2 Nephi 7 replicates Isaiah 50. Victor Ludlow comments: “Chapter 50 is divided into three main sections: verses 1–3, a call to Israel to return to the Lord and make him their strength; verses 4–9, the third servant song; and verses 10–11, an injunction to all people to follow the servant, including a message of encouragement to the faithful and of warning to the unfaithful.”
Meaning for Isaiah’s Audience: Israel did not always enjoy continuous prosperity. The Abrahamic covenant may have made them Yahweh’s chosen people, but it did not make them immune from adversity. Like Job’s wife, who urged him to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9), Israel often blamed its woes on the inattentiveness of their God. Yahweh, speaking through Isaiah, clarifies who left whom. Thus, he asks if he has given Israel a bill of divorcement or some other means of legal separation. It is a rhetorical and accusatory question. He has remained faithful; their own transgressions have alienated them. Ludlow’s commentary continues:
In the first verse, the Lord asks to see the bill of divorcement between him and Israel. Alluding to the law of divorce given in Deuteronomy 24:1–4, which requires a formal bill of divorcement when a man puts away his wicked wife, the Lord asks a rhetorical question because he knows he has never given such a bill to his beloved. Although they are separated, they are not divorced. (Hosea, a contemporary of Isaiah, used the same analogy in his prophecy; see Hosea 1.)
Furthermore, the Lord avers that he has not sold Israel into bondage and captivity as some fathers did in times of severe economic hardship. In the time of Isaiah, if a man was pressed by his creditors, he had the possibility of relieving his debt by selling his children as slaves (Ex. 21:7, Neh. 1–5, Matt. 18:25). And if he died, a creditor might take his children as payment (2 Kgs. 4:1). This slavery was not permanent; the person was indentured to work for a fixed number of years.
Ludlow explains that, in answer to the question “To whom has the Lord ever been in debt?” Isaiah answers that Yahweh is “indebted to no one and therefore has not been forced to sell Israel; Israel’s separation and captivity is her own fault.”
Meaning for Jacob’s audience: There is no evidence in the Book of Mormon that Nephi’s people were in general apostasy at this time, so this particular verse is not immediately relevant in the same way as the similar Isaiah verses that Nephi quoted to Laman and Lemuel. If Jacob’s audience is a recently formed community of Gentiles, now included with the lineage of Israel, he may be reminding them of the strength of Yahweh’s covenant, a covenant that Nephi would have expected to continue to be his birthright as a descendant of Israel.