Alma 16:10 Textual Variants

Here the 1837 edition replaced their with the. This change was not marked by Joseph Smith in his editing of the printer’s manuscript for the 1837 edition. It is possible that the use of the pronoun it for the city of Ammonihah (“in one day it was left desolate”) seemed to clash with the use of the plural their, although in reality there is no difficulty at all in interpreting this pronominal form since their and they are used in the immediately preceding verse:

• Alma 16:9
  • and the people of Ammonihah were destroyed yea every living soul of the Ammonihahites were destroyed and also their great city which they said God could not destroy because of its greatness

The 1837 replacement of their with the was most probably a typo. The use of their adds cohesion to the narrative and will be restored in the critical text.