Here is an example of a strange use of retain that led the editors for the 1920 LDS edition to emend the text. For that edition, the word retain was deleted, which ended up making a minor shift in the meaning. The original verb retain could be interpreted to mean something like ‘take back’. This meaning, for instance, is still found in the text in Alma 44:8, 12 (see the discussion under Alma 44:11). One could therefore interpret “retain that wrong” here in Alma 39:13 as somehow taking back a sin through the process of repentance—in other words, by taking back his sin, Corianton would somehow eliminate it.
The original manuscript reads quite strangely here. Oliver Cowdery seems to have written something that looks like relain, but the loop for the l-like character is very wide and the l almost looks like a capital P. In any event, this l-like character has been overwritten since its final ink flow is considerably heavier. But the most striking part of this letter is that it is crossed with what looks like an even darker ink stroke, yet this extra stroke is not actually a stroke of the pen but is an accidental ink blob! Elsewhere on the page there are numerous stray ink dots with the same darkness as this stroke-like blob; one of these dots appears just above in the previous line and two of them, one quite irregular and larger, appear just below in the following line. The second half of the page is full of these dark dots—and in fact, two of them look like small strokes, although they are not horizontal. Usually Oliver’s crossing for the letter t is longer than the short one found here on this word. All in all, it appears that Oliver may have first written some other word than retain and that the accidental ink drop made a different letter look like a t.
These possibilities suggest that the actual word in the original manuscript is repair. The letter corresponding to the p was defectively written (perhaps because there is a stray fiber in the paper that seems to have interfered with writing the letter). But it is clear that the scribe in 𝓞 (here Oliver Cowdery) never intended to cross the ascender for this letter. Moreover, the final n in this word can also be interpreted as an r, especially since Oliver often wrote n and r indifferently. Consider, for instance, the word robber in Helaman 3:23; there the initial r was almost written like an n in 𝓟, with the result that the 1830 typesetter misread the word robber as nobler, thus the 1830 edition refers to Gaddianton the robber as Gaddianton the nobler! For some examples where a word-final n or r may have been mixed up, see the discussion under Mosiah 2:15–16 regarding clear /clean.
The decision to emend retain to repair here in Alma 39:13 is strikingly supported by the language in another passage that refers to people repairing the wrongs they have done:
Notice in particular the specific reference to the confession of sins, which is equivalent to the acknowledgment of faults. We find the same reference to both confessing and repairing wrongs in another passage:
One could argue against the emendation to repair in Alma 39:13 by asking how one can repair a sexual sin. Yet there is a passage that refers to repairing murder:
And in all these passages (as in Alma 39:13), the penitent sinners go directly to those whom they have sinned against. But perhaps the most important aspect of the emendation repair in Alma 39:13 is that it reminds us that repentance involves both acknowledgment (that is, confession) of sins as well as repairing the wrong (restitution).
Summary: Interpret the reading for Alma 39:13 as “repair that wrong which ye have done”; the reading in 𝓞 is not fully clear, but the original word here appears to have been repair, which was misread as retain after the manuscript page was accidentally sprinkled with random ink dots prior to being copied into 𝓟; the removal of retain from the 1920 LDS edition leads to the misleading notion that Corianton need only acknowledge his faults and that wrong which he had done.