At this point Abinadi begins to restate Isaiah. The clarity of Abinadi’s recasting of Isaiah suggests that he has a prophetic understanding of how the Messiah completed Isaiah’s visual picture. (Nephi certainly understood these details, for he discusses them in 1 Nephi 11.) Abinadi reprises the suffering servant images from Isaiah and directly relates them to the Son of God—the “God himself” who would come down. The scourging and casting out also reprise Isaiah (Isa. 53: 4–5).
Abinadi’s addition to Isaiah is that the Messiah will not yield to temptation. The idea of an innocent Messiah may lie behind the Book of Mormon rephrasing for Isaiah 53:9 which stresses that the servant has done no evil, in contrast to the KJV’s no “violence.” (See commentary accompanying Mosiah 14:9.)