The prophets made it clear what kind of a Messiah he would be: God himself would condescend and take up a physical body (see also Mosiah 3:5) to be oppressed and afflicted but also resurrected. This obviously led Abinadi to quote Isaiah 53.
Isaiah and Abinadi taught that he would condescend to the form of man and provide an atoning sacrifice of himself for all humankind. The verbs they used in describing his mission paint a portrait of grief and sorrow far different than the messianic expectations of later generations of Jews. Rather than coming as a bigger-than-life political figure who would wield impressive political clout, he would come as a suffering Servant. According to five remarkable verses of Isaiah (53:3–7; Mosiah 14:3–7), He would be despised, rejected, stricken, smitten, wounded, bruised, oppressed, and afflicted.