According to Avraham Gileadi, a better understanding of the Atonement can be realized by understanding the ancient Near Eastern suzerain ("Lord")--vassal ("servant") covenant relationship.
Death came into the world when Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Knowing "good" and "evil," in ancient Near Eastern covenant language, means to experience God's blessing and curse. People experience God's blessing when they obey the law of the covenant. Conversely, people experience God's curse when they disobey; Adam and Eve had transgressed a law. Yet, God's covenanting with men affords them vassal status. And vassal status allows them to enter into the presence of their suzerain (Lord). They enter the suzerain's presence at the feast he prepares for his vassals (see Exodus 24:9-11; see also Isaiah 25:6-8).
When he transgressed God's commandment, "Adam fell that men might be" (2 Nephi 2:25; Moses 6:48). By transgressing, Adam incurred God's judgment: God, for a time, cut the man off from His presence, from being His worthy "son" or vassal. God exiled the man to a telestial earth, a land cursed instead of blessed. Bereft of God's protection, humanity became subject to death and every power of chaos. The price Adam and Eve paid to beget physical offspring was to suffer exile in mortality. Moreover, people in mortality cannot redeem themselves from the Fall (2 Nephi 9;6-7); they cannot, of themselves, regain God's presence. Rather, partaking of man's fallen (telestial) nature, they are further prone to transgress and incur God's judgment.
For people to be delivered from death, therefore, they must also be delivered from what made them subject to death in the beginning--Adam's transgression; and from what continues to make them subject to death--personal sins. Abinadi thus teaches that "salvation doth not come by the law alone" (Mosiah 13:28). A vassal's keeping the law of the covenant puts the burden on the suzerain to deliver the vassal from a mortal threat, in this case from death itself. But what of the underlying cause of death that humanity has inherited? For that reason, Abinadi adds, "Were it not for the atonement, which God himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of his people . . . they must unavoidably perish, notwithstanding the law of Moses" (Mosiah 13:28).
Jacob teaches that this atonement for transgression must be an infinite atonement, or else "the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration" (2 Nephi 9:7). Having transgressed the law of an infinite God, who endures forever, the man and his posterity must be redeemed by the payment of an infinite ransom, one that endures forever. Otherwise "this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more" (2 Nephi 9:7)--otherwise the "first judgment," death, must have remained in force.
How does God, then, both deliver his people from death, because of his covenant, and also ransom them from their sins? To deliver them from death, he must, as their suzerain, come and conquer death. But how, as their suzerain, does he ransom them from their sins? Abinadi answers that question also. He quotes Isaiah 53, a passage near the one the priests of King Noah have quoted (see Mosiah 14:1-12). That chapter speaks of a "man of grief/sorrows" (Isaiah 53:3), who pays the price of his people's salvation by making his life an offering for their sins (Isaiah 53:5,8,10). Before and after Abinadi quotes this chapter, he says that "God himself" must come down among the children of men to redeem his people (Mosiah 13:34-35; 15:1). The "man of grief/sorrows," therefore, as Abinadi implies, is God himself.
The nature of the suffering that Isaiah 53 depicts, however, is twofold:
First, the passage speaks of one whom men lead like a "lamb" to slaughter (Isaiah 53:7). He is "taken" (Hebrew luqqah), "cut off from the land of the living for the crime of my people to whom the blow was due" (Isaiah 53:8). God wills to crush him, causing him "suffering" or "sickness." God makes his life "an offering for guilt." (The reader should note here that the Hebrew word for offering (asam-) is used in conjunction with a sacrificial "trespass offering" in Leviticus 5:15-19.) This imagery attests to an atoning death by a sacrificial proxy. Like the Passover lamb, the suffering figure dies in order to secure the salvation of his people. He is crushed because of their iniquities, he pays "the price of our peace," or salvation (Isaiah 53:5).
Second, Isaiah 53 fuses the imagery of a sacrificial proxy with that of a vassal who suffers on account of his people. In other words, though the Lord is himself Israel's suzerain, he additionally assumes vassal status in order to take his people's sins upon himself. (The reader should note that Paul stated that God took upon him the form of a "servant" (Philippians 2:7)--a vassal.) He takes Israel's sins upon himself as a [covenant] king would do, who answers to his suzerain for his people's loyalties, or rather, for their disloyalties. For example, King Hezekiah, as a righteous proxy of his people, suffers "sickness" on their behalf in order to merit their divine protection (Isaiah 38:1-6; compare Isaiah 53:11). . . .
The Lord thus functions on three levels to redeem his people: (1) as Israel"s suzerain, delivering his vassal(s) from death; (2) as a vassal answering to his suzerain for his people's loyalty; and (3) as a proxy sacrifice for sin. The latter two proxy roles combine in Isaiah 53 to establish the concept of human blood atonement for the sins or disloyalty of the Lord's people. In effect, two biblical types of proxy functions here merge in a single individual, Israel's King or suzerain. Nowhere else in the scriptures does the concept of human blood atonement function legitimately, therefore, except in Jehovah/Jesus Christ. No other person, who is both God and man, represents Israel. [Avraham Gileadi, The Last Days: Types and Shadows from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, pp. 236-239]