Alma 1:3 Textual Variants

The 1837 edition dropped the adjective own before hands. The 1908 RLDS text restored the own, the reading of the printer’s manuscript. This 1837 change appears to be accidental since the text has 14 other occurrences of “own hands” and none of these have ever lost the own throughout the textual history. Moreover, Joseph Smith did not mark the deletion of this own in his editing of 𝓟 for the 1837 edition.

When the verb is labor, we normally have “own hands” (seven times, including here in Alma 1:3), but it is also possible for the own to be lacking (two times, each marked below with an asterisk):

• * 2 Nephi 5:17 that they should labor with their hands
• Mosiah 2:14 I myself have labored with mine own hands
• Mosiah 18:24 the priests … should labor with their own hands
• Mosiah 27:4 laboring with their own hands
• Mosiah 27:5 all their priests and teachers should labor with their own hands
• Alma 1:3 they ought not to labor with their own hands
• Alma 17:14 that they might not labor for them with their own hands
• * Alma 24:18 they would labor abundantly with their hands
• Alma 30:32 I have labored ... with mine own hands

For each case of “to labor with one’s (own) hands”, we follow the earliest textual sources.