In this sentence, the verb form put, if interpreted as an infinitive form, would take they as its subject, resulting in a virtually impossible reading: that is, Amulon commanded Alma’s people to guard themselves (“Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries and [that they should] put guards over them to watch them”). More reasonably, put should be interpreted as the simple past-tense form, in which case the subject for put would be Amulon (“Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries and [Amulon] put guards over them to watch them”). In order to avoid the difficult reading, the 1830 typesetter supplied the subject pronoun he, with its obvious antecedent Amulon.
Textually, there are two possibilities: (1) the original text had the he, which was accidentally lost sometime during the early transmission of the text; or (2) the earliest reading is actually correct, despite the difficulty in processing it. Given that the reading in 𝓟, as originally written, is difficult, one wonders if there might be some support elsewhere in the text for such a conjunction of predicates where there is an intervening subordinate that-clause. Here are two examples that also involve the verb command and a that-clause. In both these cases, it should be noted, the coordinating conjunction is but rather than and, with the result that the reversal in polarity (from negative to positive) is easier to process without repeating the subject as a pronoun:
Note that for these two examples, the pair of conjoined verbs both occur in past time (thus “commanded … caused” and “have commanded ... have commanded”), just as commanded and put are in Mosiah 24:11. These two examples suggest that the earliest reading in Mosiah 24:11 is not impossible and may actually represent the original text.
To be sure, there is manuscript evidence that a conjoined subject pronoun he can be lost from the text, if only momentarily, as in the following two examples which have an intervening subordinate clause:
With respect to the first example, Oliver Cowdery (while proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞) corrected scribe 2’s accidental omission of the subject pronoun he. In the second example, Oliver himself dropped the he when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, thus creating another example where the conjoined subject pronoun is omitted (once more the conjunction is but).
Ultimately, here in Mosiah 24:11, the question is how egregious is the earliest reading without the subject pronoun he. Once we are used to it, this difficult reading can be parsed. The critical text will restore the original reading since there are a few similar examples in the earliest text where the expected subject pronoun seems to have been omitted (although those examples involve but rather than and ). Of course, the distinct possibility remains that an original he was lost here in Mosiah 24:11 during the early transmission of the text.
Summary: Restore in Mosiah 24:11 the earliest reading without the subject pronoun he in the conjoined predicate “and it came to pass that Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries and put guards over them to watch them”; this difficult reading can be parsed, although perhaps not on the first reading.