Each December, this famous Christmas prophecy becomes all too familiar to our ears. The loss in such familiarity is that we miss the stunning turn it represents.

In Isaiah 9, first comes a striking change of fortunes for Israel’s hinterlands, the people farthest from the nation’s heart in Jerusalem. Once united under David and Solomon, these rebel territories had become contemptible for their idolatry after the division of the kingdom. They would fall to Assyria in 722 BC, during the life and ministry of Isaiah.

Yet, contrary to what God’s people would have expected, the prophet foretells that this anguish will give way to a time of no more gloom. The nation will multiply as these northerners, “Galilee of the nations,” return to him, and with their return will come a soaring of joy (Isaiah 9:3).

To that surprise, Isaiah adds another. We might expect the emergence of some imposing figure, a mighty man, full-grown and battle-tested, ready to carry the nation on his shoulders. But Isaiah says,

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given.

A child! Long had God promised the world’s redemption would come through the offspring who would sustain a bite to the heel yet, in the very act of battle, crush the serpent’s head. Even as kings and prophets pinned their hopes on the coming births of sons, God unfolds his master scheme of one son to overshadow them all.

A glimpse of this Son’s manifold greatness will be captured in his name (Isaiah 9:6), which turns out to be not singular but fourfold. He is Guide, Champion, Caretaker, and Peacemaker, and each of these paired with attendant glory.

Godlike Warrior
Other meditations in this Advent series will illumine his first and final two names. Here, let’s ask what we might make of the second, “Mighty God.” Alongside the third, this name moves us toward the most daring claim in the prophecy, and perhaps in all of Isaiah.

Today, we doubtless hear “Mighty God” as a clear and ringing attribution of divinity to the Christmas child, but it wasn’t so simple in Isaiah’s day. The word for “God” in Hebrew (El) has a range of possible referents, from great men to angels to God himself. Context is critical — and poetic prophecies can be enigmatic.

This “God” of Isaiah 9:6 paired with “might” brings us to the battlefield. The “Wonderful Counselor” guides his people with wisdom at a fork in the road; the “God of might” stands before them in battle. David had his mighty men for war. God’s people, forecasts Isaiah, will have a Mighty God with them in combat.