Is Isaiah 7 a Prediction of Jesus’s Birth?

The Adoration of The Magi - Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia) Italian ca. 1460

Three weeks ago I posted my thoughts on whether the Hebrew Bible predicts Jesus and I promised (threatened?) to follow it up with some particulars. Here is one of them.

A passage that quickly surfaces when the topic turns to predictions of Jesus in the Old Testament is Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, a virgin/young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  

The birth of a child named Immanuel (literally “God with us”) by a virgin seems like a slam dunk obvious prophecy of Jesus. And it certainly helps things along that Matthew’s Gospel cites this passage as being fulfilled at Jesus’s birth:

Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.

Matthew’s citation is a little different from the original text, and we’ll come back to that in a second. The point is that this certainly looks like a fulfillment: This is an amazing child and Matthew says Isaiah’s words are fulfilled at Jesus’s birth.

Having said that . . . . 

It is not clear at all that Isaiah 7 is a prediction of something that would happen roughly 700 years after Isaiah's time. Reading Isaiah 7 on its own terms, the whole chapter is quite clearly about events in the late 8th century BCE. 

King Ahaz of Judah is on the throne and he is freaking about a bit. The mighty Assyrians have recently begun flexing their muscles, and the surrounding nations are getting worried about an attack. Specifically, King Pekah of Israel and the King Rezin of neighboring Aram have made an alliance to team up against the Assyrians. They want Ahaz to join them, but Ahaz isn’t so sure he wants to get involved. Pekah and Rezin threaten Ahaz, saying that if he doesn’t fight with them, they will attack Jersulaem and put a puppet on the throne who will. 

This is where Isaiah comes into the picture. Long story short, Isaiah tells Ahaz not to worry and gives Ahaz a sign to back it up, which is in 7:14,. “Look, a virgin/young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

In context, it is self-evident that this is not a prediction of events in 1st c. CE Palestine. 

For one thing, in Hebrew, the woman in question is not said to be a virgin (betulah) but a young woman of marriageable age (`almah). Yes, many translations say “virgin” but even those translations will add a footnote “or young woman” or the like. The decision to retain “virgin” in English translations bowing to tradition and not wanting to upset the cart. But in the Hebrew, there is nothing unusual about the women. 

Second, her conceiving of a child has already happened. It is not a future event, but a past one: the Hebrew is hinneh ha`almah harah, which literally means “Look, the pregnant young woman“--or to put it more eloquently, “Look, a young woman is with child.” What is yet to happen is the birth itself.

I know, I know. There is a good chance that your Bible says “A young woman [or virgin] shall conceive,” but that is wrong. The reason that they ignore the fact that harah (pregnant) is an adjective and not a future verb is to keep it in line with how Matthew quotes this passage (see below).

Third, there is nothing about the name “Immanuel” (God with us) that suggests the child “is God.” The Bible is FULL of names ending in “el” (= God), and not one of them means that the individuals bearing that name are God or divine or some such thing. 

The child’s name does not mean that THE CHILD is God, but that the child’s BIRTH is the SIGN that God is with “us”--here meaning Ahaz and the people of Judah.

Fourth, all this is to say that the miraculous thing happening here is not the conception or even the birth of the child, but what Isaiah says next in vv. 15-16:

He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.  For 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. 

I can’t tell you how old a child has to be in ancient Israel in order to be thought old enough to choose right from wrong, but just for the sake of it, let’s say between 3 and 5 years old. But it doesn’t matter how we answer that question. The point of the prophecy is that, before that child is of a certain age, he will be eating peace-time delicacies (curds and honey) and the military threat Ahaz so fear will be but a memory (“the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted”).

Isaiah 7:14 is not a prediction of Jesus’s birth 700 years into the future. It is a statement of God’s protection of Judah from a military threat.

So, was Matthew wrong? That is a more complex question to answer than it might appear, and trying to ferret it out lands us smack dab in the middle of a nuanced and multilayered academic topic: how the NT writers make use of their Bible, the Christian Old Testament.

The most important thing to know is that Matthew is following not the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 but the Greek translation–known as the Septuagint, which predates Jesus by 2 or 3 centuries. As a result, Matthew reads “behold the virgin (parthenos) shall conceive and bear a son” because that is what his Greek Old Testament says. 

UH, OK, so . . . why does the Greek OT mishandle the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14?! 

This is a complicated matter, but let me say this much: Was the Jewish Greek translator trying to sneak in a suggestion that we should all be waiting for a virgin woman to conceive? This is nonsensical to me. I think he was simply trying to render `almah as best he could. Or perhaps he just made a big mistake. That happens.

Bottom line: the fact that Matthew says what he says about Isaiah 7:14 is due to the translation he is reading. I do not blame him one little bit–the Septuagint was the Bible of Judaism in that day. Of course he is going to rely on it.

Also, Matthew cited the Old Testament more than any other Gospel writer. He was intent on tying Jesus to the Old Testament in any way he could, even in creative ways, which was quite typical for Judaism at the time. 

I believe that Matthew believed Jesus to have been of a special birth. He then brought that belief to his understanding of the Greek version of Isaiah 7:14. Matthew did not believe Jesus was born of a virgin because it is predicted in Isaiah. Matthew (aided by the Septuagint) read Isaiah in such a way as to tie the Jesus story to Israel’s tradition. 

Reading the Hebrew Bible through the Jesus lens is the very heart of how the NT uses the OT, and Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 is a great example of it. 

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