Ether 11:9 Textual Variants

Here the 1837 edition omitted the subject pronoun he, ending up with a conjoined predicate that works well enough. But since the original reading with the he works perfectly well, the critical text will restore it.

In this part of the text, there are a number of other cases where the subject pronoun he has been omitted from a conjoined clause:

• Ether 14:3 (initial omission in 𝓟)
  • behold there arose the brother of Shared and [NULL > he 1|he ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] gave battle unto Coriantumr
• Ether 14:17 (initial omission in 𝓟)
  • and he did slay both men women and children and [NULL >+ he 1|he ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] did burn the cities thereof
• Ether 15:2 (omission in the 1841 British edition)
  • he saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly two millions of his people and [he 1ABCEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST| D] began to sorrow in his heart

In each of these cases, the critical text will maintain the original he. Note that the initial reading in Ether 14:3 presents an interesting syntactic construction, namely, an existential there-clause immediately followed by a conjoined predicate but without any explicit subject (“behold there arose the brother of Shared and gave battle unto Coriantumr”). This kind of construction actually occurs elsewhere in the text of the Book of Mormon; for some discussion, see under Alma 21:5.

Repetition of the subject he in conjoined clauses is quite common in the text, including cases involving the auxiliary verb do. In addition to the cases here in Ether 11:9 and Ether 14:17, there are a couple of other examples in this part of the text:

• Ether 10:5–6
  • and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings and he did erect him an exceeding beautiful throne and he did build many prisons …
• Ether 11:10
  • and it came to pass that Ahah his son did obtain the kingdom and he did reign over the people all his days and he did do all manner of iniquity in his days