Helaman 13:10 Textual Variants

The verbal expression “shall visit your destruction” seems unusual. Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, we have nine examples of the phraseology “to visit a person with destruction” or “to visit a person (un)to destruction”:

• Jacob 2:33 save I shall visit them with a sore curse even unto destruction
• Mosiah 29:27 yea then is the time he will visit you with great destruction
• Alma 9:18 and ye shall be visited with utter destruction
• Alma 10:22 that ye would even now be visited with utter destruction
• Alma 33:10 and thou didst visit them in thine anger with speedy destruction
• Alma 60:29 yea and it shall fall upon you and visit you even to your utter destruction
• Helaman 7 preface that he will visit them in his anger to their utter destruction
• Helaman 11:30 and they were also visited with much destruction
• 3 Nephi 3:4 they would visit you with utter destruction

One interesting characteristic of all but one of these examples is that destruction is modified in attributive position by an intensifying adjective (“great destruction”, “utter destruction”, “speedy destruction”, “much destruction”), whereas here in Helaman 13:10 there is simply “your destruction”. But Jacob 2:33 reads without any modifier either (“even unto destruction”).

This Book of Mormon reading here in Helaman 13:10 is supported by the simpler phraseology “to visit destruction on X”, as in the following recent example from : “If it happens again I will visit destruction upon you. With a hammer.” Examples like this support the unique expression “to visit your destruction” here in Helaman 13:10.

The phraseology “to visit X”, with the sense of destruction (but not directly stated), can be found in three other places in the Book of Mormon text:

• Mosiah 11:22
  • and it shall come to pass that they shall know that I am the Lord their God and am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of my people
• Mosiah 12:1
  • therefore I will visit them in my anger yea in my fierce anger will I visit them in their iniquities and abominations
• Mosiah 13:13
  • for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me

The last passage is from the Ten Commandments (found in Exodus 20:5 and three other places in the Pentateuch). Other passages in the King James Bible also refer to the Lord visiting people’s sins, iniquities, or transgressions:

• Exodus 32:34 in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them Leviticus 18:25 and the land is defiled / therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it
• Psalm 89:32 then will I visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes
• Jeremiah 14:10 he will now remember their iniquity and visit their sins
• Lamentations 4:22 he will visit thine iniquity / O daughter of Edom
• Amos 3:14 that in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him / I will also visit the altars of Bethel

The last example continues by making it clear that visiting the altars of Bethel means destroying them: “and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground”. Thus the expression “to visit one’s destruction”, although idiomatic, is similar to the equally idiomatic “to visit one’s iniquity”.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists examples from earlier English where the verb visit means ‘to inflict punishment on someone’ (with citations under definitions 5 and 6 dating from late Middle English up into the 1800s), including this one under definition 5c that has punishment as the direct object for the verb visit:

• J. Gilbert (1836)
  It is said to be of the essence of the legal penalty to visit punishment on the person of the offender.

This usage, although indicated as rare in the OED, parallels the occurrence of “to visit destruction” here in Helaman 13:10 (“and those of the fourth generation shall visit your destruction”).

A different possibility for Helaman 13:10 is that the verb visit is an error for some other verb, such as witness. There are several examples where someone’s destruction is witnessed:

• The Words of Mormon 1:1–2
  • behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people the Nephites and it is many hundred years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people
• Alma 14:9
  • they took Alma and Amulek and carried them forth to the place of martyrdom that they might witness the destruction of those which were consumed by fire
• Moroni 9:22
  • and I pray unto God that he would spare thy life to witness the return of his people unto him or their utter destruction

Nonetheless, each of these examples refers to witnesses who are not the one causing the destruction, whereas in Helaman 13:10, if we follow this emendation using witness, we would have the Lamanites witnessing the Nephites’ destruction as if they weren’t the ones responsible for it.

Ultimately, the reading in Helaman 13:10, although unusual, appears to be fully intended. The critical text will therefore retain the verb visit in “and those of the fourth generation shall visit your destruction”, where “shall visit your destruction” means ‘will destroy you’.