Mosiah 7:16 Textual Variants

Here Oliver Cowdery initially wrote the singular labour, then changed it to the plural labours by inserting an s inline at the end of labour. This correction was probably almost immediate since the level of ink flow remains unchanged. Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text, we have six occurrences of “labors of” but none of “labor of ” (including cases where labors is conjoined with a following noun); most of these occurrences are found in the phrase “to glut (oneself ) upon the labors of someone else” (or its equivalent):

• 2 Nephi 29:4 the travails and the labors and the pains of the Jews
• Mosiah 9:12 that they might glut themselves with the labors of our hands
• Alma 30:27 that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands
• Alma 30:31 for the sake of glutting in the labors of the people
• Alma 30:32 we do not glut ourselves upon the labors of this people
• Alma 51:33 which was caused by the labors and heat of the day