And he made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither
was any deceit in his mouth. (Isa 53:9 | KJV)
And he made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death; because he had done no evil, neither was
any deceit in his mouth. (Mosiah 14:9)
The NT quote (which does not
attribute the passage to Isaiah) is found in 1 Pet. 2:22 (see also Zeph. 3:13;
Rev. 14:5). LXX reads anomian . . . dolos, “lawlessness . . . deceit”.
Actually, the MT mrmh means both “evil” and “violence”, and hence both
KJV and BM are valid translations from the Hebrew. (John A. Tvedtnes, Isaiah
Variants in the Book of Mormon [Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research
and Mormon Studies, 1981], 93)
The use of “evil” as opposed to “violence” seems to fit the ethical
character of the Suffering Servant. As M. Kartveit noted in the Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament:
The prophetic usage of these
terms is also somewhat stereotyped, as in catalogs of vices: Mic. 6:12 (remîyâ); Jer. 9:5(6) and
Hos. 12:1(11:12) (mirmâ). In Am. 8:5
the prophet cites the questions of the tradesmen: “When will the new moon be
over so that we may sell grain? And when will the sabbath be past so that we
may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practice deceit with false balances (mōʾzenê
mirmâ).” Mic. 6:11 asks rhetorically: “Can I tolerate wicked scales and a
bag of weights of mirmâ?” The
prophets may be drawing on a wisdom tradition that false balances are an
abomination to Yahweh (Prov. 11:1; cf. 20:23). Zeph. 1:9 castigates those who
“fill their master’s house with violence and fraud.” Jer. 23:26 likens the
prophets who prophesy šeqer to the
prophets whose hearts are tarmîṯ. In
Jer. 14:14, in a similar context, šeqer,
qesem, ʾalîl, and tarmîṯ
appear as synonyms. Jer. 8:5 equates apostasy and tarmîṯ. The various terms tend to lose their distinctive meanings,
being employed simply to characterize the wicked. Contrariwise, Isa. 53:9
describes the servant of Yahweh: “He had done no ḥāmās, and there was no mirmâ
in his mouth.” In Zeph. 3:13 the same language describes the ethical
character of the righteous remnant of Israel. (M.
Kartveit, “רמה,” TDOT 13:503-4, emphasis added)