Alma 47:27 Textual Variants

and it came to pass that Amalickiah commanded that his [armies 01ABCDEFGIJLMNOPQRST|servants HK] should march forth and see what had happened to the king

Here the 1874 RLDS edition replaced armies with servants; the 1908 RLDS edition restored the correct armies. This error was prompted by three occurrences of the word servants in the preceding two verses:

Alma 47:25–26
- now the servants of the king ﬂed and the servants of Amalickiah raised a cry saying behold the servants of the king have stabbed him to the heart

Of course, armies is correct, not servants; the word servant refers to a personal attendant, not to a soldier in the army.

Summary: Maintain the plural armies in Alma 47:27, the reading of all the earliest textual sources (including 𝓞).

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 4

References