Abinadi again assumes that the priests understand his argument. He asserts that many prophets have given specific testimonies about the Messiah’s mission; the next section of his discourse provides an example. The insertion of a chapter break in the 1879 edition perhaps muffles the connection between the Isaiah quotation and Abinadi’s exegesis that it is evidence of much prophetic knowledge about the Messiah’s earthly mission. Contemporary readers of this passage have knowledge of Christ’s mission that Abinadi does not have, so his understanding of Isaiah must come from his own prophetic experience or from his understanding of the prophetic experience and writings of other Nephite prophets like Lehi and Nephi.
Text: Because the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon makes no chapter break at this point, the Isaiah passage should be read as a continuation of the witness that many earlier prophets made of Messianic prophecies.