He Read Them Isaiah 52 and 54. He Showed Them 53.

October 5–11, 2026 · Official reading: Isaiah 50–57
Last week: Isaiah 40–49 · Official Come, Follow Me assignment

This lesson follows Ken Krogue’s prophetic interpretation of Egypt, the Servant, and the Assyrian.

This week's reading holds the most famous chapter in Isaiah, a wake-up call shouted three times, and a chapter some people call forbidden. And when Jesus visited the Nephites, He never said a word about it to them. He didn't need to.

There's no class in my ward this week either. So, like last week, this one is yours.

If we were in class, we'd start the way we always do. What was the first code? Egypt. What does it mean? America. Who are the two main characters in Isaiah? The Servant and the Assyrian. Hero, or villain? You know.

Every week, we look for them. Where is the Servant? Where is the Assyrian? This week, you're going to find both. And this week the Servant does something new: he speaks for himself. In Isaiah 50, which Jacob reads in 2 Nephi 7, he says, "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned… I gave my back to the smiters" (50:4, 6). Isaiah even names him: "the voice of his servant" (50:10). Then at the end of chapter 52, God points to him Himself: "Behold, my servant" (52:13). And then chapter 53 turns to Someone greater: the One who suffers for all of us. Abinadi tells us who that is: "God himself shall come down" (Mosiah 15:1). Don't mix them up. Jesus said it Himself: "The servant is not greater than his lord" (John 13:16). But remember the door from last week: Isaiah's prophecies often come true more than once. Keep your eyes open.

Here's where we're going: the Savior goes all the way down, so He can bring us all the way up. Watch for it.

Wake up, three times

Three times in this week's reading, Isaiah shouts the same two words: Awake, awake.

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD." — Isaiah 51:9

"Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem." — Isaiah 51:17

"Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city." — Isaiah 52:1

Notice who gets woken up. First the Lord's own arm. Then Jerusalem. Then Zion and Jerusalem together. Remember last week? The people who "call themselves of the holy city" weren't leaning on God. Now God Himself calls Jerusalem the holy city, and tells her to get up and get dressed.

Now notice what each one is told to do. The arm of the Lord and Zion are both told to put on strength. Jerusalem isn't. Jerusalem is told to stand up (51:17), to put on thy beautiful garments (52:1), and to shake thyself from the dust (52:2). The strength goes to two: the Lord's arm, and Zion. Jerusalem has to be sent hers. Two verses after her wake-up call, Isaiah tells her: "These two sons are come unto thee… Thy sons have fainted, save these two" (2 Nephi 8:19–20). All her other sons have fallen down. Two are still standing, and they come to her with strength. Only the Book of Mormon says sons. The Bible says "two things." Who are they? That's for the deep end.

What does put on thy strength mean? We don't have to guess. In 1838, a man named Elias Higbee asked Joseph Smith that exact question. Here's the answer:

"He had reference to those whom God should call in the last days, who should hold the power of priesthood to bring again Zion, and the redemption of Israel; and to put on her strength is to put on the authority of the priesthood." — D&C 113:8

Putting on Zion's strength means putting on the priesthood. And it's about the last days. That's us.

And notice: the arm of the Lord gets the first call to put on strength, and then Zion gets the same call. Neither one makes that strength. The priesthood is the Lord's own power, and He gives it to those He calls.

Then Elias asked about the next verse, where Zion is told to "loose thyself from the bands of thy neck" (52:2). Bands are ropes or chains. The answer: the scattered people are being invited to "return to the Lord from whence they have fallen; which if they do, the promise of the Lord is that he will speak to them, or give them revelation" (D&C 113:10).

Wake up. Get dressed. Take off the chains. Come back, and He'll talk to you.

Remember the ladder from two weeks ago? Zion is rung 4. Awake means don't stay asleep on the rung you're on.

Jacob picks it up first

Last week, Nephi read Isaiah 48 and 49. This week's first two chapters, Isaiah 50 and 51, are read in the Book of Mormon by his younger brother Jacob, in 2 Nephi 7 and 8.

And look how Jacob's version starts. Before anything else, God asks a question the Bible's version doesn't have: "Have I put thee away, or have I cast thee off forever?" (2 Nephi 7:1). Remember last week? He already answered it: "yet will I not forget thee."

And in Jacob's very first chapter, the Servant starts to suffer:

"I gave my back to the smiter, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting." — 2 Nephi 7:6 (Isaiah 50:6)

Smiters are people who hit. Hold onto that verse. You're about to see where it's going.

Jacob's version also gives the Servant something the Bible's version doesn't: a weapon. "Who is mine adversary? Let him come near me, and I will smite him with the strength of my mouth" (2 Nephi 7:8). The Servant doesn't fight with a sword. His strength is in his mouth: the words God gives him. Remember, he's the one God woke up "morning by morning" to listen first (2 Nephi 7:4).

The villain shows up

Find the Assyrian this week. He's in one verse:

"My people went down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause." — Isaiah 52:4

Egypt and the Assyrian, in the same verse. You know both codes. If you don't, go back and review the last few weeks: the first Egypt lesson, Egypt and Isaiah 19, and the Assyrian. I'm not going to tell you what to see. Get your own meal.

Here's something else. The Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah 52 all over the place, every verse but two. The two nobody ever quotes are this one, about the Assyrian, and the next one, about God's name being mocked.

Beautiful feet

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace… that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!" — Isaiah 52:7

Good tidings means good news. Publish means announce. And remember the code from our codebook: Salvation means Jehovah, Jesus Christ.

But look closely at who's standing on the mountain. It isn't Salvation Himself. It's the one who publishes salvation: a messenger running ahead of the King to shout, "Thy God reigneth!" The good news is a Person. The one with the beautiful feet is the one who carries it.

That's the Servant's work. He goes before the Lord and makes the way ready, like the "voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD" (40:3). Isaiah has already promised him: "I will give to Jerusalem one that bringeth good tidings" (41:27). The Servant announces the Lord. He is not the Lord. Just like John the Baptist the first time the Lord came. John announced Jesus, and he said so plainly: "I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him" (John 3:28).

Now, if you read Mosiah 15, you might say, "Wait! Abinadi says this verse is about the Lord!" He does (Mosiah 15:18). But look at the words he had to change to do it:

To publish means to announce. A founder is the one who starts something. To grant means to give.

So the messenger announces the peace. The Lord makes it. The messenger announces the salvation. The Lord gives it. Abinadi uses Isaiah's verse a second way, for the Lord Himself, and he has to change Isaiah's words to do it. That's how we know Isaiah's own words are about the messenger. And it's one more example of Isaiah's prophecies coming true more than once.

When the risen Jesus visited the Nephites, He quoted the verses right after this one: "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God" (3 Nephi 16:20). Hold onto His arm. It's a clue.

Here's something fun: that verse, "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm," is the most-quoted Isaiah verse in the whole Book of Mormon. Six times, by four different voices. And the very next chapter starts by asking, "to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?"

You already know this chapter

Have you heard Handel's Messiah? You've heard Isaiah 53. He was despised. Surely he hath borne our griefs. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. Those are four pieces from Messiah, and all four are built on this chapter. (He was despised also uses Isaiah 50:6, Jacob's verse from a minute ago.)

Here's how it reads:

"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… Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows… But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… and with his stripes we are healed." — Isaiah 53:3–5

Stripes are the marks a whip leaves. Isaiah is saying His wounds heal ours.

The Chosen quotes verse 3, despised and rejected, in Season 4, Episode 7, the episode where Jesus raises Lazarus.

“The prophet Isaiah gave you
many warnings.”

A hint about the arm

Here's this week's hint. Chapter 53 starts with a question:

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?" — Isaiah 53:1

The arm of the LORD. We just saw it made bare in the Book of Mormon's favorite verse (52:10). Then chapter 53 asks who the arm is revealed to, and right away it describes Someone despised and rejected, wounded for our transgressions. Abinadi tells us who: God Himself, come down. In chapter 53, the arm of the Lord that's revealed is the Lord Himself.

Hold onto that, because Isaiah uses the word arm in more than one way.

God's two arms

Isaiah also uses arm another way: to show how God works through others. Here's a way to see the whole book.

Think of God with two arms. With His right arm He saves and gathers. That's where the Servant is: not the Lord Himself, but a servant held *"in the shadow of his hand" (49:2). With His left arm He stops the wicked. Remember the villain? God calls the Assyrian "the rod of mine anger" (10:5). But the Assyrian doesn't know it. He thinks he's doing it all himself: "By the strength of my hand I have done it"* (10:13).

The right arm knows whose hand holds him. The left arm thinks the hand is his own.

The prophet who said it to a king

The whole of Isaiah 53 is in the Book of Mormon once. It's Mosiah 14, and a prophet named Abinadi is the one who says it.

Abinadi was arrested and brought before wicked King Noah and his priests. The priests tried to trap him with a question about a different verse in Isaiah. Abinadi answered with this chapter, the one about the Man people turned away from.

Then he told them what it meant: "God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people" (Mosiah 15:1).

That cost him his life. King Noah's charge against him was exactly this: "thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men" (Mosiah 17:8). Abinadi "suffered death by fire" rather than take it back (17:20).

But one young priest in that room believed him. His name was Alma. He ran, repented, and started teaching what Abinadi said (Mosiah 18:1). Out of that one listener came the church at the waters of Mormon, and the best place in all of scripture to study the covenant you make at baptism. Remember? Alma asked the people if they were willing "to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death" (Mosiah 18:9). Well, Abinadi had already passed the ultimate test of that covenant. He stood as a witness of God even until death.

Which verse did the priests use to try to trap him? You've already read it this week. The whole story is waiting in the deep end.

What griefs and sorrows really mean

Years later, Alma's son, also named Alma, explained the chapter:

"He will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people… that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities." — Alma 7:11–12

Succor means run to help. Jesus didn't just carry our sins. He carried our pain, our sickness, and our weakness, so He would know from the inside exactly how to help us.

Why some call it the Forbidden Chapter

Here's something a lot of people don't know. Every Sabbath, in synagogues all over the world, Jewish congregations read a section from the Prophets. Those readings include Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 54. But the part from Isaiah 52:13 through 53:12 isn't one of the readings.

Because of that, some Christian writers call Isaiah 53 "the Forbidden Chapter." Some say rabbis took it out long ago because it caused too many arguments.

Jewish writers say that isn't fair, and we should hear them out. Nobody is forbidden to read any part of their Bible. The weekly readings don't go chapter by chapter anyway, and most chapters of the Prophets are never read aloud at all. So whether it was left out on purpose is something people still argue about.

But here's what makes it really interesting for us. The Book of Mormon shows someone else who didn't read Isaiah 53 aloud: Jesus.

The chapter He didn't read

When the risen Jesus came to the Nephites, He quoted Isaiah. He quoted chapter 52 (3 Nephi 16). He quoted all of chapter 54: "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear" (3 Nephi 22). He never read them chapter 53.

Why not? Here's what I think. Look at the very last verse before chapter 53 begins:

"For that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider." — Isaiah 52:15

They shall see. And the very first thing the risen Jesus did was invite them to "feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet." They came "one by one," and they "did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands" (3 Nephi 11:14–15).

With his stripes we are healed. They didn't need it read to them. They had touched it.

There's something else here. Jesus almost never talked Himself up. When John the Baptist's followers asked Him, "Are you the one?", He didn't say yes. He said, go tell John what you see: the blind see, the deaf hear (Matthew 11:4–5). That's Isaiah's own list. Isaiah even said He would stay quiet: "he opened not his mouth" (53:7). And at His trial, "Jesus held his peace" (Matthew 26:63). The villain in Isaiah brags about himself. The Savior lets the Father, the prophets, a man in camel hair, a dove, and the scriptures speak for Him. So when He came to the Nephites, He didn't read them the chapter about Himself. He let them touch His hands: the same hands He had graven them upon (1 Nephi 21:16). And one day, at the very end, the people of Jerusalem will see those same hands, and ask Him: "What are these wounds in thine hands?" (Zechariah 13:6). (The whole story is in the deep end: link, What Are These Wounds?)

Right after He finished chapter 54, He told them: "Search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah" (3 Nephi 23:1). He read the chapter before 53 and the chapter after it, then told them to search.

I think He left the middle one for us to find.

All the way down, all the way up

Here's where we said we were going. Look at how chapter 53 ends:

"Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great… because he hath poured out his soul unto death." — Isaiah 53:12

Despised, wounded, bruised, led like a lamb, and poured out his soul unto death. And therefore, lifted up to a portion with the great. He went all the way down. That's why He's lifted all the way up. The Doctrine and Covenants says it this way: "he that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things" (D&C 88:6).

Remember the ladder? Every rung is reached by going down before going up. The Savior shows us how. And He went down so He can reach whatever rung we're on.

Chapter 57 puts the whole ladder into one sentence:

"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." — Isaiah 57:15

God lives at the very top of the ladder, and with the person who has gone all the way down. Both at once. That's why the way up starts with going down.

Compare that to the villain. The Assyrian tries to climb into God's place: "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High" (14:14). The Savior goes down, and the Father lifts Him up.

And then, the invitation

Right after chapter 53, the doors fly open. Chapter 54 tells a lonely, childless woman to sing, because more children are coming than she can count. Then chapter 55 opens with this:

"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." — Isaiah 55:1

Jacob loved that verse. He quotes it to his people in 2 Nephi 9:50. Free. For everyone. Because the Savior already paid.

And a few verses later:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD." — Isaiah 55:8

The Chosen uses that verse twice in Season 4 (Episodes 4 and 6). It's the same lesson as last week's new thing. God's way of saving us, a Savior who goes down instead of up, isn't the way we would have planned it. It's better.

Chapter 56 throws the doors open wider: "mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people" (56:7). Jesus quoted that line when He cleaned out the temple (Mark 11:17).

But chapter 56 also has a warning. Look at God's watchmen, the people whose whole job is to stay awake and warn everybody:

"His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber." — Isaiah 56:10

Guard dogs that can't bark. Guards who love to nap. That's why Isaiah had to shout "Awake, awake" three times. Don't be the watchman who sleeps through it.

Put your name in it

Isaiah 53 is written by people who looked away and are now admitting it. Read it in Mosiah 14. It's twelve verses. Every time you see we, our or us, stop:

• Surely he has borne our griefs.
• He was wounded for our transgressions.
• All we, like sheep, have gone astray.

Now say it with your own name. He carried ___'s griefs. It reads differently, doesn't it?

Abinadi's question

After he finished the chapter, Abinadi asked the priests a question. Isaiah says the Lord "shall see his seed", meaning His children, His family. So Abinadi asked: "Who shall be his seed?" (Mosiah 15:10).

His answer: everyone who listens to the prophets and believes the Lord will redeem them. "These are they whose sins he has borne" (Mosiah 15:11–12).

Alma heard that answer and became one of them. That's the question for you this week.

This week, read Mosiah 14 and put your name in it.

I have a deep love for, and a strong testimony of, Him who was despised and rejected of men, who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And I know that with his stripes we are healed. I share that in His sacred name, even Jesus the Christ, amen.

Next week

Next week is the last of Isaiah's chapters, 58 through 66, where Isaiah ends where the whole story was going.

And last week, Isaiah 49 said "I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands". This week you saw what that cost Him.

READY TO GO DEEPER? "He that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word." — Alma 12:10 → Why Abinadi answered a trap with Isaiah 53: Deep Dive 01

Ken Krogue is the founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply studying Isaiah for more than ten years.

Conceived and directed by Ken Krogue, with Orson and Nathan assisting research and development. Published under Ken’s editorial direction.