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
“For there is a child born for us, a son given to us;
and dominion is laid on His shoulders, and this is the name they give him:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end
for the Throne of David and his royal power
Hmmm
One of my favorite passages in the Bible, and Yeshua clearly sees himself in this light
However Christian dominions have not been particularly peaceful IMO
However it would seem to me that his dominion has been anything but peaceful
I wish I could read and understand Hebrew!
Me too Darlene!
Learning to read is not as difficult as you might think. Just get started and keep going. If you do that you will understand more next month than you do today.
Try starting here http://eteacherbiblical.com/free-lessons/hebrew-alefbet
Thanks, Pam, for the encouragement and the helpful link! I’ll try it. Shalom.
This is what got me started many years ago. More importantly it is what has kept me interested and encouraged. I am no scholar but have persevered, all the while maintaining an insanely busy life that was totally at odds with taking classes of any sort.
When someone asks you what you want as a gift this would be a great idea. 😉
http://www.livingwordpictures.com/pkg_complete_hwp.htm
Thanks. Great idea! 🙂
Thanks for the post, it definitely makes me want to look deeper into verses I skim through so often. But it raised another question for me…
What does it mean for the ‘governement to rest on his shoulders’?
Is this a similar saying to what we have about feeling responsible for something? As it’s written, I might think that ‘resting on the shoulders’ is ‘yoke talk’ which suggests Torah observance, which suggests establishing God’s Kingdom — which would then apply in obvious ways to both Hezekiah and Yeshua.
The other way I’ve heard ‘governement to rest upon his shoulders’ interpreted prophetically — is the persecution of Yeshua in the form of Herod trying to kill him. Any thoughts?
“God is smarter than we are and He is perfectly capable of teaching more than one thing from any given verse of Scripture.”
And as the Author, He is the only One who is entitled to take His word and apply it out of context! 🙂
You are SO right about this. Should make all of us pay a lot more attention to the ORIGINAL audience.
Perhaps, ~ “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in..” ~ (Romans 11.25)
~ Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God on behalf of my fellow Israelites is for their salvation ~ (Romans 10.1)
Why would that be Paul? Are some of them “lost?” and currently in need of “salvation or deliverance?”
Yeshua wept over Jerusalem. (John 11.35) Why?
And as far as the “translation” of Isaiah 9.6 goes, (is it Messianic or is it speaking of King Hezekiah, (a mere mortal), let us remember the small things called “commas” do not exist in the Hebrew, (why does a Goy remember this?). No, these are not (Greek) commas- these are (Hebrew) “dashes” as in “Pele-yoez-El Gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom!” And also, – is this all? What “else” about tHis Name above all names?
John the Immerser had his doubts also. (John, be not faithless, but believing!) He also “had his moments of doubting..” –
A wonderful question for any man:
~ “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”? ~
(Matthew 11.3)
Both words are nouns (yoetz is a participle functioning as a noun), so they are nouns in construct – translated literally, “a wonder of counseling.”