In the introduction to The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones sets the stage for her telling of the biblical narrative: “And at the center of the Story, there is a baby.” As a mother of three young children, I like this because it seems to grab my kids’ attention — young children are always fascinated by babies.
As a Hebrew Bible scholar, I also like this because much of my research up to this point has been focused on birth narratives, childlessness, and motherhood in the Old Testament. The birth of a significant child is certainly an important theme that can be traced throughout Scripture. This storybook statement — that the baby does not just come toward the last third of the story, as we reach the New Testament, but is at the center of the story — is interesting and reminds me of theologian Robert Jenson’s statement that time, as it frames the biblical narrative, is not actually linear but is rather like a helix, actively spiraling around a center, which is Christ himself.
Of all the passages read throughout this season, as the church reflects upon the baby “at the center of the Story,” the prophetic oracle of Isaiah 9:1-7 is certainly one of the most familiar. This poetic oracle foretells the coming of a Davidic king who will free his people from the yoke of Assyrian oppression, whose presence will be a light shining on those who live in the land of the shadow of death, and whose everlasting reign will be marked by peace, justice, and righteousness.
And at the heart of this oracle is a child — For a child has been born for us, a son given to us. Though we rarely pause to ask questions of a passage so familiar to us, it is worth asking, Why highlight the king’s infancy? Why would an oracle about a coming Davidic king feature language of birth and sonship? Why, as it were, is a baby at the center?
Part of the answer is that the child of Isaiah 9 is the fourth and final child in a series of children who function as prophetic signs in the larger narrative of Isaiah 7-9. The first and third of these children are Isaiah’s sons (Isa. 7:3; 8:3-4). The second is the child who will be conceived by the young maiden of Isaiah 7:14 (translated as virgin in the Septuagint).
These children have significant names that serve as part of Yahweh’s message to King Ahaz to have hope even amid the coming Assyrian invasion. The child in our passage, the son who is given of Isaiah 9, serves as the climax of this series in that he is the real substance of hope to which the previous children only functioned as signs.
While the first three children’s names served as messages (making some of the names very peculiar indeed — imagine naming your child The-Spoil-Speeds-the-Plunder-Hastens), the names given to the child in Isaiah 9 are magnificent titles—Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His presence will be not just a sign for the future but the reality of restoration for the present. That the Davidic oracle of Isaiah 9:1-7 would speak about the king as yet another child who will be born, not with one meaningful name but with four, makes this king the fulfillment of the preceding three sign-children.
The even more significant part of the answer to our question — why the oracle would feature language of childhood — is found when we recognize that the language of sonship and birth connects Isaiah 9:1-7 to other key Davidic passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. The most significant of these is 2 Samuel 7, in which Yahweh makes a covenant with David. After declaring that he will be the one to make David a house (and not the other way around), Yahweh promises, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your own body … and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.”
Similarly in Psalm 2, likely a coronation liturgy, we read of Yahweh pouring out his king on Zion before declaring, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” The word translated begotten is from the same verbal root that is typically translated as born in Isaiah 9:6. To help us feel the verbal overlap between these two passages, we could therefore read the Isaiah passage as “for us a child is begotten, to us a son is given.”
Later in Psalm 89, which recalls the Davidic covenant and the special relationship between Yahweh and the king, we hear the Davidic king respond to his sonship by calling out to Yahweh: “You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!” In these passages we hear the key feature of Davidic theology: the king was Yahweh’s son.
His human parentage was never denied, but his status as Yahweh’s anointed meant that his true identity was as the son of God, the one begotten/birthed of Yahweh. In fact, the relationship between Yahweh and the Davidic ruler was so close that in some passages it is difficult to distinguish between them. In our passage, for example, one of the names attributed to this Davidic king is Mighty God.
The description of the king in Isaiah 9 as a child who is begotten and a son who is given is therefore utilizing stock language to describe the Davidic king’s relationship with Yahweh. In fact, many scholars consider Isaiah 9:1-7 to have originated as a coronation hymn, perhaps sung when Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, ascended to the throne (notice the throne language of Isa. 9:7). The crowning of the king would therefore be understood to also be the birth of the divine child.
As David’s descendant sat on his God-given throne, he assumed his role as Yahweh’s son. Therefore, as they watched the crown being placed on the grown man’s head, the choir could sing, For unto us a child is born! Unto us a son is given! The language of sonship and birth identified the king as Yahweh’s anointed and hearkened back to the original promises made to David.
Coming to the New Testament and the birth narratives so familiar to us at this time of year, we can ask the same question we asked of Isaiah 9 — Why feature stories of Jesus’ infancy? Why do Matthew and Luke begin with stories of his birth instead of jumping in, as Mark and John do, with Jesus in the prime of adulthood as his ministry is inaugurated?
The answer to this New Testament inquiry can in part be found in our exploration of Isaiah 9. To be sure, the infancy narratives uniquely impress upon us the wonder of the Incarnation as they invite us to envision God as a fragile baby. They also serve to identify Jesus as the long-awaited Davidic king who will free his people from oppression, both the sign and substance of God’s now-embodied presence.
In fact, it is extremely important to both Luke and Matthew that the reader of their birth narratives understand this child to be the long-awaited son of David, and both utilize passages from Isaiah 7 and 9 to convey this part of his identity. To that end, the angels’ announcement to the shepherds in Luke 2:11-12 is a combination (and transformation) of Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6 — “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
The shepherds must go look for a baby because the Davidic king of Isaiah 9 has now been born to them. They are told to rush to Bethlehem not to witness the ceremonial birth of a divinely adopted son as a human king is crowned, but instead to witness the real first breaths of a baby who is at once human and divine. The birth functions as a sign to all those looking on that this child is not just another significant baby in the biblical lineup, but is the baby, the axis of the helix around which all the other passages have been spiraling.
The coronation liturgy of the Davidic king, in which the human becomes the son of the divine, thus finds its unexpected fulfillment in its reversal: the divine Son has now become a human baby. The reality that God the Son has become one of us leads to yet another unanticipated fulfillment. Now we, not unlike the Davidic kings of old, are the ones who become God’s children.
Thus Paul can state in Galatians 4:4-6, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” The baby at the center of the story has made us God’s children.
It is therefore appropriate and important that we stop at this time of year and reflect on the infancy of our Lord. The breathtaking condescension of God to become a human baby, to become the son of a woman and the adopted son of a man, tells us not only who he is but also who we are in him. So let us join the choir and sing, For unto us a child is born! Unto us a son is given!
Pauline Paris Buisch, PhD is a Guest Writer. She is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. Her first book (under review) traces the literary and theological development of the biblical motif of the woman facing the threat of childlessness.