Alma 5:50 Textual Variants

Ross Geddes (personal communication, 22 November 2003) proposes that the following two changes in the punctuation for this verse should be implemented:

• place a comma after behold (this change was made in the 1906 LDS edition and the 1908 RLDS edition, but the comma did not persist in the LDS text);
• remove the semicolon before the and; do not even permit a comma here.

These changes would give the following reading:

• Alma 5:50 (revised accidentals)
  • Behold, the glory of the King of all the earth and also the King of heaven shall very soon shine forth among all the children of men.

The Lord is indeed the King of all the earth and also the King of heaven; thus here in Alma 5:50 these two noun phrases are conjoined to each other, which means that this passage is saying that “the glory of the King of earth and heaven shall very soon shine forth among all the children of men”. This interpretation is supported by the preceding part of the verse, which refers to the glory of the coming of the Son of God:

• Alma 5:50
  • yea the Son of God cometh in his glory in his might majesty power and dominion

Further, the sentence-initial behold in this verse is an example of the narrative connector behold, which requires a comma. The text is not telling us to “behold the glory of the King of all the earth”; instead, the behold introduces a single statement that the glory of the King of all the earth (and also of heaven) shall very soon shine forth among all the children of men.