Helaman 14:11 Textual Variants

The 1840 edition and the 1920 LDS edition switched the word order after the prepositional phrase “for this intent”, from the noninverted order (“for this intent I have come up”) to the inverted order (“for this intent have I come up”). The 1840 change may have been accidental. The 1908 RLDS edition restored the original noninverted order to the RLDS text. The later LDS change was intentional since it is marked in the 1920 committee copy.

Elsewhere in the text, we have examples of both word orders after “for this intent”:

noninverted order

• Jacob 4:5 and for this intent we keep the law of Moses
• Moroni 8:6 for for this intent I have written this epistle

inverted order

• Jacob 4:4 for for this intent have we written these things
• Helaman 15:4 and for this intent hath the Lord prolonged their days
• Mormon 5:14 and for this intent shall they go

Thus either order is possible, and therefore the original noninverted order in Helaman 14:10 (“I have come”) will be restored in the critical text. For further discussion regarding inverted versus noninverted word order after a sentence-initial adverbial phrase, see under Mosiah 20:15.