Mosiah 9:4 Textual Variants

Here the printer’s manuscript reads “after many days wandering in the wilderness”. The 1830 typesetter interpreted many days as a possessive noun phrase and the following wandering as a gerund, and thus he added an apostrophe to the end of many days. Such a reading is theoretically possible. This kind of gerundive construction does occur in the Book of Mormon text, although rarely for full noun phrases; there is only one clear example in the original text—namely, “all mankind’s becoming carnal” in Mosiah 16:3 (for discussion, see under that passage).

Here in Mosiah 9:4, it seems more natural to treat many days as the object of the preposition after and the phrase “wandering in the wilderness” as a participial clause that adds additional information, but nonrestrictively. For this interpretation, the apostrophe would be incorrect. Elsewhere the text has four examples of “after many days”; in each of these cases, many days is the object of the preposition after:

• Jacob 5:6 after many days it began to put forth somewhat a little young and tender branches
• Mosiah 18:7 after many days there were a goodly number gathered together
• Mosiah 21:2 after many days the Lamanites began again to be stirred up in anger
• Alma 16:11 after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth

In none of these cases is there any following participial clause.

Another possibility would be to interpret many days in Mosiah 9:4 as an adverbial noun phrase, which would mean that the after-phrase here is equivalent to “after wandering many days in the wilderness”. There is one reading in the text that provides some support for an adverbial interpretation:

• Mosiah 22:13
  • and after being many days in the wilderness they arrived in the land of Zarahemla

But this example does not follow the word order of Mosiah 9:4 (that is, it does not read “after many days being in the wilderness”).

The most natural interpretation for Mosiah 9:4 is to consider the phrase “wandering in the wilderness” as a participial clause acting nonrestrictively. Under such a reading, the apostrophe should be removed from the end of many days since this phrase would be acting as the object of the preposition after.