Mosiah 21:6 Textual Variants

The use of the preposition with in the phrase “began to murmur with the king” seems strange since in modern usage the with implies that the king too was murmuring. But later in this passage, the text indicates that “they did afflict the king sorely with their complaints”. One might propose that somehow this later use of with led to the introduction of with in the earlier phrase “to murmur with the king”. Yet such an interference seems unlikely since the distance between the two occurrences of with is about one and a half manuscript lines of text. If the distance had been a single line, then the possible influence of with just below in the next line could have led to introducing a with in the preceding line.

The usual phraseology in the text is “to murmur against someone” (which occurs 13 times, but only in the small plates of Nephi). Here in Mosiah 21:6 the people are not murmuring against king Limhi but instead are pestering him with their murmurings. Karl Franson (personal communication, 10 October 2003) suggests that the preposition with may be a mistake for to. Elsewhere, there are two instances of “to murmur to someone”:

• Mosiah 27:1
  • the church began to murmur and complain to their leaders concerning the matter and they did complain to Alma
• Mosiah 29:33
  • and many more things did king Mosiah write unto them unfolding unto them all the trials and troubles of a righteous king yea all the travails of soul for their people and also all the murmurings of the people to their king

In the first of these (“to murmur and complain to their leaders”), the preposition to may apply only to the verb complain (note the following “and they did complain to Alma”). But there is at least one clear instance of “to murmur to someone” in the text (namely, the second instance listed above). Yet one instance is probably not enough to motivate emending Mosiah 21:6 from “to murmur with the king” to “to murmur to the king”.

The online Oxford English Dictionary cites one example (under definition 2 for the verb question) for which with may be associated with the verb murmur:

• Henry Brooke (1768)
  • Nay, I was not far from murmuring and questioning with my God, on his putting to such tortures the most guiltless of his creatures.

Of course, like the example in Mosiah 27:1, the preposition (here with) may be associated with only the immediately preceding verb (namely, question).

The critical text will maintain the preposition with in “to murmur with the king”. Although difficult, this reading seems possible and may be intended.