Alma 17:26 Textual Variants

This passage is the only place where we find the singular “the water of Sebus”. Elsewhere we have five occurrences of “the waters of Sebus”—and without variation:

• Alma 17:34 those which stood by the waters of Sebus
• Alma 18:7 to stand by the waters of Sebus
• Alma 19:20 his servants who had had their flocks scattered at the waters of Sebus
• Alma 19:21 those men which had stood at the waters of Sebus
• Alma 19:21 which he had slain of their brethren at the waters of Sebus

In fact, excluding this one instance of “the water of Sebus” in Alma 17:26, we get only the plural waters (38 times) for the general expression “the water(s) of X”, with the following statistics for each type of X:

Mormon 8
Sidon 8
Sebus 5
the Red Sea 4
the great deep 3
the river 2
life 2
Noah 2
Judah 1
Shiloah 1
Ripliancum 1
baptism 1

The probable source for the error in Alma 17:26 is the preceding singular “the place of water”. And although the phraseology “the place of water” sounds strange in English, the text is firm in having water in the phrase “place of water” rather than waters (or watering):

• Alma 17:26 to the place of water
• Alma 17:27 to this place of water
• Alma 17:31 unto the place of water
• Alma 17:32 to the place of water
• Alma 18:6 at the place of water

In the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery sometimes miswrote waters as water, at least initially:

• Mosiah 18:8
  • behold here is the [water > waters 1|waters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of Mormon
• Alma 43:40
  • and they were driven by Lehi into the [water > waters 1|waters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of Sidon The critical text will correct the singular water here in Alma 17:26 to the plural waters.