A Marvelous Correction

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.  Isaiah 9:6  NASB (9:5 in the Hebrew text)

Today’s word edition comes from a comment by Rodney Baker, Adelaide, Australia

Pele-yoetz – Referring to Today’s Word of December 21, 2009, something has been brought to my attention about the translation of the first part of the name, pele yoetz.
 The problem is this – pele does not mean “wonderful”.  Pele (a segolate noun,  i.e., one with two successive segol vowels and see the link here) means “a wonder” or “something marvelous,” “a miracle of God.”  It is from an unused qal root pala which means “to distinguish or to separate.”

 The word yoetz  is the qal active participle “he is planning,” from ya’atz, to plan, conspire, advise, give counsel, consult. The qal passive participle is counselor, but this would be ya’otz.

It seems that here too we have a translation that is dependent more on the theology of the translators rather than grammatical accuracy. 

So, an alterative reading for the name of the child is, “The Mighty God, Father unto eternity and Prince of Peace is planning a wonder.”

As another writer said, “In other words, the name of the child is a complete sentence describing the work of God.” 

This may be a problem for those who wish to ascribe this verse as being solely about the Messiah, since it supports the Orthodox Jewish (anti-missionary) view that this is about King Hezekiah and God’s miraculous deliverance from the armies of Sennacherib.

I propose that it is both. After all, as you have pointed out on more than one occasion, it must have had some immediate and relevant meaning and application for those who first heard the prophecy in that day, otherwise what would be the point? The fact that there is also the Messianic application referring to Yeshua you could perhaps say is a “bonus.”

Like Brad Scott says, “God is smarter than we are and He is perfectly capable of teaching more than one thing from any given verse of Scripture.”  –  Rodney Baker

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Skip’s comment:  Rodney’s insight reiterates the point that Scripture must first be understood according to the original audience.  Only then can we look for other meanings and applications.  Since we know the gospel authors applied this verse to the Messiah, we can be assured that it carried an additional meaning for them, but this does not mean that the original audience saw it as a Messianic prophecy.  It takes a prior paradigm shift to read the text as more than a sign in Isaiah’s day.  And that shift does not occur because of the textual evidence.  The textual evidence is a result of the shift, not its cause.

What does this tell us about our favorite Messianic prophecies from the Tanakh?  Perhaps the Jewish interpreters aren’t as blind as we think.  Perhaps they just haven’t moved to our paradigm because we don’t offer them any practical reason to do so.

Topical Index:  pele-yoetz, wonder, paradigm, prophecy, Isaiah 9:6, Rodney Baker