NOTES for Isa 9:1-21

What a wonderful gift prophecy is! Several centuries after these words were written, the apostle Paul would tell us to seek this gift in particular, because it reveals the ways of the Lord to us. Isaiah seems merely to be prophesying the birth of an earthly Messiah—a King from David's line—yet he lists names that can refer only to God Himself. For a person of Isaiah's time, however, a name was not a conventional designation but something that expressed the essence of its bearer. Thus, in some astonishing way, the King from David's line proves to be God Himself, establishing His Kingdom forever. And all this is accomplished by God's zeal or, as the New Testament would later clarify, by God's love.