ready despaired. But, in doing so, they have
considered the names too much by themselves, overlooking the
circumstance that the full and deeper meaning of the individual
attributes, as it at first sight presents itself, must, in the
connection in which they here occur, be so much the rather held fast.
The names are completed in the number _four_,--the mark of that which
is complete and finished. _They form two pairs, and every single name
is again compounded of two names._ The first name is [Hebrew: pla
iveC]. That these two words must be _connected_ with one another
(_Theodor._--[Greek: thaumastos bouleuon]) appears from the analogy of
the other names, especially of [Hebrew: al gbvr] with whom [Hebrew: pla
iveC] forms one pair; and then from the circumstance that [Hebrew:
iveC] alone would, in this connection, be too indefinite. The words do
not stand in the relation of the _Status constructus_, but are
connected in the same manner as [Hebrew: pra adM] in Gen. xvi. 12.
[Hebrew: iveC] designates the attribute which is here concerned, while
[Hebrew: pla] points out the supernatural, superhuman degree in which
the King possesses this attribute, and the infinite riches of
consolation and help which are to be found in such [Pg 87] a King. As a
_Counsellor_, He is a _Wonder_, absolutely elevate d above everything
which the earth possesses in excellency of counselling. As [Hebrew:
pla] commonly denotes "wonder" in the strictest sense (comp. chap. xxv.
1: "I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name, for thou hast done
wonders," Ps. lxxvii. 15: "Thou art the God that doest wonders;" Exod.
xv. 11); as it here stands in parallelism with [Hebrew: al] God; as the
whole context demands that we should take the words in their full
meaning;--we can consider it only as an arbitrary weakening of the
sense, that several interpreters explain [Hebrew: pla iveC]
"extraordinary Counsellor." Parallel is Judges xiii. 18 where the Angel
of the Lord, after having announced the birth of Samson, says: "Why
askest thou thus after my name?--it is wonderful," [Hebrew: plai],
_i.e._, my whole nature is wonderful, of unfathomable depth, and
cannot, therefore, be expressed by any human name. _Farther_--Revel.
xix. 12 is to be compared, where Christ has a name written that no man
knows but He himself, to intimate the immeasurable glory of His nature.
That which is here, in the first instance, said of a single attribute
of the King, applies, at the same time