Could “Mighty God” in Isaiah 9:6 refer to a man?

Answer:

I generally don't do reviews of other people's writings. However, I will address a common point the two you selected brought up and show you how they are playing games.

In both sites, written by Muslim authors, the goal is to refute that Jesus is God. As you would expect, the evidence for the deity of Christ is only presented in part, as if there were only a few verses that would lead a person to the conclusion that Jesus is God. To illustrate numerous ways we are told that Jesus is God, take a look at Jesus Is God.

Consider "And she conceived again and bore a daughter. Then God said to him: "Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, For I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, But I will utterly take them away. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, Will save them by the LORD their God, And will not save them by bow, Nor by sword or battle, By horses or horsemen"" (Hosea 1:6-7). Notice that God says He is going to save Israel by sending God to them -- two are called God in one statement!

Or "Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit Have sent Me" (Isaiah 48:16). Read the context from Isaiah 42:12-17 and realize that God is speaking, yet He says God and His Spirit will send him!

Then remember, "I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me" (John 8:18). God who was sent by God is Jesus Christ. "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).

The primary verse both sites focus on is Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Both admit that this verse is a prophecy about Jesus, what they object to is the translation of the phrase "Mighty God." The essence of the argument is that neither "mighty" nor "God" is used exclusively of deity. There are cases where these words are applied to men. Therefore, they conclude that this verse is not calling the Messiah God.

But there is sleight of hand going on. Yes, the Jews, and we too for that matter, used "mighty" for a variety of things. And there are few cases where people who represent God are called gods (See: Just Justices). But the question ought to be whether the phrase 'el gibbowr is ever applied to anyone other than God. As best that I can tell, the phrase appears four times in the Bible (Genesis 49:24; Isaiah 9:6; 10:21; Jeremiah 32:18). The three other cases are clearly references to God and not man. There are also some verses where 'el and gibbowr are used together to describe one person, though not in a phrase: Deuteronomy 10:17 and Nehemiah 9:32, and again they apply to God.

What I particularly found amusing is one source picked apart Isaiah 9:6 but skipped any mention of "Everlasting Father." It altered the phrase to "Father of the Coming Age," but with no commentary or proof as to why this alteration should exist. The second attempts to alter the meaning of "everlasting" to say that Jesus would be eternally important to his followers and "father" to say that he would be the head of his people. The problem is that we only have this man's claim. He did not prove that Jesus was not eternal or that the word in Isaiah 9:6 only meant the length of the Christian age. Christians know that Christ called himself "I AM," a statement that he was the eternal God. See "Jesus is the "I AM""

The reason for noting this is that the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6 is called both Mighty God and Eternal Father. It is the combination that proves both contenders to be wrong.

The truth is that to claim that Jesus was just a man, the authors must eventually dismiss the writings of the New Testament. For example, the Father declares Himself to be eternal in Isaiah 41:4; 44:6; Revelation 1:4; 21:5-6. But the same phrases are used for Jesus in Revelation 1:8; 22:12-13. Then there is the blunt statement: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. ll things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made" (John 1:1-3). The only way around this is to dismiss the writings of John from the Bible. But the writings of Paul are equally difficult when Paul said, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God" (Philippians 2:5-6). We soon realize that the only way to find support for the idea that Jesus was not God is to discard the Word of God.