In one of the book of Isaiah’s most quoted exclamations, the sixth verse of chapter 9 announces the astonishing birth of a consequential child:
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.
Isaiah 9.6 (ESV)
I have italicized the first of four ‘throne names’, as they are often understood to be, of this royally endowed child. The now very traditional ‘Wonderful Counselor’ represents פלא יועץ, a somewhat enigmatic descriptor that might more literally be rendered ‘a wonder of a counselor’ or even ‘a wonder, a counselor’. ‘Wonderful Counselor’ is not a bad translation, but my interest in making this clarification lies in the juxtaposition of the two Hebrew words, פלא (‘wonder) and יועץ (‘counselor’). A too fast reification of their meaning might us to overlook the supple play of the two words in Isaianic context. It might also be noted that, from an interpretative point of view, the choice of small or capital letters generally corresponds to the theological commitments of the translator(s).
Both words are meaningfully deployed in the first half of the book. With a curious tenacity, the two are repeatedly linked.
In the doxological eruption that begins in chapter 25 and is sustained for several chapters, the combination of wonder and counsel that is established by the linkage of the two words occurs with a certain intensity. This is likely done with programmatic intent, since the paired words appear in the section’s very first verse.
O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things (כי עשית פלא עצות), plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
Isaiah 25.1 (ESV)
Then, with apparent reference to YHWH’s ‘strange work’ of Zion’s painful redemption, we find the combination once more.
This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel (הפליא עצה) and excellent in wisdom.
Isaiah 28:29 (ESV)
Finally, the sequence is crowned by a verse where the absence of עצה is compensated by the rapid-fire reiteration of פלא.
The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote; so I will again do amazing things (להפליא) with this people, shocking and amazing (הפליא ופלא). The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.
Isaiah 29.13-14 (NRSV)
Any assessment of what I have been describing must take into account two features that cohabitate amidst a tension that is critical to the soul of the Isaianic burden. First, עצה (‘[to]) counsel’) as a verb and as a noun establishes that YHWH’s way with his Israel and his nations aligns with a determined and previously existing purpose. In this sense, YHWH’s purposeful counsel flows from his stable center. It is not chaotic and not—at least from a divine and therefore a prophetic point of view—serendipitous. One thinks here of the use of the verb קום, deployed in Isaiah to announce that human machinations against Zion and other aspects of YHWH’s purpose shall not stand. Such rustlings of rebellious hearts are doomed from the start, no matter impressions to the contrary, precisely because they contravene YHWH’s counsel or purpose.
Second, the outworking of the divine counsel/purpose regularly astonishes human beings, who have no automatic access to it. This is where פלא serves to underscore that the settled, unstoppable purpose of YHWH is a source of continual surprise to those who are caught up in its concretization. This is so particularly for Israel/Jacob, but hints of gentile ‘marveling’ or ‘wondering’ are not absent from the texts.
It is inconceivable to me that we should not read chapter nine’s ‘wonderful counselor’ in the light of this subsequent florescence of the word-pair and ancillary expressions that use just one of the two. The child that ‘has been born to us’ in chapter nine is not merely a particularly gifted advisor or empath, as English translations might lead one to conclude. Rather, he is an agent of the divine purpose, destined in the execution of YHWH’s counsel to surprise and astonish. This scion of the court of David’s house—as Isaiah 9 appears almost certainly to identify him—is drawn into both the premeditation and the redemption of YHWH in ways that make eventual framing of Mary’s son in his light an interesting interpretative move, even perhaps for those who do not share the shepherds’ doxological impulse as they assimilate the news of that baby’s birth (Luke 2.20). Even she, the third evangelist tells us, ‘treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Luke 2.19, ESV). Perhaps we are not wrong to wonder whether this new mother, though read into the divine purpose by way of angelic visitation, considered its unlikely realization in her own womb and now at her breast the most unimaginable of paths for the divine counsel to tread.
Canter Bridge 