Alma 40:14 Textual Variants

The original manuscript reads for of; both words are written rather faintly in 𝓞 (at least when compared with the other words in the line). It does not appear that the of is erased, although there is some slight ink smearing. The printer’s manuscript and the first two printed editions also have for of. The expression “a state of awful fearful looking for of the fierce indignation of the wrath of God” is, to be sure, a difficult reading.

The 1840 edition attempted to deal with this difficult expression by placing a comma between the for and the of. And the RLDS textual tradition has continued with both words and the comma separating them. The idea behind this punctuation change is to make sure that looking for belongs together as the nominal gerundive form for the prepositional verb look for. In the Book of Mormon text, the nominal gerundive typically places an of between the adverbial element of a phrasal verb and its complement, as in these examples:

• 1 Nephi 14:1 unto the taking away of their stumbling blocks
• 1 Nephi 15:13 concerning the grafting in of the natural branches
• 2 Nephi 3:12 unto the confounding of false doctrines and laying down of contentions
• 2 Nephi 17:25 for the sending forth of oxen
• 2 Nephi 18:8 and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land
• 2 Nephi 19:18 like the lifting up of smoke
• Mosiah 20:23 and attributed the carrying away of their daughters to them
• Alma 53:17 unto the laying down of their lives
• 3 Nephi 1:15 at the going down of the sun
• 3 Nephi 6:15 unto the stirring up of the people
• 3 Nephi 20:27 unto the pouring out of the Holy Ghost
• Ether 12:3 even until the going down of the sun
• Ether 12:33 even unto the laying down of thy life

Alma 40:14 therefore fits into this pattern: “a state of awful fearful looking for of the fiery indignation of the wrath of God”.

The 1841 British edition (which was set from the 1837 edition) deleted the of, thus removing this difficult reading from the text; all subsequent LDS editions have followed this emendation. One could argue that the extra of here is an error resulting from the many occurrences of of in this passage: “now this is the state of the souls of the wicked yea in darkness and a state of awful fearful looking for of the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them”. This error is supported by the following nearby example where Oliver Cowdery initially inserted in 𝓟 an extra of; 𝓞 is extant here and the of is lacking:

• Alma 37:19
  • and now behold one purpose hath he fulfilled even to the restoration of many [ 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|of > NULL 1] thousands of the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth

And as in Alma 40:14, the surrounding text in Alma 37:19 contains a number of of ’s that could have interfered in the correct transmission of the text: “of many of thousands of the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth”.

Despite the difficulty of the earliest reading in Alma 40:14, there is one very striking passage in the King James Bible that shows without a doubt that here the original Book of Mormon reading is no mistake:

• Hebrews 10:26–27
  • for if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries

The parallelism with the Book of Mormon reading (“a state of awful fearful looking for of the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them”) shows that the of is fully intended in the Book of Mormon text. Therefore the of will be restored in the critical text.