Here in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote down “and these are they that lay down the weapons of their rebellion”. Later, perhaps when the text was read back to Joseph Smith and thus checked, Oliver corrected the lay to layed (that is, laid ) by supralinearly inserting the ed with somewhat heavier ink flow. Don Brugger suggests (personal communication, 7 July 2006) that in this instance Oliver Cowdery probably misinterpreted laid as lay because the following word, down, began with a d; that is, it would have been difficult to hear the difference between laid down and lay down. Also note that Oliver’s misinterpretation could have been primed by the occurrence of lay down earlier in this account:
Of course, the base form of the transitive verb lay is correct in verse 7 since it occurs with the auxiliary verb form did.
Summary: Maintain in Alma 23:13 the past-tense verb form laid, not the lay that Oliver Cowdery accidentally wrote when he first took down Joseph Smith’s dictation for this passage.