3 Nephi 3:14 Textual Variants

This passage originally had a complex, partially redundant construction (“there should be armies... should be placed as guards”). The editors for the 1920 LDS edition removed the initial “there should be”. Another possibility, one more consistent with Book of Mormon usage, would have been to delete the second should be:

3 Nephi 3:14 (alternative revision)

• and he caused that there should be armies
  —both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites or of all them which were numbered among the Nephites— placed as guards round about to watch them and to guard them from the robbers day and night

This kind of construction (“there should be” followed by the subject and then a past participle) is quite common in the Book of Mormon text, as in the following example where there is an intervening parenthetical phrase just like here in 3 Nephi 3:14 (although not as long):

• Alma 50:2
  • and upon the top of those ridges of earth he caused that there should be timber—yea works of timbers—
    built up to the heighth of a man round about the cities

Of course, the reason the original Book of Mormon text repeats the should be in 3 Nephi 3:14 is because the intervening subject noun phrase is quite long and complex. The critical text will restore the original wording. And there is evidence elsewhere in the original text for similar repetitions of the finite verb when there is an intervening parenthetical phrase or clause:

• Mosiah 10:18
  • for this very cause hath king Laman by his cunning and lying craftiness and his fair promises hath deceived me
• Helaman 9:11
  • and thus were also those judges which were at the garden of Nephi and heard his words were also gathered together at the burial

For both of these examples, the verbal redundancy has been removed from the standard text; see the discussion under each example.