Alma 9:22 Textual Variants

Here in the earliest text we have a sequence of five present participial clauses, each headed by the perfect having and followed by the passive been. The expression “having been waxed strong” seems odd since “to wax strong” means ‘to grow strong’ or ‘to become strong’ (see the definition for the verb wax in the Oxford English Dictionary). The verb wax is a kind of linking verb; thus it seems quite strange here in Alma 9:22 that it should be used transitively and in the passive. The 1920 LDS edition removed the passive auxiliary verb form been, thus creating the more expected “they having waxed strong in battle”.

David Calabro has suggested (personal communication) that the been in “they having been waxed strong in battle” may be an early error in the text that resulted from the surrounding occurrences of “having been” in the two immediately preceding clauses (“having been delivered” and “having been saved”) and in the two immediately following clauses (“having been brought out of bondage” and “having been kept and preserved”).

Despite the unusualness of the been in “they having been waxed strong in battle”, the rest of the passage argues for the been. First, all the nearby examples refer to what the Lord had done for these people: he delivered them out of the land of Jerusalem, he saved them from famine and from sicknesses and diseases, he made them strong in battle so they wouldn’t be destroyed, he brought them out of bondage many times, he kept and preserved them up to the present, and he even made them prosper so that they became rich. In other words, it was the Lord who made the people strong in battle, and this is apparently what “they having been waxed strong in battle” means. Note also that the Lord did this so “that they might not be destroyed”. If the been is removed, the causative relationship between waxing strong in battle and not being destroyed is weakened.

There are no other examples in the text of “to wax strong” being used transitively (nor is such usage identified in the OED). The Book of Mormon text has 37 examples of the linking verb wax, as in “to wax ” (for which 23 examples take the adjective strong or its comparative stronger); there is also one example of “to wax in iniquity” (in Jacob 2:23). In this regard, we should note the strange usage in the last sentence of Alma 9:22: “and they have been prospered until they are rich in all manner of things”. Normally, we would expect “and they have prospered until they are rich in all manner of things”. But the text says that it was the Lord who made them prosper, thus the use of the transitive expression “to prosper someone”, meaning ‘to make someone prosper’. There are at least 12 other examples in the text of the transitive expression “to prosper someone”, as in this sampling:

• Mosiah 2:36 that ye may be blessed prospered and preserved
• Mosiah 27:7 and the Lord did visit them and prosper them
• Alma 59:3 insomuch that he might with ease maintain that part of the land which he had been so miraculously prospered in retaining
• Ether 10:28 and never could be a people more blessed than were they and more prospered by the hand of the Lord

The OED lists this transitive use of the verb prosper (see definition 2), with the following citations referring to the Lord prospering someone (here I retain the original spelling):

• Jehan Palsgrave (1530)
  I beseche Jhesu prospere you in all your busynesses.
• Thomas Nashe (1593)
  God ... cherrisht and prosperd them with all the blessings hee could.

Thus the larger passage in Alma 9:22 shows that the expression “they having been waxed strong in battle” is indeed intended and means ‘they having been made strong in battle’. The critical text will restore the earliest reading, despite its difficulty.