Prophecies of a Triumphant Messiah: The Prince of Peace Prophecy

In Part 1 we discussed Isaiah’s prediction about the birth of a son named Immanuel — “God with us” (Isa 7:14), and this messianic child is later described in more detail.[1] Isaiah delivered God’s warning that those who neglect His words would stumble in darkness (Isa 8:19–22), and he predicted the birth of a highly exalted child who would bring light to Galilee, particularly in regions that had been allocated to two of Jacob’s sons — Zebulun and Naphtali. Like the son of man in Daniel’s vision (Dan 7), this person would establish God’s eternal kingdom. Here is a translation of Isaiah’s remarkable Prince-of-Peace prophecy, taken from the oldest existing text (among the Dead Sea Scrolls):

“In the former time [God] treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but in the latter time he will make it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. On those who lived in the land of deep shadow, light has shined . . . For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will be on his shoulders. He is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government will expand, and peace will be endless for the throne of David and his kingdom, to establish and to sustain it with justice and righteousness from now and for evermore. ” (Isa 9:2–6).[2]

The two regions in Isaiah’s prophecy included towns where Jesus lived and worked — Nazareth and Cana in Zebulun; Chorazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida in Naphtali — and Matthew’s Gospel applied Isaiah’s prophetic text directly to Jesus (Matt 4:13–14).

The Jewish Masoretic Text combined the titles Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peaceinto a single name for the promised child: “Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom.” These are highly significant titles in Christianity. In the same way that Isaiah’s promised Prince of Peace would also be God the Everlasting Father, Jesus is the royal Son of God, the fundamental source of peace (Luke 1:79; John 14:27; Eph 2:14; Col 3:15; Acts 10:36), and co-equal with the Father (John 5:18; Phil 2:6; Col 2:9). And the title of Wonderful Counselor foreshadowed Jesus’s promise to be a counselor in the form of the Holy Spirit:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another paraklēton (Greek: advocate or counselor) to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth . . . I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16–18).

Jesus was also associated with the bringing of light to a shadowed people:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The New Testament writers were not doing something new when they applied Isaiah’s Prince-of-Peace prophecy to Jesus as the promised Messiah. Jewish tradition made the same association:

• The Babylonian Talmud records the teaching of Rabbi Jose: “The name of the Messiah is also ‘peace’ (Shalom), as it is written: ‘The prince of peace’” (Derech Erez-Zuta). [3]

• The Aramaic translation/paraphrase known as Targum Jonathan, which accompanied the public reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, explicitly applied Isaiah’s words to the expected Messiah:

“The prophet said to the house of David: ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a child is given, and he has taken the law upon himself to keep it. His name is called from eternity wonderful, the Mighty God who lives to eternity, the Messiah whose peace shall be great upon us in his days . . . There shall be no end to the throne of David and of his kingdom.”[4]

This remarkable Jewish text identified the Messiah with the eternal Mighty God and expressed the understanding that the Messiah would live forever, which was the belief of Jesus’s contemporaries (John 12:34).

The Talmud also records a discussion that associated the promised Messiah with Isaiah’s end-time prophecy of divine light shining in the darkness,[5] and according to Michael Brown, Isaiah 9:6 is given a messianic interpretation in other Jewish commentaries.[6]

It is therefore widely accepted that Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the end times looked forward to the work of the Messiah, although it is often claimed that this was not a messianic figure in the distant future but rather Hezekiah, son of King Ahaz. However, in that case the prophet would have been using offensively blasphemous language, because Mighty God (El Gibbor) was an explicit title for God (Isa 10:21; Jer 32:18; Neh 9:32). And some Jews certainly disagreed that Hezekiah could have been the promised Messiah.[7] It is possible that Isaiah’s prophecy applied partly to the present and partly to the future, as explained by Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner:

“I, along with most modern scholars, consider this whole prophecy messianic. The prophet wished and longed that Hezekiah would be a ‘wonderful counsellor’ and a ‘prince of peace’; but Hezekiah was such a person only in a limited way. Hence the wish and longing of the prophet to see his ideal completely realized are his Messianic expectations” (Messianic Idea, 64–65, original emphasis).

Overall, the ancient verses in Isaiah 7–9 anticipate the arrival of a highly exalted child whose birth would be a miraculous sign (Isa 7:14). This messianic Son and Prince of Peace is described as having a human-divine nature (being physically born as a child yet identified directly with God the Father), bringing illumination to the people, particularly in the region of Galilee, and establishing an eternal Kingdom of righteousness. The links between this messianic prophecy and Jesus’s nature and work are remarkable, and it is not surprising that his followers regarded him as its fulfillment.

[1]. Some Jewish teachers agree that the same child is being discussed in both Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 9: see https://www.torahclass.com/archived-articles/427-signs-symbols-and-the-son-of-isaiah-by-rabbi-baruch. [2]. Translation by Eugene Ulrich and Peter W. Flint. Qumran Cave 1. II: The Isaiah Scrolls. http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/chapters_pg [3]. https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t05/ere18.htm [4]. https://www.sefaria.org/Targum_Jonathan_on_Isaiah.9.5?with=About+this+Text&lang2=he [5]. “A certain heretic said to Rabbi Abbahu: When will the Messiah come? Rabbi Abbahu said to him: He will come when the darkness will enshroud these people, i.e. you . . . For it is written: ‘For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and fog the peoples; but the Lord shall shine upon you, and His glory shall be seen upon you’” (Sanhedrin 99a; quoting from Isa 60:2). https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.99a.2?lang=bi [6]. Regarding the prophecy in Isaiah 9:6, the Rabbis put the following words in the mouth of the patriarch Jacob: “I have still to bring forth the King Messiah as it is written: ‘Unto us a child is born’” (Midrash Rabbah Devarim 1). Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:20 records this belief: “The Messiah is called by eight names: Yinnon, Tzemach; Pele’ [Wonderful], Yo’etz [Counselor], Mashiach, El, Gibbor and Avi Ad Shalom [Eternal Father of Peace].” See Michael Brown, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Vol. 3, Baker, 2003, endnote 86. (I have not been able to confirm these quotes from a direct source.) [7]. Various Jewish texts disagree that the prophecy in Isaiah 9:6 applied to King Hezekiah: “Rabbi Hillel says: There is no Messiah coming for the Jewish people . . . as all the prophecies relating to the Messiah were already fulfilled, during the days of Hezekiah. Rav Tosef says: May the Master forgive Rabbi Hillel for stating matters with no basis . . In the generations after Hezekiah, there are prophecies about both redemption and the coming of the Messiah” (Sanhedrin 99a). https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.99a.1?lang=bi Rabbi Giddel disagreed that Isaiah could have been prophesying about Hezekiah (Sanhedrin 98b). The extra-biblical text 2 Baruch depicted Hezekiah as a separate figure from the expected Messiah.