see FOR TO in volume 3. But in two places, Joseph missed removing the archaic for to, here in Mosiah 13:25 and in a later passage:

• Alma 12:4
  • and thou seest that we know that thy plan was a very subtle plan as to the subtlety of the devil for to lie and to deceive this people

Here in Mosiah 13:25, the 1830 punctuation seems to have prevented the 1837 editing out of the for since the 1830 typesetter broke up the original single question into two questions:

• Mosiah 13:25 (1830 accidentals)
  • Have ye taught this people that they should observe to do all these things? For to keep these commandments?

The resulting punctuation could have misled Joseph Smith into interpreting the for as a conjunction (which would have been independent of the following to). In any event, the 1837 edition retained the for to and the preceding question mark, although the capitalized For of the 1830 edition was replaced with a lowercase for in the 1837 edition. The 1920 LDS edition correctly removed the sentence-internal question mark but left the for to (as also in Alma 12:4). The critical text will, of course, restore all original instances of for to.