Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 wrote behold twice. The 1830 compositor, John Gilbert, crossed out the extra behold in 𝓟 and set a single behold for the 1830 edition. There are no other examples of behold behold in the Book of Mormon text. The King James Bible has only one example: “the first shall say to Zion: behold / behold them” (Isaiah 41:27). And here in the case of Alma 12:27, there is no room for an extra behold between extant fragments of 𝓞 except by supralinear insertion. So it appears that here in Alma 12:27 we have a case of scribal dittography. Scribe 2 of 𝓟 frequently wrote dittographies as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟 (there are 27 clear cases). About half of his dittographies occurred at the ends of lines (13 times). Sometimes scribe 2 caught his dittography (12 times); sometimes it was corrected by Oliver Cowdery when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞 (10 times). And in few cases the dittography was missed by both scribe 2 and Oliver but ended up being correctly set by the 1830 compositor (5 times).
In almost every case, scribe 2’s dittographies in 𝓟 were the simple repetition of one or two words; in the following list, each case where the dittography occurred at the end of a line in 𝓟 is marked with an asterisk:
| passage | repeated word(s) | corrector |
| *Mosiah 29:43 | that | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| *Mosiah 29:46 | that | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| *Alma 1:6 | of | 1830 compositor |
| *Alma 1:25 | in the | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| * Alma 3:1 | number | Oliver Cowdery |
| Alma 3:20 | Lamanites | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| * Alma 4:3 | of | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Alma 7:11 | this | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Alma 7:14 | and | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Alma 10:28 | hath | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Alma 12:27 | behold | 1830 compositor |
| * 3 Nephi 21:4 | of | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| 3 Nephi 27:14 | or | Oliver Cowdery |
| * 3 Nephi 28:15 | out | Oliver Cowdery |
| 3 Nephi 28:18 | them | Oliver Cowdery |
| * 3 Nephi 30:2 | of your | Oliver Cowdery |
| 4 Nephi 1:1 | year | 1830 compositor (copied from 𝓞) |
| * 4 Nephi 1:13 | the | 1830 compositor (copied from 𝓞) |
| * Mormon 2:16 | the | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Mormon 3:4 | of the | 1830 compositor (copied from 𝓞) |
| Mormon 7:10 | of | Oliver Cowdery |
| * Mormon 8:24 | could | Oliver Cowdery |
| Mormon 9:16 | of | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| Mormon 9:26 | stand | Oliver Cowdery |
| * Mormon 9:28 | with | Oliver Cowdery |
From this list, I exclude two cases (a you in Alma 5:6 and a by in Mormon 3:14) where scribe 2 of 𝓟 initially miswrote the word, crossed it out, and then correctly wrote the word inline. Such instances are not really dittographies.
In two cases, scribe 2’s dittography was longer than two words, and in each of these cases the dittography resulted from him trying to deal with some other repetition in the original text:
Oliver Cowdery corrected the first of these two longer dittographies; scribe 2 corrected the second one (although he actually crossed out the preceding still rather than the following one). Amazingly, in the second one, “shall be unhappy” was repeated three extra times inline.
Finally, there is one odd case of dittography in Alma 12:17 where “forever and ever” was miscopied as “forever and forever”, an instance of partial dittography. In this case, Oliver Cowdery corrected the repeated forever to the correct ever. For discussion of this example, see under that passage.
Summary: Accept the 1830 compositor’s emendation of behold behold to a single behold; spacing considerations between extant fragments of 𝓞 as well as usage elsewhere in the text supports the compositor’s decision to consider the repeated behold as a dittography.