Why won't my variant metafield render HTML in this code?

I’m trying to get a variant metafield to render HTML. It’s in a capture. The variant works fine on it’s own and renders HTML. Only when it’s in this piece of code it fails to render. Any suggestions please?

<span class="delivery-message" itemprop="delivery-message">{{ variant.sku }}</span>

{% capture 'meta_data' %}
            {% for variant in product.variants %}
              {{ variant.sku | json }}: {{ variant.metafields.custom.delivery_message | json }}
              {% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}
            {% endfor %}
            {% endcapture %}

<script>
  var metaData = { {{ meta_data }} }
  var selectCallback = function(variant, selector) {
    if (variant) {
      if (variant.sku != '')
      {
      $('.variant-sku').text('SKU: ' + variant.sku);
      $('.delivery-message').text((metaData[variant.sku]));
      }
    }
    else {
      $('.variant-sku').empty();
    }

Figured it out.

Changed:

$('.delivery-message').text((metaData[variant.sku]));

To:

$('.delivery-message').html((metaData[variant.sku]));