“He Shall Prolong His Days”

Brant Gardner

Poetic: This verse creates a conceptual break in that is shifts from the past tense to the future. The past tense describes the suffering, the future describes the glory (Ludlow 1982, p. 455).

This verse views the suffering servant from the Lord's perspective. It indicates that the Lord allowed the suffering because it fit into a larger purpose. What is most fascinating here is the juxtaposition of the death imagery of verses 8 and 9 and the clearly life affirming statement that the Lord "shall prolong his days…" even that "he shall see his seed…." As with other contradictory statements in this passage, it was intended to be seen as a paradox. For instance, it would be hard to imagine how a grave among the wicked could also be a grave among the rich - unless one understands how Christ fulfilled that prophecy. Similarly, it is intended to be contradictory that there should be a death and a prolonging of days. The poetic attempt of this verse is to declare the resurrection. The resurrection is the part of the atonement that extends Jesus days after death.

Who then are his "seed?" Sperry sees the "seed" as the future believers, partly based on thetext Ether 3:14 that indicates that "…In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters." (Sperry, 1982, p. 304). This would then see a resurrected Christ able to witness his "generations" of the faithful who follow him, and have become his sons and daughters through faith on his name.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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