The priests of Noah began this interrogation by asking for an explanation of verses in Isaiah 52. Abinadi’s rebuttal now inserts the whole of Isaiah Chapter 53. These chapters are part of an alternating pattern in Isaiah which has chapters that focus on Jerusalem and what has become known as the suffering servant. The priests of Noah quoted from one of the Jerusalem chapters, and Abinadi answers with a suffering servant chapter.
In the context of the conflict between a law of Moses that the priests assume to be complete and a law that Abinadi declares looks forward to a future Messiah, the contrast between the two types of chapters in this part of Isaiah provides an interesting backdrop, but underscores the way that the priests of Noah and Abinadi see the scriptures.
In the Jerusalem chapters, Jerusalem is both the subject and a collective reference. When the priests of Noah used the verses in Isaiah 52, they dealt with the salvation of Jerusalem, and by extension her people. While true, there are different types of redemption and salvation, and the redemption and salvation of Jerusalem is temporal.
What Abinadi will do by quoting the suffering servant is to counteract the quotation of authoritative scripture with not only another authoritative quotation but the following chapter (or text, since it does not appear that the modern chapters were reflected on the brass plates from which the Nephites took their quotations of Isaiah).
Abinadi begins with what we know as Isaiah 53:1. The important question asked is “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” That is very much the nature of the question that Abinadi is asking. The scriptures are being put forth as conclusive, but right in those scriptures it asks “Who has believed [them]?” Abinadi has already declared that the priests of Noah have not believed them (for if they had, they would have lived according to them). Now Abinadi will use the scriptures to declare his case for the coming Messiah and the salvation that cometh only through him.