Alma 32:30–31 Textual Variants

This portion of the text was accidentally omitted by the 1830 typesetter. It was restored in 1908 in the RLDS text and in 1981 in the LDS text. The entire text is extant in 𝓞 (and in 𝓟). This omission was a visual skip based on the repetition of the words “sprouteth and beginneth to grow / and now behold”.

Ross Geddes (personal communication, 7 February 2006) suggests that the last clause in the omitted portion may have actually read “for behold it swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow”. Elsewhere the text includes the verb swell with sprouteth (and in three out of four cases, the language is specifically “swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow”):

• Alma 32:30 (two times)
  •   but behold as the seed swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow 
      and then ye must needs say that the seed is good
      for behold it swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow ...
      for ye will say : I know that this is a good seed
    → for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow
• Alma 32:33
  • and now behold because ye have tried the experiment and planted the seed
    and it swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow 
    ye must needs know that the seed is good
• Alma 32:34
  • for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls and ye also know that it hath sprouted up that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened and your mind doth begin to expand [In this last case, there is no explicit statement that the word has begun to grow; however, the final clause (“and your mind doth begin to expand”) seems to be referring to the same idea.]

Thus it is possible that at the end of Alma 32:30 the original text read “for behold it swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow”. If so, this case would literally repeat the full language of the second case (“for behold it swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow”)—and in verbal agreement with the first case (in verse 30) and the third case (in verse 33).

Since 𝓞 is extant for the entire verse 30 and it reads without swelleth and near the end of the verse, the possible loss of swelleth and would have occurred as Joseph Smith read off the text to Oliver Cowdery, the scribe here in 𝓞. One possibility is that Joseph’s eye may have skipped over the first verb to the second one (especially since swelleth and sprouteth are visually similar and have the same visual contour). Another possibility is that Oliver missed the swelleth and as he took down Joseph’s dictation. Of course, there is always the possibility that the original text here just didn’t have swelleth and. Since the reading in 𝓞 will work for this case, despite its lack of full parallelism with the two other cases in verse 30 and the one in verse 33, the safest solution is to simply follow the reading of the original manuscript, while recognizing that swelleth and could have been lost early on here in the transmission of the text.