Alma 46:24 Textual Variants

As discussed under Alma 46:7, there was a tendency for Oliver Cowdery to write the plural hands in the phrases “by the hand of the Lord” and “by the hand of God”. Except for the one case of “by the hands of the Lord” in Alma 46:7, the earliest text consistently supports the singular hand in these two phrases, including here in Alma 46:24. In this instance, Oliver initially wrote the plural hands in 𝓞 but then immediately erased the plural s. Elsewhere in the text, there are three examples of “by the hand of God” but none of “by the hands of God”:

• Mosiah 1:5 these things which have been kept and preserved by the hand of God
• Alma 9:9 our father Lehi was brought out of Jerusalem by the hand of God
• 4 Nephi 1:16 among all the people which had been created by the hand of God

For a list of cases where hand and hands have been mixed up in the text, see under Mosiah 16:1.