Mosiah 14:7-12

Brant Gardner

The important indicators of the identity of this suffering servant are elucidated. His is oppressed and afflicted. He is imprisoned and executed. Christians have recognized Christ in these verses from very early times. Abinadi sees Christ, or the Messiah, in those same terms long before the Christian hindsight clarified them.

The end of this servant is death, but a death that sees him bearing “the sins of many” and making “intercession for the transgressors.”

There is no chapter break at this point in the 1830 edition. While Pratt’s reorganization of the chapters makes it easier to compare and connect this chapter with Isaiah 53 that it quotes, it makes it more difficult to see as part of the continuing argument Abinadi is making. In particular, it is important to see the very next verse as being tied to this chapter. It is Abinadi’s essential understanding of this chapter and the crux of the difference between Abinadi’s preaching and that of the priests of Noah.

Book of Mormon Minute

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