Mosiah 29:20 Textual Variants

Oliver Cowdery supralinearly added the conjunction because when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. The corrected reading provides an example of chiasmus in the text:

but behold he did deliver them

because they did humble themselves before him

(bª) and because they cried mightily unto him

(aª) he did deliver them out of bondage

Without the second because, the text reads rather awkwardly, but not impossibly.

This kind of immediate repetition of semantically related because-clauses is found elsewhere in the text:

• 1 Nephi 2:1
  • blessed art thou Lehi because of the things which thou hast done and because thou hast been faithful and declared unto this people the things which I commanded thee behold they seek to take away thy life
• Jacob 4:14
  • for God hath taken away his plainness from them and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand because they desired it and because they desired it God hath done it that they may stumble
• Alma 18:6
  • for he had slew many of them because their brethren had scattered their flocks at the place of water and thus because they had had their flocks scattered they were slain
• Mormon 1:17
  • but I were forbidden that I should preach unto them because of the hardness of their hearts and because of the hardness of their hearts the land was cursed for their sake

Note that the examples in Jacob 4:14 and Alma 18:6 are chiastic, just like in Mosiah 29:20.