“He Will Take Upon Him the Pains and the Sicknesses of His People”

Alan C. Miner

According to Angela Crowell, an example of an accurate literal translation found in the Book of Mormon is a reference in the book of Alma to Isaiah 53:3-4. The King James Version and Inspired Version both read:

He is despised and rejected of men;

A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

And we hid as it were our faces from him;

He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,

Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Notice the closer literal translation of the same verse in the 1955 Jewish Publication Society's English translation of the Old Testament, The Holy Scriptures:

He was despised, and forsaken of men,

A man of pains, and acquainted with disease,

And as one from whom men hide their face:

He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely our diseases he did bear, and our pains he carried;

Whereas we did esteem him stricken,

Smitten of God and afflicted

The key words here are "pains" and disease."

In the Jewish Publication Society's most recent (1985) English translation, Tanakh The Holy Scriptures, the verse reads:

He was despised, shunned by men,

A man of suffering, familiar with disease.

As one who hid his face from us,

He was despised, we held him of no account.

Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing,

Our suffering that he endured.

We accounted him plagued,

Smitten and afflicted by God;

The key words here are "suffering," "disease" and "sickness."

The verse in the Book of Mormon which totally agrees with Hebrew scholars of today is Alma 7:11:

And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind;

And this that the word might be fulfilled which saith,

"He will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of the people;

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which binds his people;"

The key words here are "pains," "afflictions" and "sickness," which are correct literal translations from the Hebrew text.

How can we account for a Book of Mormon translation which is more precise than the King James Version in the previous example? . . . How could a young man, who did not have the knowledge of Hebrew or any other Semitic language, produce a work such as the Book of Mormon? [Angela M. Crowell, "Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon," in Recent Book of Mormon Developments, Vol. 2, pp. 9-10]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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