Isaiah 9:6

6. For unto us Jews first, then all the world.

A child is born The antitype of the child of chap. vii; a child of the Davidic house, as asserted in next verse.

Unto us Or for us for our benefit.

A son is given In chap. vii the child is given as a sign, but here as a gift of grace. He is the anointed Son of God. Psalms 2:7. It would seem, according to Hebrews 2:14, that he is partaker of the same nature with the children of Isaiah 8:18.

Government shall be upon his shoulder Princedom unlimited better accords with the original. Unlike Assyrian tributary rule, it is not oppressive to his people. Unlike all earthly potentates, he wears sovereignty as a robe everlastingly befitting him.

His name shall be called Literally, They shall call, etc. By universal admission he is Wonderful; rather, a Wonder; arresting the whole world’s attention by his incarnation, words, and acts.

Counsellor A supreme teacher and guide to men, collectively and individually.

Mighty God אל גבור , ( el gibbor.) Gesenius renders this, strong hero; and De Wette adopts the same rendering. But this is a case where a parallel phrase close at hand must settle the meaning. Now in Isaiah 10:21, the same phrase is applied to deity, and the context will bear no other sense. The remnant of Jacob shall return unto the “mighty God,” same words in the original. In Isaiah 10:20-21, (which see,) the parallel to “Holy One of Israel” which indisputably is the Lord Jehovah is אל גבור , ( el gibbor,) and this, if not to be regarded fully as strong, yea a stronger expression for deity, is violently opposed to the laws of parallelism in Hebrew poetry. It would be nonsense to regard it otherwise.

Everlasting Father Or, Father of eternity. So the words and order of the Hebrew; and this, in Hebrew rhetoric means eternal, or he is eternal, or the eternal One.

Prince of Peace Having absolute command of peace, to whom all willing people shall be subject. That all these predicates belong to Messiah has, with little dispute, always been conceded. The earlier Jews and the Targums explained them as referring to Messiah; the later Jews (in order to parry the Christian view) as referring to Hezekiah. Modern rationalists concede them to Messiah, but emasculate them of their strong, divine sense, so as to reduce Messiah to a mere, but exalted, creature. Such shifts in interpretation, in the face of the ancient view of this passage, confirmed by later unprejudiced exegesis, but too plainly show greater partisan-ship for theory than for simple truth.