If it's past tense as you claim, what son of Hezekiah was known as Mighty God and Everlasting Father?
Sometimes it is claimed that the messianic prophecies cited by Christians are in the past tense. Therefore, it is said, they cannot refer to a future, coming Messiah.
This is an invalid argument. There is no such thing as "tense" in biblical Hebrew. (Modern Hebrew, on the other hand, does have tenses.) Biblical Hebrew is not a "tense" language. Modern grammarians recognize that it is an "aspectual" language. This means that the same form of a verb can be translated as either past, present, or future depending on the context and various grammatical cues. The most well known grammatical cue is the "vav-consecutive" that makes an imperfective verb to refer to the past.
Therefore it is wrong to say that Isaiah 53 or other prophecies are in the "past tense." Biblical Hebrew has no tenses. There are many examples of what is wrongly called the "past tense" form (properly called "the perfective" or "perfect") being used for future time.
This fact was recognized by the medieval commentators as well as by modern grammarians, as shown by the following citations.
Medieval Jewish grammarian and commentator David Kimchi on the prophets' use of the perfect for future events:>/b>
"The matter is as clear as though it had already passed."
—David Kimchi, Sefer Mikhlol. Cited in Waltke, Bruce K. and O'Connor, Michael Patrick. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 464 n. 45. They reference Leslie McCall, The Enigma of the Hebrew Verbal System: Solutions From Ewald to the Present (Sheffield: Almond, 1982), p. 8.
Rabbi Isaac ben Yedaiah (13th c.)
[The rabbis] of blessed memory followed, in these words of theirs, in the paths of the prophets who speak of something which will happen in the future in the language of the past. Since they saw in prophetic vision that which was to occur in the future, they spoke about it in the past tense and testified firmly that it had happened, to teach the certainty of his [God's] words—may he be blessed—and his positive promise that can never change and his beneficent message that will not be altered.
—Saperstein, Marc. "The Works of R. Isaac b. Yedaiah." Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1977, pp. 481-82. Cited in Daggers of Faith by Robert Chazan, Berkeley: UC Press, 1989, p. 87.
From the standard grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (section 106n, pp. 312-313):
More particularly the uses of the perfect may be distinguished as follows:—…To express facts which are undoubtedly imminent, and, therefore in the imagination of the speaker, already accomplished (perfectum confidentiae), e.g., Nu. 17:27, behold, we perish ,we are undone, we are all undone. Gn. 30:13, Is. 6:5 (I am undone), Pr. 4:2.…This use of the perfect occurs most frequently in prophetic language (perfectum propheticum). The prophet so transports himself in imagination into the future that he describes the future event as if it had been already seen or heard by him, e.g. Is. 5:13 therefore my people are gone into captivity; 9:1ff.,10:28,11:9…; 19:7, Jb. 5:20, 2 Ch. 20:37. Not infrequently the imperfect interchanges with such perfects either in the parallel member or further on in the narrative.
David ("Fortress of David," 18th c. commentary by David Altschuler) on Jeremiah 31:32:
"I will place—lit. I placed. This is the prophetic past. I will incline their hearts to keep the Torah."
—Cited in Rosenberg, A. J. Jeremiah: A New English Translation. New York: The Judaica Press, 1985, vol. 2, p. 255.
Contemporary Jewish commentator Nahum Sarna on Exodus 12:17, "for on this very day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt":
This is an example of the "prophetic perfect." The future is described as having already occurred because God's will inherently and ineluctably possesses the power of realization so that the time factor is inconsequential.
—Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), p. 59.
From the recent textbook of Biblical Hebrew, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Sec. 30.5.1.e, pp. 489-490):
Referring to absolute future time, a perfective> form may be persistent or accidental. A persistent (future) perfective represents a single situation extending from the present into the future.
Until when will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Exod 10:3 With an accidental perfective a speaker vividly and dramatically represents a future situation both as complete and as independent.
And concerning Ishmael…I will bless him. Gen. 17:20. Women will call me happy. Gen. 30:13. We will die. We are lost, we are all lost. Num. 17:27. This use is especially frequent in prophetic address (hence it is also called the "prophetic perfect" or "perfective of confidence").
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. Num. 24:17. In the past he humbled…in the future he will honor …The people walking in darkness will see a great light. Isa. 8:23-9:1. —Waltke and O'Connor [full reference given above], pp. 489-490.
2When the house of David heard that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. 3Then the LORD said to Isaiah, Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller's Field, 4and say to him, Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah. 5Because Aram--with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah--has plotted evil against you, saying, 6Let us go up against Judah and cut off Jerusalem and conquer it for ourselves and make the son of Tabeel king in it; 7therefore thus says the Lord GOD: It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. 8For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. (Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered, no longer a people.) 9The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all. 10 Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, 11Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. 12But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. 13Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? 14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. 15He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.
The context is that Ahaz is troubled by Aram's invasion of Judah, and fears that he will lose his crown and country. Isaiah says, essentially, "don't worry, G-d will make sure the invasion does not succeed--- here's proof, a young woman is with child..." The obvious context being that a young woman in Ahaz's court had just gotten pregnant-- the sign being that she will choose to name her child Immanuel (probably informing Ahaz shortly after Isaiah's words), and that by the time the child is a toddler, Judah will be secure from it's enemies. It would hardly be a "sign" for Isaiah to say "Yo Ahaz, don't you be worrying 'bout dis invasion for it won't succeed. Let me prove it to you, 600 years from now a child will be born." That's hardly the kind of "sign" that would have comforted Ahaz--- on the other hand, having a relative come to him a few days later and say "Oh Ahaz, guess what, I'm pregnant and I'm naming my child Immanuel" would be exactly the kind of comfort Ahaz needed.
I won't respond to your posts anymore, as I find this exchange dull and tiresome.