Isaiah 9:6
Messenger of Great Counsel
Doctrine shiftedLong before anyone argued over a Trinity, the Greek Bible gave this Child one title.
Side by Side
The Older Text
Septuagint, translated before Messiah
For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder: and his name is called the Messenger of great counsel: for I will bring peace upon the princes, and health to him.
The Hebrew
Masoretic, matching the Isaiah scroll from Qumran
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Your KJV reads: the Hebrew, with all five titles, and capital letters that make “mighty God” and “everlasting Father” look like names of Yahuah.
See what changed and why ↓What Your Bible Says
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 KJV
This is one of the favorite verses of Trinity teachers. The Child is called “mighty God” and “everlasting Father,” so, they say, the Son must be Yahuah Himself.
What the Older Text Says
And his name is called the Messenger of great counsel.
Isaiah 9:6 (9:5 in the Greek), Septuagint
The Jewish scholars who translated Isaiah into Greek before Messiah gave the Child one title: the Messenger who carries Yahuah’s great counsel. A messenger is sent. He is not the One who sends him.
What Changed
Here the Hebrew is not the late reading. The great Isaiah scroll from Qumran, copied before Messiah, has the same five titles as the Masoretic text. What changed is how the titles were read.
The Greek translators did not take “mighty El” and “everlasting Father” to mean the Child was Yahuah. Centuries after the cross, some Greek copies added the Hebrew titles. Later English Bibles put them in capitals, and the verse became a creed.
What the Titles Mean
El means a mighty one, and Scripture uses it of men. Nebuchadnezzar is “the mighty one of the heathen” (Ezekiel 31:11), a form of the same word. Moses was made “a god to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:1). A shared title is not a shared identity.
Father is used of rulers too. Joseph was made “a father to Pharaoh” (Genesis 45:8). Eliakim would be “a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Isaiah 22:21). The Hebrew here is “father of the age,” the coming age Messiah rules. It does not make Him the Father.
Which One Is Right?
The Greek Bible, in its main copies, reads “Messenger of great counsel.”
A Hebrew scroll from Qumran has the five titles, as does the Masoretic text.
Later Greek copies add the titles, bringing the Greek into line with the Hebrew.
Purpose of the Change
No Hebrew letter changed. The shift is in the reading. The effect of reading the titles as names of Yahuah, helped along by capital letters in English, is to turn a description of Yahuah’s Messenger into a proof for a three-person God.
The Bottom Line
The oldest Greek gave the Child one title, Messenger of great counsel. Whatever He is called, Yahuah sent Him, and “the zeal of Yahuah of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:7).
The risen Son still calls Yahuah His God, four times in one verse: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God … and I will write upon him the name of my God” (Revelation 3:12).
Dig Deeper The evidence, for anyone who wants it
The Added Titles
Brenton’s English Septuagint notes that the old Greek copy called Alexandrinus, made in the 400s, adds “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty One, Potentate, Prince of Peace, Father of the age to come.” Scholars generally think these titles were added later to make the Greek match the Hebrew. The main Greek text has only “Messenger of great counsel.”
The Messenger
The Greek word is angelos, which means messenger. It does not make Messiah an angel. Malachi calls Him “the messenger of the covenant,” sent by “Yahuah of hosts” (Malachi 3:1).
Counsel and Might Given
Two chapters later Isaiah says where the Child’s counsel and might come from: “the spirit of Yahuah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might” (Isaiah 11:2). Yahuah’s own spirit rests on Him. He is counsellor and mighty because Yahuah gives it.
My God
After His resurrection the Son said, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). One who has a God above Him is not that God.
An Honest Note
This page does not claim the Hebrew was altered. The Qumran scroll shows the titles are old. The same words, “mighty El,” are used of Yahuah in Isaiah 10:21. The point is narrower: Jewish translators before Messiah did not read this verse the way the later creeds did, and Greek copies disagree among themselves.