Helaman 16:7 Textual Variants

The original manuscript is extant for the word lands in the conjoined predicate “and did flee out of their lands”. The 1830 compositor set the text correctly here, but Oliver Cowdery miscopied lands as hands in the printer’s manuscript, probably because right above in the preceding line of 𝓞 the word hands occurred (“to lay their hands on him”).

The immediately following yea-phrase in this passage (“yea even unto his own country”) works best if that phrase restates some aspect of the preceding text. Obviously, fleeing “unto his own country” is semantically related to the statement that Samuel the Lamanite fled “out of their lands”. Moreover, Samuel was never in the hands of these Nephites, despite all their exertions to seize him (as described here in verses 6–7).

The expression “to flee out of the land (of X)” occurs seven times in the text, so this expression is perfectly acceptable:

• 1 Nephi 3:18 he hath been commanded to flee out of the land
• 1 Nephi 3:18 it must needs be that he flee out of the land
• 2 Nephi 1:3 that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem
• Omni 1:12 that he should flee out of the land of Nephi
• Mosiah 11:13 at the time they fled out of the land
• Alma 21:13 and the remainder of them fled out of the land of Middoni
• Ether 9:9 Nimrah gathered together a small number of men and fled out of the land

Stan Larson, on pages 250–251 of his master’s thesis (A Study of Some Textual Variations in the Book of Mormon Comparing the Original and the Printer’s Manuscripts and the 1830, the 1837, and the 1840 Editions, Brigham Young University, 1974), argues that lands is incorrect since all the other examples, listed above, refer to people fleeing from a single land, not from lands. Of course, at the time of Larson’s thesis, this fragment of 𝓞 had not yet been discovered, nor was there any recognition at that time that the 1830 edition had been set from 𝓞 for this part of the text. 𝓞 is extant and reads lands, so this unique instance of fleeing “out of their lands” should not be rejected on the basis that all other passages refer to fleeing out of a single land. To be sure, there are numerous references in the text to the land of the Nephites as “their lands” (although not with the verb flee), as in Mormon 4:15: “insomuch that they did beat again the Lamanites and drive them out of their lands”. Obviously, Samuel the Lamanite could be said to have been preaching in the lands inhabited by the Nephites, even though the text refers only to his preaching in the land of Zarahemla (Helaman 13:2).

There is one occurrence in the text of fleeing “out of someone’s hands”, so that reading is not impossible:

• Alma 27:5
  • let us gather together this people of the Lord and let us go down to the land of Zarahemla to our brethren the Nephites and flee out of the hands of our enemies that we be not destroyed

𝓞 is extant for this passage and reads hands, not lands. The expression “hand(s) of one’s enemies” is quite common in the text, occurring 29 other times. In Alma 27:5, it seems unlikely that hands is a mistake for lands.