Isaiah's Prophecy of the Messiah's Birth
How did Jews, before and after the time of Jesus, interpret the famous prophecy of Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us a child is born...whose name will be called Mighty God...Prince of Peace"?
Around this time of year, it’s not uncommon to hear that beautiful selection from Handel’s Messiah, “For Unto Us a Child is Born.” In light of my secular Jewish background, however, this wasn’t a particular piece of music I grew up listening to. To be honest, I was ignorant not only of the song itself, but of Handel’s entire oratorio, and all the prophecies that inspired it. That’s probably a result of the “secular” aspect of my Jewish upbringing. We had a great deal of ritual, tradition, and delicious food—but not a lot of Scripture.
The first Bible passage that caught my attention was Micah 5:2 (which I discuss here). Of course, I was familiar with the fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but somehow I made it through all those years of synagogue and Hebrew school completely unaware of the fact that some 700 years earlier, Micah prophesied that the Messiah would originate from that town. Once I discovered that curious passage, I began looking for others like it, and soon stumbled on to the early part of Isaiah chapter 9.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.” — Isaiah 9:6-7
Upon my first reading of this passage (without the help of either Jewish or Christian interpreters), one thing that seemed clear to me was that the child spoken of by Isaiah was somehow being identified as God incarnate. After all, among all his various appellations, this child was going to be called, “Mighty God.” So I immediately began discussing these things with relatives and Rabbis. But in every conversation, it just seemed to me that the plain meaning of the text was being explained away.
One of the Rabbis I spoke with back in those days recommended I read a book titled, Faith Strengthened, by Isaac Troki. I still have the book in my library (pictured below), and reviewing its contents some forty years ago has been quite revealing. Now that I think about it, this is probably the first theology book I ever read.
At one point in his book, Troki says that his readers may on occasion be asked questions related to the proper interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecies. For example, a Christian may ask, “Of whom did Isaiah prophesy in chap. ix. 6, when he said, ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: on his shoulders shall be the government: and they shall call him Wonderful, Counsellor, Almighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace…’”? Troki then replies as follows: “Those passages refer to Hezekiah, king of Judah, during whose government Israel experienced, through divine intervention, a signal deliverance from Sennacherib, king of Assyria…The child born unto Ahaz [i.e., Hezekiah] is entitled the Prince of Peace because of the peace granted to Israel in the days of Hezekiah…”1
The odd part about this response is that Isaiah and Hezekiah lived around the same time, and yet, at the very opening of chapter 9, Isaiah clearly states that this prophecy has to do with the “latter times,” in a day in which “the way of the sea will be made glorious…Galilee of the nations” (cf. Mt 4:12-16). Furthermore, the child mentioned by Isaiah is specifically called, “Mighty God.” To this, Troki responds by saying that “the nature of the holy language allows application of the name of the Almighty to human beings, and even to inanimate objects, inclusively.”
The other major problem with this interpretation is that Hezekiah did not end up reigning eternally on David’s throne (Is 9:7; cf. 2 Sam 7:13). According to Troki, when Christians ask, “‘If the intention of the prophet had been to prophesy an earthly kingdom, how could he say that his (the king’s) government would be without end?’ We reply to this, that the expression, ‘without end,’ is a mere figure of speech.’” But Isaiah is simply reiterating God’s promise to David as recorded in 2 Sam 7:13: “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” This promise then reverberates in numerous ways throughout the Old Testament and into the New (Ps 45:6-7, Is 9:7, Jer 33:14-19, Dan 2:44-45 and 7:13-14, Lk 1:30-33, Eph 1:20-22, Rev 11:15).
As I already mentioned, it’s been forty years since I first read Troki’s book, nevertheless, I do recall being surprised that the author expressed his belief in a coming Messiah. “Although an interruption has occurred during the time of the captivity, the government, nevertheless, will in the days of the Messiah, return to the scion [i.e. Branch] of David. See Ezekiel xxxvii. 36…” This is something that came up in some of my conversations with Rabbis as well. But if the idea of a coming Messiah was such an important concept in Jewish thought, why had I never heard about it before?
It took quite a few years for me to discover the answer to that question, and once again it relates to the extent to which contemporary Judaism has been secularized. If this world is all there is, the City of God is eclipsed by the City of Man and theology devolves into politics. Political candidates then become the focus of all our messianic hopes and expectations. But Isaiah’s promise of a coming “Prince of Peace” is simply too lofty and grand for the likes of Hezekiah, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump.
Ancient Jewish Beliefs About the Coming Messiah
Over the past decade or more, I’ve been fascinated to discover various ancient Jewish interpretations of Israel’s messianic promises. One such source is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For example, a series of scrolls found in Cave 4 provides numerous insights into the way these particular Jews interpreted Isaiah.2 Though the section dealing with the early portion of Isaiah chapter 9 is missing, other legible sections from these scrolls make clear that they were reading Isaiah messianically. For example, in this section from 4Q174, the Qumran interpreter reminds his readers of the Davidic promise from 2 Samuel 7:
As for what He said to David, “I will give you rest from all your enemies…Moreover, the Lord declares to you that He will make you a house and I will raise up your offspring after you, and establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he will be My son. This passage refers to the Shoot of David, who is to arise…in Zion in the Last Days…whom He shall raise up to deliver Israel…”3
In this scroll, the Davidic promise of an eternal king is connected with Isaiah’s prophecy of a “shoot” that will spring forth “from the stump of Jesse [i.e., David’s line] and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” In 4Q252, the “Shoot of David” is specifically referred to as “the Righteous Messiah, the Branch of David,” and the author goes on to say that, “to him and to his seed the covenant of the kingdom of His people has been given for generations to come…”4 According to 4Q521, “the heavens and the earth shall listen to His Messiah…Over the humble His spirit hovers, and He…will honor the pious upon the throne of His eternal kingdom, setting prisoners free, opening the eyes of the blind, raising up those who are bowed down.”5
The author of 1QSa looks forward to the day “when God has fathered the Messiah,”6 which is essentially another way of saying that Israel’s Messiah will be “the Son of God,” and 11Q13 speaks of a messianic figure who “will proclaim to them the jubilee, thereby releasing them from the debt of all their sins.” In fact, this fascinating scroll goes on to interpret numerous Old Testament promises in messianic directions:
This visitation is the Day of Salvation that He has decreed through Isaiah the prophet concerning all the captives, inasmuch as Scripture says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your divine being reigns’” (Is. 52:7)…“[T]he messenger” is the Anointed of the Spirit, of whom Daniel spoke, “After the sixty-two weeks, an Anointed One shall be cut off” (Dan. 9:26). The “messenger who brings good news, who announces salvation” is the one of whom it is written, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…” (Is. 61:2).
Apart from Isaiah 9, the other passage that I discussed with family members and Rabbis was the famous passage about the Suffering Servant from Isaiah 52-53. Isaac Troki provides a good summary of what the Rabbis told me. Essentially, the servant described by Isaiah is a personification of the nation of Israel.7 I’ll go into a little more detail about this interpretation in a future article, but for now, we need to recognize that at least some Jews before the time of Jesus applied Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant to the Messiah, the one who was to be “Anointed (מָשִׁיחַ | mashiach) of the Spirit.”
Messianic Expectations in the Aramaic Targums
When the scroll of Isaiah was translated from Hebrew to Aramaic, the text was expanded into a kind of paraphrase rendering that let us know how it was being interpreted by Jews around the time of Jesus.8 And here’s what we find in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant:
Behold, My servant the Messiah will be successful; he will be lifted up and increase and be very strong…53:6-12 All of us like sheep have been scattered…and it was pleasing from before the Lord to forgive all of us our sins on account of him…[F]rom before the Lord it was pleasing to refine and to purify the remnant of His people, so that He could cleanse their life from sins. They will see the kingdom of their Messiah…because he handed his life over to the death, and…he will entreat for many sins…”9
Not only is Isaiah’s servant unmistakably identified as the Messiah, but he also cleanses his people from their sins in the process of handing his life over to death. It turns out that the counsel I received from the Rabbis I met with forty years ago was a much later Jewish interpretation. Ancient Jews, it turns out, applied the passages I had enquired about to Israel’s Messiah, including the passage from Micah 5:2 that first got the ball rolling for me:
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrath, you were as too small to be numbered among the thousands of the house of Judah. From you shall come forth before me the Messiah to be executing rule over Israel, whose name is uttered from former times, from the days of antiquity…And he shall arise and rule with might from before the Lord in the greatness of the name of the Lord his God…for now shall his name increase unto the ends of the earth. And there shall be peace for us from then on.”10
One Rabbi told me that this prophecy was only saying that the Messiah was going to be related to King David who was born in Bethlehem. Though I was new at biblical interpretation, he seemed to me to be evading the clear words of the text. When I eventually discovered this ancient Aramaic translation, I finally found a Jewish interpretation that seemed to fit with the clear language of the original prophecy. It wasn’t about David, but his greater son, the prince of peace—the Messiah.
There’s one more passage from the Aramaic Targum of Isaiah that I’d like to share with you. As I mentioned above, unfortunately, discussions related to the early part of Isaiah chapter 9 are missing in the Dead Sea Scroll collection. However, this section is available in the Aramaic translation and reads as follows: “The prophet said to the house of David that a boy has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and he has received the Torah upon himself to keep it. And his name has been called from before the One Who Causes Wonderful Counsel, God the Warrior, the Eternally Existing One—the Messiah who will increase peace upon us in his days.”11
According to this ancient Jewish paraphrase, the promised child of Isaiah’s famous prophecy was applied, not to King Hezekiah, or any of Israel’s former monarchs for that matter, but to the Messiah himself who is described by the translator as the “Eternally Existing One.” In other words, this is not your ordinary king. This is none other than God incarnate.
Shane Rosenthal is the founder and host of The Humble Skeptic podcast and the author of Is Faith Blind? (due in 2024). Shane was one of the creators of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast which he also hosted from 2019-2021, and has written numerous articles for various sites and publications, including TableTalk, Core Christianity, Modern Reformation, and others.
Related Audio
Christmas: Legend or History? Humble Skeptic #64
Jewish Views of the Messiah, Humble Skeptic #38 with Daniel Boyarin
What Child Is This? A Christmas Message by Shane Rosenthal
Jacob’s Ladder, Humble Skeptic #63
Were Jews Expecting a Divine Messiah? WHI 1243 with Craig Evans
A Suffering Messiah? WHI-1564 with Craig Evans
The Angel of the Lord (Pt 1), WHI 1566 with Foreman & Van Dorn
The Angel of the Lord (Pt 2), WHI-1567 with Foreman & Van Dorn
Articles
The Bethlehem Prophecy: An Exploration of Micah 5:2, Shane Rosenthal
Finding Christ in All of Scripture (PDF), Shane Rosenthal
Sprinkled Nations & Speechless Kings, Shane Rosenthal
Why Should We Believe The Bible? (PDF), Shane Rosenthal
Proof of the Gospel (PDF), selections from Justin Martyr, Eusebius & Augustine
A New Way of Reading Scripture, Shane Rosenthal
A Dead Sea Scroll Hymn Based on Isaiah 52 - 53 (PDF), Shane Rosenthal
Related Books
The Jewish Gospels, Daniel Boyarin
Proof of the Gospel, Eusebius of Caesarea
The Jewish Targums & John’s Logos Theology, John Ronning
A Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Craig Evans
A Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels, Craig Evans
The Angel of the Lord, Doug Van Dorn & Matt Foreman
The Gospel According to Isaiah 53, Darrell Bock & others
The Moody Handbook of Messianic Prophecy, Rydelnik & Blum
The Life & Times of Jesus The Messiah, Alfred Edersheim
Isaac Troki, Faith Strengthened (New York: Hermon Press, 1970, reprinted from the 1850 London edition), 104-105.
See 4Q161-174 in Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr. and Edward Cook (editors.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New English Translation (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 236-254.
Ibid., 257.
Ibid., 355.
Ibid., 531. Though this was written well before the time of Jesus, it echoes many of the statements applied to Jesus throughout the New Testament (cf. Mt 8:21, 11:4-5, 23:11, 25:31-40, Lk 4:18, 18:14,
Ibid., 140.
Isaac Troki, Faith Strengthened, 109-127.
Though the Aramaic Targums are often dated to around 200 BC, many scholars argue that they reflect beliefs that go back to the time of Jesus and beyond.
Dr. Eldon Clem (translator), Targum Onqelos, Jonathan, and the Writings (Altamonte Springs, FL: Accordance, OakTree Software, 2015), Isaiah 52:13-53:12.
Ibid., Targum translation of Micah 5:1-4 (translated by Dr. Jerome Lund).
Ibid., see Isaiah 9:5-7