“Any Deceit in His Mouth”

Brant Gardner

Gileadi uses his Christian knowledge to render this more clearly:

"He was appointed among the wicked in death, among the rich was his burial; yet he had done no violence, and deceit was not in his mouth."

Isaiah is creating a poetic contrast here between the righteousness of the suffering servant and the circumstances of death. The first incongruity is that the righteous man would be "among the wicked in death" yet have a grave among the rich (death with the theives on the cross, and burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea). While Gileadi alters the text to be closer to Christian history, it is probable that Isaiah's imagery relied more upon a tighter incongruity, that he would have a grave paradoxically with both the wicked and the rich. In this particular case, rich would not have the pejorative connotation that can have it other parts of Isaiah's writings.

Variant: The KJV has "violence" where the Book of Mormon has "evil": " because he had done no evil/violence." Tvedtnes notes that the Masoretic text reads mrmh which means both "evil" and "violence" (Tvedtnes 1981, p. 93). The KJV translation is stressing the lack of reason for capital punishment, while the Book of Mormon appears to emphasize the purity (lack of evil) of the suffering servant.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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