Ether 3:9 Textual Variants

The 1858 Wright edition added the adverb forth here in Ether 3:9. The first two RLDS editions followed this intrusive reading, but the 1908 RLDS edition restored the original reading without the forth. The expression “to come before someone” is not too common in the text; there is only one other example, and the meaning there is metaphorical: “good and evil hath come before all men” (Alma 29:5). But there are no examples of the redundant “to come forth before someone”. For the expression “to come (forth) and stand before someone”, there are examples with and without the forth:

• 1 Nephi 1:11 and the first came and stood before my father
• 1 Nephi 3:29 behold an angel of the Lord came and stood before them
• 1 Nephi 8:5 and he came and stood before me
• Mosiah 26:25 then shall they that never knew me come forth and shall stand before me
• Alma 12:15 we must come forth and stand before him in his glory
• Alma 14:14 the chief judge of the land came and stood before Alma and Amulek

Note, however, that the two examples with forth deal specifically with the coming forth at the time of the resurrection and are therefore not quite the same as the other cases without the forth. The expression without the forth in Ether 3:9 is definitely correct.