Here in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote the plural form say rather than the singular form saith. Virtually immediately he corrected the say to saith (spelled as saieth); he crossed out the say and supralinearly wrote saieth (there is no change in the level of ink flow for this correction). As explained under the 1 Nephi preface for the clause “Nephi’s brethren rebelleth against him”, the original text allows verb forms ending in -(e)th to occur with plural subjects; thus “the words which saith” is possible in the Book of Mormon text. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith edited the saith in this passage to the standard plural form say. The critical text will restore the original saith here in Helaman 12:26.
This passage provides evidence that Oliver Cowdery tended to write say instead of saith, as discussed earlier in this chapter regarding the use in if- clauses of the indicative saith in opposition to the subjunctive say (see the discussion under Helaman 12:13–14, 16–18).
Summary: Restore the original saith in Helaman 12:26, the corrected reading in 𝓟; in the original Book of Mormon text, plural subjects frequently took verb forms ending with the historical third person singular ending -e(th).