Isaiah 9

Isaiah 9:6

Isa. 9:6. “Counselor.” Not only because He is man’s Counselor, but God’s. See Genesis 1:26. Isa. 9:6. “Wonderful.” Which shows that this child that was to be born is the same person with the Angel that spake to Manoah, that ascended in the flame of the altar; for He tells Manoah that His name is ‘Secret’, Judges 13:18. The word is the same in the original that here is translated ‘Wonderful’, and that person was God, for He is there spoken of as being God, verses 22, 23; so that here is a prophecy of God’s being born, which agrees with the names that follow - ‘The mighty God,’ ‘The everlasting Father,’ and to the name that He is called by in the last preceding chapter but one, in the 14th verse - viz., ‘Emmanuel.’ And it also confirms that the child here intended is the person that was to be a sacrifice for sin, because this person, whose name was Secret and Wonderful, ascended before Manoah in the flame of the altar; and so it argues it to be the same person that wrestled with Jacob, for when Jacob inquired after His name He answers, “Wherefore enquirest thou after my name?” in like manner as He answered Manoah when he inquired after His name. It argues it also to be that Son of God spoken of in Proverbs 30:4; see also Revelation 19:12.

Isa. 9:9-10

Isaiah 9:9-10

Isa. 9:9, 10, etc. “And all the people shall know, even Ephraim, and the inhabitants of Samaria, that say in their pride and stoutness of heart, the bricks are hewn down, but we will build with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.” They disregarded those awful and repeated judgments God had lately exercised upon them, whereby he had already greatly diminished their numbers and their wealth, and the extent of their dominions, when Pul, the king of Assyria, came up against the land, and took a thousand talents out of the land, as 2 Kings 15:19. and when afterwards Tiglath-pileser, in the days of Pekah, he that was now king, came and destroyed so great a part of the land beyond Jordan, and in the northern parts, as 2 Kings 15:2. and 1 Chronicles 5:26. They were insensible and unhumbled under these awful rebukes of heaven, as verse 13. “For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them.” But when the hand of heaven was so evidently against them to diminish them, yet they were full of contrivances, and big with expectations of conquests, and enlarging their dominions, as appears in Pekah’s conspiring with Rezin, king of Syria, to go and conquer the kingdom of Judah, of which in the two foregoing chapters. Thus even in the midst of God’s awful judgments they were full of haughty, ambitious designs, and big with expectations of aggrandizing them, and making themselves bigger than they were before; though they had lost their western and northern countries, yet they hoped to obtain the kingdom of Judah that should more than make up their loss, and so said, Though the bricks are fallen down, we will build with hewn stone, etc.

Isa. 10:26