Yahweh responds by commanding the brother of Jared to gather plants and animals, specifying both male and female animals. Since their flocks would already have included both male and female, this is Yahweh’s way of telling them they will be colonizers. Although he does not tell them they will cross waters, Mosiah/Moroni probably intended a parallel to Noah’s story, a parallel strengthened by the later comparison of the Jaredite barges to Noah’s ark (Ether 6:7).
Variant: “Thy families” (v. 41) seems to imply that the brother of Jared had more than one “family.” This word, however, is a typographical error in the 1830 edition. The printer’s manuscript reads “thy family.” Royal Skousen notes: “The 1830 printer in reading one of the families apparently let his eye glance down to the next line and he caught one of the plurals and accidentally set it as ‘families’[;] this is just a typo by the 1830 [typesetter].”