The earliest Book of Mormon text here uses the indicative desirest after the first thou (“if thou desirest this thing”), but then switches to the subjunctive (that is, base) verb forms after the second and third occurrences of thou (“if thou will bow down before God / yea if thou repent of all thy sins”) as well as with the conjoined predicate that follows: “and will bow down before God and call on his name in faith”. (Here I treat the last part of this conjunct, “and call on his name in faith”, as a case of ellipsis of the modal verb will, as if the text read “and will bow down before God and will call on his name in faith”. One could treat the verb call as a finite verb form, as if the text read “and thou will bow down before God and thou call on his name in faith”. The following analysis would need to be slightly altered, but not crucially, if call were treated as a finite verb form.)
This passage in Alma 22:16 has manifested some variation in its use of indicative and subjunctive verb forms, but none of the changes have ended up making the entire passage read consistently in either the indicative or the subjunctive. The first change occurred when Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “and bow down before God” as he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Then almost immediately he supralinearly inserted the modal verb form will (not wilt), giving “and will bow down before God” (there is no change in the level of ink flow for the inserted will ). This correction means that the reading in 𝓟 (“and will bow down before God”) agrees with the similar clause earlier in this passage (“if thou will bow down before God”), at least in its use of will. The corrected reading in 𝓟 is probably the reading in 𝓞 and, as far as we can tell, the original text itself. We also note that the typesetter for the 1841 British edition, like Oliver Cowdery initially in 𝓟, accidentally omitted the will here, giving once more “and bow down before God”. The subsequent LDS edition, in 1849, restored the original will. The omission of this will makes the following conjoined predicate lack the modal verb will /wilt for both verbs: “and bow down before God and call on his name in faith”.
The first permanent change in the reading here in Alma 22:16 occurred in the 1830 edition. There the typesetter replaced the first occurrence of will with wilt, undoubtedly because this instance of will was immediately preceded by thou (thus giving “if thou wilt bow down before God”). But the 1830 typesetter left the two following instances of the subjunctive verb form: “yea if thou repent of all thy sins and will bow down before God and call on his name in faith”.
The second permanent change took place in the 1837 edition when the subjunctive repent was emended to the indicative wilt repent (thus giving “if thou wilt repent of all thy sins”). Even so, the remaining instance of the subjunctive verb form was left unchanged (“and will bow down before God and call on his name in faith”). Here the standard text has retained the 1837 reading. But no edition has completed the process of grammatical emendation that would make all the verb forms indicative:
Of course, in the earliest text there was no modal verb before repent, so based on that reading, an alternative reading with consistent grammatical emendation would be the following:
(As noted above, one could treat call in “and call on his name in faith” as a finite verb form, which would mean that the two indicative readings listed above would end in “and callest on his name in faith”.)
The earliest Book of Mormon text allows both indicative and subjunctive (or base) verb forms for the subject pronoun thou. For a list of other examples, see the discussion under Alma 12:23. The critical text will therefore restore in Alma 22:16 the earliest reading (the corrected reading in 𝓟):
The King James Bible, it should be noted, is fairly equally divided between the use of the indicative versus the subjunctive after if thou (107 occurrences with the indicative and 97 with the subjunctive), as in the following variation involving the verb do (either as a main verb or as a helping verb):
However, if the verb is the modal will or shall, the King James Bible always has the indicative form wilt (46 times) or shalt (15 times), never the subjunctive will or shall. But as noted under Mosiah 12:11 and Alma 8:20, there are a few instances of thou shall and thou will in the original Book of Mormon text. As a result, Book of Mormon usage is not fully identical to King James usage. For further discussion, see under subjunctive in volume 3.
Summary: Maintain the original subjunctive verb forms in Alma 22:16: “if thou will bow down before God / yea if thou repent of all thy sins and will bow down before God and call on his name in faith”.