Alma 43:25 Textual Variants

In this sentence, the original subject, Moroni, is immediately followed by a present participial clause (“leaving a part of his army in the land of Jershon”) plus a subordinate lest-clause (“lest by any means a part of the Lamanites should come into that land and take possession of the city”). When the text finally provides the predicate for Moroni, we get a Hebrew-like connector, and, and a repetition of the original subject (thus “and Moroni took the remainder part of his army and marched over into the land of Manti”). In his editing here for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith removed the non-English use of and as well as the repeated subject, Moroni. A similar instance of this kind of construction (connective and and a repeated subject) is found earlier in the text:

• Alma 19:14
  • now Ammon seeing the Spirit of the Lord poured out according to his prayers upon the Lamanites his brethren which had been the cause of so much mourning among the Nephites or among all the people of God because of their iniquities and their traditions [& Ammon 0|& Ammon >js & Ammon he 1|and Ammon A| he BCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRT|He PS] fell upon his knees

In that instance, Joseph removed the and but replaced the repeated name Ammon with the subject pronoun he (thus maintaining a form of the redundancy). For both Alma 19:14 and Alma 43:25, the critical text will restore the Hebrew-like and and the repeated name. For further discussion of this use of and, see under hebraisms in volume 3.