This sentence originally began with two conjoined present participial clauses, each with an initial being. The second being was deleted in the 1920 LDS edition. But the conjoining of being- clauses is found elsewhere in the text (for an example, see below), nor is there anything especially diffi- cult about repeating the being here in Ether 1:34. The real difficulty has to do with the conjunction for that preceded the following clause in the earliest extant text: “for Jared his brother said unto him”. This use of for seems quite foreign here, so it was removed in the editing for the 1920 edition. But instead of an intrusive for, what we appear to have here is an error for therefore. One possible scenario is that while writing down the text in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery missed the there part of therefore and ended up writing down only for. (It is also possible that Oliver miscopied a therefore in 𝓞 as simply for in 𝓟, especially if the there ended the line and -fore began the following line.)
Another possibility to consider here is that the for (or fore) is an archaic form that means ‘therefore’. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, provides no direct support for such an interpretation. Under definition 21 for the preposition for, the OED lists for this as having the meaning ‘therefore’ in the 16th century, but there is no example of for (or fore) as a shortened form of the word therefore.
Usage elsewhere in the Book of Mormon argues that here in Ether 1:34 for is probably a manuscript error for therefore. In particular, there are a good many examples of a present participial being- clause followed by a main clause introduced by therefore, including the following:
The last example is especially similar to Ether 1:34 since there is a pair of conjoined being-clauses that precede the therefore-clause.
Semantically, the text in Ether 1:34 implies that Jared asked his brother to pray on their behalf because his brother was “highly favored of the Lord”. The Book of Mormon text otherwise uses therefore rather than for to represent such a resultive relationship, which further argues that the for of the printer’s manuscript in Ether 1:34 is an error for therefore. The critical text will accept this conjectural emendation, although there are no examples elsewhere in the history of the text for this particular error.
Earlier in my analysis, under Mosiah 29:5, I referred to the for in the earliest text for Ether 1:34 as supporting the original reading of for in Mosiah 29:5. Given the replacement of for with therefore here in Ether 1:34, that argument there must now be revised. For the resulting revision in the analysis, see under Mosiah 29:5 in the addenda at the end of this last part of volume 4.
Summary: Emend Ether 1:34 to read therefore in place of the for found in the earliest textual source, the printer’s manuscript; usage elsewhere in the text supports therefore when preceded by presentparticipial clauses with the verb form being.