sign of immanuel

The Sign of Immanuel : Was It About Jesus ?

In the first chap­ter of Matthew we come across the fol­low­ing text :

Now all this was done that it might be ful­filled which was spo­ken of the Lord by the prophet, say­ing : Behold, a vir­gin shall be with a child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being inter­pret­ed is, God with us.” (Matthew 1:22 – 23)

Accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian authors, the prophet stat­ing this was Isa­iah as in his book he has been quot­ed as saying :

Thus, the Lord Him­self shall give thou a sign : the vir­gin shall be with a child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.”(Isa­iah 7:14)

The authors of the New Tes­ta­ment have often quot­ed pas­sages from the Old Tes­ta­ment, claim­ing such state­ments to be prophe­cies ful­filled in the per­son of Jesus Christ. The num­ber of such quot­ed pas­sages is actu­al­ly very high. Among the evan­ge­lists, Matthew is the one hav­ing made this phe­nom­e­non char­ac­ter­is­tic to his Gospel.

The prophe­cy of Immanuel (some­times roman­ised as Emmanuel) car­ries a very impor­tant place in Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. Every Chris­t­ian knows about the prophe­cies of the books of Psalms, Isa­iah, and Daniel relat­ed to the child­hood, life, mis­sion, and death of Jesus. To every Chris­t­ian, these prophe­cies are the clear evi­dence of the truth of Gospels and mis­sion of Jesus in general.

The prob­lem is that accord­ing to the Bible, there exists true prophe­cies as well as false ones. Hence the ques­tion aris­es on the nec­es­sary cri­te­ria to dis­tin­guish a false prophe­cy from a true one.

Cri­te­ri­on For Prophecy

Some of the cri­te­ria that we shall use to exam­ine the prophe­cy” men­tioned above are as follows :

First Cri­te­ri­on

For a pas­sage to be con­sid­ered a prophe­cy, it must have the form of a prophe­cy. In gen­er­al, the prophe­cies have a char­ac­ter­is­tic intro­duc­to­ry part, dis­tin­guish­ing them from any oth­er non-prophet­ic pas­sage. The most fre­quent forms are as fol­lows : And it will come to pass that…”; And when the promise and will of the Lord comes…”; It won’t get long and…”. If one quotes as being a prophe­cy ful­filled cen­turies lat­er in Jesus the words, Amon was twen­ty two years when he began to reign and he kept his throne for two years in Jerusalem…” (2 Kings 21:19), his claim would prop­er­ly be con­sid­ered unground­ed, sim­ply because of the fact that the quot­ed pas­sage does not con­sti­tute a prophe­cy, as its form does not lead us to accept it as such.

Sec­ond Criterion

If any author quotes a pas­sage from the Old Tes­ta­ment and dur­ing its cita­tion he changes the text, there­by alien­at­ing its orig­i­nal mean­ing to adapt it to a pre­arranged aim, we would then be able to affirm that this author is not divine­ly-inspired and that the pas­sage quot­ed by him is not a prophe­cy fore­telling the per­son or the event claimed by the author.

Third Cri­te­ri­on

If the quot­ed pas­sage is inac­cu­rate­ly extrap­o­lat­ed from the con­text, gain­ing a mean­ing that dif­fers from its orig­i­nal, we would be able to affirm this to be a manip­u­la­tion accom­plished by the author and for this rea­son, the so-called prophe­cy can­not be true. Relat­ed to this mat­ter, the the­olo­gian Mike Brown in one of the sub­jects treat­ed in his work Inter­pre­ta­tion and Exe­ge­sis”, says :

The issue of Bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion is very impor­tant. Some­times it is very easy to find in the Bible a base to sup­port a spe­cial teach­ing sim­ply by tak­ing a verse out of the con­text and con­nect­ing it with anoth­er verse found some­where else in the Bible, and unit­ing both these pas­sages one can cre­ate a new doc­trine hav­ing noth­ing to do with the vers­es if they were tak­en in the appro­pri­ate con­texts. As some­one has said, it is easy to make the Bible say any­thing we want it to say.Mike Brown, in the book Përgjig­jet për Dësh­mi­tarët e Jeho­vait, Korçë 1995, p. 4 

Now let us exam­ine whether the above-men­tioned cri­te­ria have been respect­ed in the issue of the Immanuel prophecy.

Has The Immanuel Prophe­cy Been Fulfilled ?

In respect of the first cri­te­ri­on, the text applies it com­plete­ly. Who­ev­er read­ing the pas­sage of Isa­iah 7:14 will agree to be able to see a prophe­cy in it.

But the sec­ond cri­te­ri­on has not been respect­ed. As we shall notice in con­tin­u­a­tion, the evan­ge­list has changed the text of Isa­iah 7:14, adapt­ing it to his per­son­al aims. The Hebrew word, used in the pas­sage of Isa­iah, is almah, mean­ing young woman”, while the Greek trans­la­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment, known as Sep­tu­agint (LXX), offers the erro­neous term parthenos, mean­ing vir­gin”. The evan­ge­list, using the Sep­tu­agint in his quot­ing of Isa­iah, trans­lates the Hebrew word almah as vir­gin”. Thus, he gains a prophe­cy on Maria’s giv­ing birth to Jesus while being vir­gin. In fact, the word vir­gin” in the Hebrew lan­guage is bethu­lah and not almah. For this rea­son, the trans­la­tion of Sep­tu­agint is false.

Accord­ing to tra­di­tion, Matthew was knowl­edge­able in Hebrew. How­ev­er, he does not refer to the Hebrew text but instead sup­ports his claim on the Greek text, because the Hebrew does not agree with his pre-con­ceived inten­tions. In fact, the vari­a­tion of the young woman men­tioned in the Hebrew text and that of the vir­gin men­tioned in the Greek text of Sep­tu­agint and Math­ew have stim­u­lat­ed sharp exegetic debates begin­ning since the sec­ond cen­tu­ry between Justin Mar­tyr and the Hebrews of his time, until the debates pro­voked by the pub­lish­ing of the bib­li­cal trans­la­tion named RSV in the year 1952, which brought in the pas­sage of Isa­iah 7:14 the use of the word young woman”. This caused a harsh reac­tion from the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists in the Unit­ed States, where they pub­licly burned copies of this trans­la­tion, claim­ing that this work denied the vir­gin con­cep­tion of Jesus.Ray­mond E. Brown, The Birth of the Mes­si­ah, New updat­ed edi­tion, Dou­ble­day Pub­lish­er, 1993, pp. 145 – 6 

Hebrews and Chris­tians alike believed that Bib­li­cal prophets had fore­told and proph­e­sied events of a dis­tant future. Chris­tians espe­cial­ly hade made the idea that the Bib­li­cal prophets had fore­seen every­thing about the life of Jesus as an impor­tant part of their belief. An exam­ple of this is the prophe­cy of Immanuel, writ­ten almost 700 years before the birth of Jesus. But relat­ed to this, the renowned the­olo­gian Ray­mond Brown warns that this con­cep­tion of prophe­cy as a pre­dic­tion of the dis­tant future has dis­ap­peared from most seri­ous schol­ar­ship today, and it is wide­ly rec­og­nized that the NT ful­fil­ment” of the OT involved much that the OT writ­ers did not fore­see at all. The OT prophets were pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with address­ing God’s chal­lenge to their own times. If they spoke about the future, it was in broad terms of what would hap­pen if the chal­lenge was accept­ed or reject­ed. While they some­times preached a mes­sian­ic” deliv­er­ance (i.e. deliv­er­ance through one anoint­ed as God’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, thus a reign­ing king or even a priest), there is no evi­dence they fore­saw with pre­ci­sion even a sin­gle detail in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.“Ray­mond E. Brown, op. cit., p. 146 

Was It Vir­gin” Or Young Woman”?

A large num­ber of Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish the­olo­gians involved in the study of Semit­ic lan­guages have affirmed that the exact trans­la­tion of the text of Isa­iah 7:14 is not vir­gin”, but young woman”. To prove this, we shall men­tion some of their statements.

The well-known the­olo­gian Bruce Met­zger, in a Bib­li­cal com­men­tary pre­pared by him in co-author­ship with E. Mur­phy, states :

Young woman, Hebrew almah, fem­i­nine of elem, young man (1 Sam 17:56 ; 20:22); the word appears in Gen 24:43 ; Ex 2:8 ; Ps 68:25, and else­where, where is trans­lat­ed young woman,” girl,” maid­en”.The New Oxford Anno­tat­ed Bible with Apoc­rypha : New Revised Stan­dard Ver­sion, edit­ed by Bruce M. Met­zger and Roland E. Mur­phy, New York : Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1994, p. 876

Samuel David­son writes in one of his works :

Almah is not the prop­er term for the Vir­gin Mary, accord­ing to the opin­ion of those who believe in her real and true vir­gin­i­ty ; because it sim­ply means a young, mar­riage­able woman. Bethu­lah denotes a vir­gin prop­er­ly so called. Prov. XXX.19 shows that almah refers to oth­ers than vir­gins. There is no rea­son for restrict­ing it to an unmar­ried woman. Aquila, Sym­machus, and Theodotion, right­ly ren­der it nea­nis. Had the Messiah’s birth been intend­ed, sure­ly the true term for vir­gin would have been employed.An Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment, by Samuel David­son, Vol. III, 1863, p. 77 – 78 ; see also The New Jerome Bib­li­cal Com­men­tary, edit­ed by Ray­mond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmy­er and Roland E. Mur­phy, Engle­wood Cliffs, NJ : Pren­tice Hall, 1990, p. 235

Anoth­er Bib­li­cal com­men­tary on Matthew 1:23 states :

A vir­gin : Hebrew alma does not nor­mal­ly mean any­thing more than a young woman.The New Bible Com­men­tary Revised, Edit­ed by D. Guthrie, J.A. Moty­er, A.M. Stibbs, D.J. Wise­man, Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing, Michi­gan 1970, p. 818

Accord­ing to a noto­ri­ous Bib­li­cal com­men­tary, Isa­iah 7:14 must be trans­lat­ed as follows :

Behold, a [or the”] young woman shall con­ceive and [or has con­ceived and shall”] bear a son. Young woman, maid­en,” is the only cor­rect trans­la­tion of the Hebrew almah, as is rec­og­nized by Aq., Symm., and Theod., who ren­der it by nea­nis. Vir­gin is tak­en from the Greek word parthenos, found in the LXX [the Greek Old Tes­ta­ment Sep­tu­agint], although this cor­re­sponds rather to the Hebrew word bethu­lah. The quo­ta­tion in Matthew 1:23 is tak­en from the LXX, not from the Hebrew, and is one of a num­ber of such quo­ta­tions used by the author of that Gospel [Matthew] to show that the O.T.[Old Tes­ta­ment] fore­shad­owed the life of Jesus Christ. That he uses these with­out par­tic­u­lar regard to their mean­ing in their orig­i­nal con­text is clear from the quo­ta­tion of Hos. 11:1 in Matt. 2:15. This lat­er mes­sian­ic inter­pre­ta­tion” is derived from the con­vic­tion that the mes­sian­ic hope had been ful­filled in Jesus. This con­vic­tion we may firm­ly retain, while rec­og­niz­ing that the N.T.‘s use of Isa. 7:14 is based on an inac­cu­rate trans­la­tion of the Hebrew text, which must not prej­u­dice our inter­pre­ta­tion of this verse in its orig­i­nal set­ting. The word almah means a young woman of a mar­riage­able age”, pos­si­bly a vir­gin (cf. Gen. 24:43 ; Exod. 2:8 ; Prov. 30:19); if Isa­iah had wished to make clear that he had in mind a mirac­u­lous vir­gin birth, he would have had to use the spe­cif­ic term bethûlah.The Inter­preter’s Bible, Vol. 5, edit­ed by George Arthur But­trick, Nashville, NT : Abing­don, 1956, p. 218 

Ch. Guignebert, pro­fes­sor of the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sor­bonne, affirms :

Ortho­dox the­olo­gians have made every effort to prove that ha-almah might mean vir­gin, but with­out suc­cess.CH. Guignebert, Jesus, Uni­ver­si­ty Books, New York, 1956, p. 123 ; see also The Text of the Old Tes­ta­ment, Sec­ond Edi­tion, by Ernst Wurth­wein, trans­lat­ed by Erroll F. Rhodes, Grand Rapids, MI : Eerd­mans, 1995, p. 54 

Based on the above-men­tioned state­ments, we can reach the con­clu­sion that Math­ew, in his cita­tion of Isa­iah 7:14, has not been loy­al to the text in Hebrew, but has trans­formed the lat­ter to suit to his per­son­al intentions.

The exact trans­la­tion of Isa­iah 7:14 is thus the following :

Thus, the Lord Him­self shall give thou a sign : a young woman shall be with a child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.“For this trans­la­tion, see : La Bibbia:Traduzione Inter­con­fes­sion­ale in Lin­gua Cor­rente, quot­ed work, p. 468 ; Holy Bible”, Today Eng­lish Ver­sion, pub­lished by The Bible Soci­eties 1982, p. 628 ; The Jerusalem Bible” — Read­ers Edi­tion, Dou­ble­day & Com­pa­ny, Inc., Gar­den City, New York 1968, p. 981 ; La Bible”- Ancien et Nou­veau Tes­ta­ment, Alliance Biblique Uni­verselle, Paris 1991, p. 324 ; The Bible”, Revised Stan­dard Ver­sion 1947 in CD-ROM ; The Inter­preter’s Bible”, vol. 5, edit­ed by George Arthur But­trick, Nashville, TN : Abing­don, 1956, f. 218 ; S.R. Dri­ver and Charles A. Brig­gs, A Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con of the Old Tes­ta­ment, p. 261 etc.) 

As it can be clear­ly seen, the cor­rect­ly trans­lat­ed text does not men­tion any super­nat­ur­al birth by a vir­gin, while the Sep­tu­agint text seems to lead exact­ly to such a con­clu­sion. For this rea­son, the evan­ge­list prefers to fol­low the Greek trans­la­tion, skip­ping the orig­i­nal Hebrew.

But var­i­ous the­olo­gians argue that the Sep­tu­agint trans­la­tors, in spite of this erro­neous trans­la­tion, did not aim to prove the vir­gin birth of Mes­si­ah. Among them, we may men­tion Ray­mond Brown, who argues that the Sep­tu­agint trans­la­tors, by the words the vir­gin shall be with a child” under­stood an actu­al­ly vir­gin woman that, in com­plete­ly nat­ur­al ways, after the male inter­ven­tion of her legal hus­band, will give birth to Immanuel. These trans­la­tors, accord­ing to Brown, thought that the sign to be giv­en to Ahaz was not relat­ed to a woman already preg­nant dur­ing the artic­u­la­tion of this prophe­cy, but to a vir­gin woman that would give birth to Immanuel in a nor­mal way. Thus, Immanuel would be her first-born son.

Brown con­tin­ues rea­son­ing that for the Hebrew text (Masoret­ic MT) and for the Sep­tu­agint (LXX) alike, the sign giv­en by Isa­iah is not con­cen­trat­ed in the way (how) of Immanuel’s birth, but in the prov­i­den­tial tim­ing where­by a child who would be a sign of God’s pres­ence with His peo­ple was to be born pre­cise­ly when that people’s for­tunes had reached their nadir.

The fol­low­ing is an unde­ni­able truth stat­ed by Ray­mond Brown :

Nei­ther the Hebrew nor the Greek of Isa­iah 7:14 referred to the type of vir­ginal con­cep­tion of which Math­ew writes, and his Chris­t­ian use of the pas­sage has added a great deal to the lit­er­al mean­ing.Ray­mond E. Brown, op. cit., p. 149 

Thus, Matthew has trans­formed and inter­pret­ed arbi­trar­i­ly the Hebrew and the Greek text alike.

This prophe­cy does­n’t ful­fil the third cri­te­ri­on also. Matthew, as we shall see, has extrap­o­lat­ed from its con­text the pas­sage of Isa­iah 7:14 and in a forced and arbi­trary way have wished to apply it to Mary and Jesus.

Exam­in­ing The Immanuel Prophecy

Let us now exam­ine the pas­sage in brief. The Aramean King Rezin of Dam­as­cus (Syr­ia) and the king Pekah of Izrael (Ephraim : the North­ern King­dom) orga­nized a revolt against the super­pow­er of the time : Assyr­ia. The king Ahaz refused to unite with them and for this rea­son, they turned against him, invest­ed Jerusalem and tried to dethrone him and bring a vas­sal in the throne of Judah. To save him­self, King Ahaz decid­ed to ask the sup­port of the King Tiglath-Pileser of Assyr­ia. At this point, Isa­iah for­bade him to do this, because he knew quite well that after the Assyr­i­an king’s rout­ing the ene­mies of Judah, they would also reduce Judah to vas­salage. The king act­ed this way, but the dan­ger of being rout­ed by his ene­mies was still great.

All this was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the years 735 – 734 B.C., and King Ahaz with his peo­ple was very afraid. God then sent Isa­iah to ensure them that these two kings” would not bring to the end of their inva­sion. The most inter­est­ing part of this account, at least for us, comes when God wish­es to give a sign” to calm the king Ahaz. But Ahaz doesn’t wish to pro­voke God and thus he refus­es to ask for any sign by Him. God then insists on mak­ing Isa­iah say :

Thus, the Lord Him­self shall give thou a SIGN : a YOUNG WOMAN shall be with a child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat cream and hon­ey until he learns to reject the evil and to choose the good. But before the child learns to reject the evil and choose the good, the coun­try through fear because of his two kings, shall be aban­doned.” (Isa­ia 7:14 – 16

As we can clear­ly see, this prophe­cy has been ful­filled dur­ing the life of Ahaz and not cen­turies lat­er, as Math­ew wish­es to make us believe, because the giv­en sign aimed to calm the king Ahaz and his peo­ple by their fear­ing of their ene­mies. After God said to Ahaz to ask for a sign show­ing that He was with him and his peo­ple and after the king’s refus­ing to pro­voke God, then God Him­self took the ini­tia­tive and promised to Ahaz the birth of Immanuel. Before this child reached his matu­ri­ty, the kings ter­ror­is­ing the peo­ple of Ahaz would get ruined. And the kings fear­ing Ahaz were rout­ed many cen­turies before the birth of Jesus. 

The infor­ma­tion that this child would be fed with cream and hon­ey until learn­ing to reject the evil and pre­fer the good, is anoth­er ele­ment iden­ti­fy­ing this child with the sit­u­a­tion that Judah was actu­al­ly under­go­ing ; cream and hon­ey instead of the com­mon food of an agri­cul­tur­al pop­u­la­tion formed the sub­sis­tence of the peo­ple whose land was waste. Such human forms put the child in the peri­od when this prophe­cy was ful­filled. Applied to the Mes­si­ah, it is super­flu­ous and unsuit­able.“Samuel David­son, An Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment, Vol. III, 1863, p. 78

This means that the prophe­cy was ful­filled many times before the birth of Jesus.See 2 Kings 15 : 27 – 29 ; 16 : 1 et pas­sim ; 2 Chron­i­cles 28:1 et pas­sim). Thus, there is no place in this prophe­cy for Jesus and his revered mother.

CH. Guignebert affirms that :

The pre­dic­tion has a much more imme­di­ate bear­ing, and it is pre­cise­ly for the pur­pose of indi­cat­ing its speedy ful­fil­ment that the author makes his com­par­i­son. It is required only the time nec­es­sary for a child to be con­ceived, born, and brought to the begin­ning of under­stand­ing before Jahveh will crush the ene­mies of Judah. It is not the birth of the child which is empha­sized by the prophet, but the hap­py issue for which the king is wait­ing, and of which he may now, rely­ing upon the com­par­i­son giv­en him, con­fi­dent­ly-esti­mate the approach­ing date. The child in ques­tion is prob­a­bly the same one referred to again by Isa­iah in VIII.3 : Then I went in unto the prophet­ess, and she con­ceived and bare a son.”Jesus” CH. Guignebert, Uni­ver­si­ty Books, New York, 1956, p. 123

Anoth­er real­i­ty clear­ly demon­strat­ing that the inhab­i­tants of Israel of the time expect­ed this prophe­cy to be ful­filled soon, dur­ing the peri­od of trou­bles, is relat­ed to the fact that many women of that time named their chil­dren Immanuel.J.D. Dou­glas & Mer­rill C. Ten­ney, NIV Com­pact Dic­tio­nary of the Bible, Zon­der­van Pub­lish­er 1989, p. 268 And of course none of them had giv­en birth to her child in a state of vir­gin­i­ty and with­out any male intervention.

Samuel David­son states :

A prophe­cy of Christ’s birth sev­en hun­dred years after­wards, could have been no sign of the promise made to Ahaz. That promise was one of encour­age­ment. It announced the speedy deliv­er­ance of Judah from her ene­mies. The con­fi­dence of Ahaz and his peo­ple depend­ed on the sign or pledge. Hence it must have been some­thing imme­di­ate, pre­ced­ing the event or thing sig­ni­fied. Or, if it fol­lowed the deliv­er­ance or event itself, which formed the sub­ject of the promise, it could not have ful­filled its pur­pose as a sign, unless it hap­pened not long after, cer­tain­ly in the time of the per­son to whom it was giv­en. The promise of imme­di­ate deliv­er­ance to Ahaz might thus be con­firmed by an appeal to a pos­te­ri­or event, but not to one long pos­te­ri­or as Alexan­der affirms. Sign to be ver­i­fied by future events were giv­en, as we know from Ex. Iii. 12 and Is. XXXVII.30 ; but there is a dis­sim­i­lar­i­ty in them and the present case. They hap­pened very soon, and so the signs were ver­i­fied to Moses and Hezeki­ah respec­tive­ly ‑the per­sons for whom they were intend­ed. But here, the sign was not ver­i­fied till cen­turies after Ahaz and his con­tem­po­raries. It was, there­fore, no sign, in real­i­ty, to the per­son to whom it was giv­en. The remote­ness of the sign divests it of its use as such ; for it is absurd to say, with Alexan­der, that it was bet­ter in pro­por­tion to its dis­tance. How could it be good or bet­ter to Ahaz, long after he was dead ? The dan­ger from which he feared destruc­tion, was impend­ing, and he need­ed some­thing to meet it imme­di­ate­ly.An Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment, by Samuel David­son, Vol III, 1863, p. 77 ; see also The Inter­preter’s Bible, Vol. 5, edit­ed by George Arthur But­trick, Nashville, NT : Abing­don, 1956, p. 218 – 19 

Being faced with such impass­able dif­fi­cul­ties, some Chris­t­ian the­olo­gians have tried to save at any cost this prophe­cy, con­jec­tur­ing absurd­ly and arbi­trar­i­ly that it has a dou­ble ful­fil­ment. The first ful­fil­ment occurred with­in the peri­od of Ahaz, as men­tioned above, and the sec­ond hap­pened in the time of Jesus, with his mirac­u­lous birth.See : Tyn­dale New Tes­ta­ment Com­men­taries, Matthew R.T. France, Inter­var­si­ty Press 1990, p. 78 – 80 ; Arno C. Gae­belein, The Gospel of Matthew, Loizeaux Brto­hers, 1982, p. 36 ; The Mac Arthur New Tes­ta­ment Com­men­tary, Matthew 1 – 7, 1985, p. 20 ; The New Bible Com­men­tary Revised, edit­ed by D. Guthrie, J.A. Moty­er, A.M. Stibbs, D.J. Wise­man, Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing, Michi­gan 1970, p. 596 ; La Bib­bia di Gerusalemme, Edi­zioni Deho­ni­ane Bologna, 2002, p. 1566

Samuel David­son, com­ment­ing on this hypoth­e­sis, says :

The hypoth­e­sis of a dou­ble sense should be very cau­tious­ly assumed, if assumed at all. It is one that is still sub judice. The best inter­preters are against its admis­sion as unau­tho­rized, or con­trary to the true prin­ci­ples of gram­mat­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion. And we are now inclined to agree with them, per­ceiv­ing the pecu­liar the­o­ry of inspi­ra­tion out of which it has arisen to be unfound­ed. One sense alone seems to have been intend­ed by the sacred writ­ers, though their words may admit of many appli­ca­tions. We refuse assent there­fore to this inter­pre­ta­tion of the verse because its basis is pre­car­i­ous.An Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment, by Samuel David­son, Vol. III, 1863, p. 79 

We will not dwell on analysing such an absurd the­o­ry cre­at­ed by des­per­ate apol­o­gists, but we will men­tion the affir­ma­tion of a well-known Bib­li­cal dic­tio­nary, where is stat­ed as follows :

In Mt. 1:23, Is. 7:14 is quot­ed as a fore­shad­ow­ing of the vir­gin birth of Jesus. The ques­tion has been raised whether this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Immanuel with Jesus was in the mind of Isa­iah him­self, or made by the evan­ge­list either erro­neous­ly, or by way of appro­pri­at­ing the words of an ancient ora­cle as suit­able to his pur­pose, but not with the inten­tion of com­mit­ting their orig­i­nal author to his inter­pre­ta­tion of them. The dif­fi­cul­ties in the way of tak­ing it to be the pri­ma­ry inten­tion of Isa­iah to fore­tell the vir­gin birth of Jesus are insep­a­ra­ble. The mean­ing of his phrase­ol­o­gy is so pal­pa­bly ful­filled in the cir­cum­stances of his own day that as remote a ref­er­ence as this to the birth of Jesus seems exeget­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble. On the oth­er hand, all inter­pre­ta­tions, which find in the ref­er­ence to Immanuel a dou­ble sense i.e. a first inten­tion to speak of a child that might be borne in his own days and sec­ondary one to pre­dict the vir­gin birth of Jesus, are arti­fi­cial and arbi­trary. They have the appear­ance of inge­nious devices to escape a dif­fi­cul­ty rather than nat­ur­al expla­na­tions of the fact of the case.New Stan­dard Bible Dic­tio­nary, Funk and Wag­nalls Com­pa­ny, INC, New York 1936. p. 368 

This may lead to the fol­low­ing ques­tion : if the child that would be called Immanuel was not Jesus, then who was he ? 

Who Was The Real Immanuel ?

On this issue, the Chris­t­ian the­olo­gians have offered var­i­ous answers. We shall men­tion some of them here.

Who, than, was the maid­en referred to ? The maid­en” may be general-“a cer­tain maiden”-but since the sign would have to be one which would come to the atten­tion of Ahaz, either this means that young women will be bear­ing chil­dren and call­ing them Immanuel”, or it refers to a young women well known to both king and prophet, the wife of either (per­haps a new wife of Ahaz, since the LXX, Aq., Symm., and Theod. read here thou shalt call his name”)The Inter­preter’s Bible, Vol. 5, edit­ed by George Arthur But­trick, Nashville, NT : Abing­don, 1956, p. 218 – 19 

An Ital­ian trans­la­tion of the Bible con­tain­ing many com­men­taries, the result of a work of more than 90 experts in var­i­ous Bib­li­cal fields, answers this ques­tion as follows :

A young woman : the Hebrew word trans­lat­ed this way means a woman hav­ing reached the age of mar­riage ; most prob­a­bly the ques­tion is relat­ed to the young woman of Ahaz, the moth­er of the future king Hezchia.La Bib­bia : Traduzione Inter­con­fes­sion­ale in Lin­gua Cor­rente, Tori­no 1986, p. 468 

This is also affirmed by one of the most famous Catholic Bib­li­cal com­men­taries in the world, that is relat­ed to the iden­ti­ty of the woman giv­ing birth to Immanuel relates in the page 235 :

This is best under­stood as a wife of Ahaz ; the child promised will guar­an­tee the dynasty’s future (note again the house of David” in v 13 ; cf. v 2) and for this rea­son can be called Immanuel (“with us is God”).The New Jerome Bib­li­cal Com­men­tary, edit­ed by Ray­mond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmy­er, and Roland E. Mur­phy, Engle­wood Cliffs, NJ : Pren­tice Hall, 1990, p. 235 

Anoth­er renowned Bib­li­cal com­men­tary states :

In the con­test of the quo­ta­tion in Isa­iah (Is. 7:10 – 17), it seems that the woman referred to may have been a wife of King Ahaz. Lxx trans­lat­ed the word by the Greek parthenos (‘vir­gin’) for rea­sons which are uncer­tain. There was no expec­ta­tion of a vir­gin birth in Israel, and it is clear that for Matthew the fact leads on to the prophe­cy rather than vice ver­sa.The New Bible Com­men­tary Revised, edit­ed by D. Guthrie, J.A. Moty­er, A.M. Stibbs, D.J. Wise­man, Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing, Michi­gan 1970, p. 818 ; despite the above-men­tioned state­ment, the dog­ma­tism of the authors of this work doesn’t allow them to accept the non-ful­fil­ment of this prophe­cy. Here­inafter, in a strange way, they seem to affirm the the­o­ry of the dou­ble sense of this prophe­cy. For the rejec­tion of this absurd the­o­ry, see the quo­ta­tions no. 16 – 17

We con­clude this pas­sage by quot­ing Ray­mond Brown, who has sum­marised the inter­pre­ta­tions of mod­ern the­olo­gians relat­ed to the text of Isa­iah in the fol­low­ing points :

  1. It was to the wicked King Ahaz (c.a. 735 – 715 B.C.) that Isa­iah spoke of the ora­cle as men­tioned in 7:14. It was intend­ed as a sign to this dis­be­liev­ing monarch dur­ing the Syro-Ephraimite war of 734 and must refer to some­thing that took place dur­ing that year or short­ly thereafter.
  2. The child to be born was not the Mes­si­ah, for mes­sian­ism had not yet devel­oped to the point of expect­ing a sin­gle future king (foot­note 9, §3). Schol­ars are not agreed on the iden­ti­ty of the child, but at most, it may refer to the birth of a Davidic prince who would deliv­er Judah from its ene­mies. An ancient Jew­ish inter­pre­ta­tion, known to Justin (Dia­logue Lxvii 1) iden­ti­fied the child as Hezeki­ah, Ahaz’s son and suc­ces­sor, one of the few tru­ly reli­gious mon­archs of the House of David.
  3. The word almâ, used to describe the woman, nor­mal­ly describes a young girl who has reached the age of puber­ty and it is thus mar­riage­able. It puts no stress on her vir­gin­i­ty, although de fac­to, in the light of Israelite eth­i­cal and social stan­dards, most girls cov­ered by the range of this term would be vir­gins.Ray­mond Brown, at this point, has put a foot­note stating :

See Bratch­er, Study”, for an accu­rate sum­ma­ry of the immense lit­er­a­ture on this ques­tion. Almâ is used only nine times in the Hebrew OT, and two pas­sages demon­strate how poor­ly it would under­line vir­gin­i­ty : In Cant 6:8 it refers to a woman of the king’s harem, and in Prov. 30:19 an almâ is an object of a young man’s sex­u­al atten­tion. We have no clear instance in the OT of almâ being applied to a woman already mar­ried so that Mar­tin Luther could still win the bet of 100 florins he was will­ing to make on that point. How­ev­er, there is a Ugarit­ic text (Keret 128, II, 21 – 22) that puts the cog­nate word ġlmt in poet­ic par­al­lelism (and thus rough equiv­a­lence) with att, wife. The close­ness of the two lan­guages rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that in the Hebrew as well, a young wife might be called an almâ. Although it does not have the clin­i­cal pre­ci­sion of vir­go intac­ta, the Hebrew word betûla is the nor­mal word for a vir­gin (Ezek. 23:1 – 8 and Joel 1:8 are debat­able). The ref­er­ence to a betûla giv­ing birth in the Hymn to Nikkal” (Ugarit­ic text 77, line 5) is now gen­er­al­ly dis­count­ed as an incor­rect read­ing, although line 7 still has the inter­est­ing : (“Behold, the alma will give birth to a son”).

For sim­i­lar state­ments see also CH. Guignebert, Jesus, Uni­ver­si­ty Books, New York, 1956 ; p. 123.)
4. The pres­ence of the def­i­nite arti­cle, the young girl”, makes it like­ly that Isa­iah was refer­ring to some­one def­i­nite whose iden­ti­ty was known to him and to King Ahaz, per­haps some­one whom the king had recent­ly mar­ried and brought into the harem. The pro­pos­al that the almâ was Isaiah’s own wife, the prophet­ess” men­tioned in 8:3, is most unlike­ly ; for the fact that she had already borne Isa­iah a son old enough to walk with him (7:3) makes such a des­ig­na­tion for her implausible.
5. From the Hebrew par­tici­ple con­struc­tion, it is not pos­si­ble to know whether Isa­iah meant that the almâ was already preg­nant or would become preg­nant. The birth, how­ev­er, was almost cer­tain­ly future ; yet even in that judg­ment, we are ham­pered by the tem­po­ral vague­ness of the Hebrew conjugations.

Ray­mond Brown, con­clud­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the above-men­tioned points, wrote :

The Masoret­ic Text (MT) of Isa.7:14 does not refer to a vir­ginal con­cep­tion in dis­tant future. The sign offered by the prophet was the immi­nent birth of a child, prob­a­bly Davidic, but nat­u­ral­ly con­ceived, who would illus­trate God’s prov­i­den­tial care for his peo­ple. The child would help to pre­serve the House of Davidic and would thus sig­ni­fy that God was still with us.Ray­mond E. Brown, op. cit., pp. 147 – 8 

Con­clu­sions

We can state with cer­tain­ty that the text of Isa­iah does not con­tain any prophe­cy of a vir­gin birth to be ful­filled cen­turies lat­er. Matthew, tak­ing arbi­trar­i­ly and in a forced way the pas­sage of Isa­iah out of its true con­text, has mis­used it try­ing to gain a prophe­cy on Mary’s giv­ing mirac­u­lous­ly birth to Jesus. Our analy­sis is aimed at show­ing the dis­hon­est meth­ods used by the evan­ge­list and we believe that we have reached our goal.

What for­bids then to the Chris­t­ian the­olo­gians and sim­ple pro­fes­sors of Chris­tian­i­ty to accept such a real­i­ty ? What hin­ders them from accept­ing such clear truth ? In nor­mal cir­cum­stances, the only fac­tor hin­der­ing this is dog­ma­tism. The phe­nom­e­non of dog­ma­tism does not allow one to look at the facts clear­ly, it blinds the eyes and hard­ens the hearts. After all what we have shown above, look how ridicu­lous their claims now sound in a Protes­tant Bib­li­cal commentary :

It is clear, how­ev­er, that in the judge­ment of most exegetes the trans­la­tion giv­en in the KJV is inex­act, and has been made the basis for views which the Hebrew text can­not sup­port. Mod­ern crit­i­cism may protest against the use of this verse in sup­port of the doc­trine of the Vir­gin Birth ; it may deny that this is a prophe­cy of the Mes­si­ah : but noth­ing can dis­so­ci­ate it in the minds of devout believ­ers from the birth of our Lord, and the beau­ti­ful and beloved name Immanuel is for­ev­er the title of Jesus Christ to his dis­ci­ples.The Inter­preter’s Bible, Vol. 5, edit­ed by George Arthur But­trick, Nashville, NT : Abing­don, 1956, p. 218

And only God knows best ! The Sign of Immanuel: Was It About Jesus? 1

The author is the direc­tor of Eras­mus”, Cen­tre for Stud­ies on Com­par­a­tive Reli­gion, Albania.Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Rezart Beka, The Sign of Immanuel : Was It About Jesus ?,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, March 5, 2007, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​b​i​b​l​e​/​i​m​m​a​n​u​e​l​-​g​o​d​-​w​i​t​h​-​us/

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6 responses to “The Sign of Immanuel : Was It About Jesus ?”

  1. Seidu Yakub Avatar
    Seidu Yakub

    sim­ple ques­tion were in the life of Jesus was his fol­lows or the Dis­ci­ples call him by the name Emmanuel not even once in his life­time. so if the prophe­cy was about him then what about the prophe­cy made that hes shall be call Jesus Christ when the angle vis­it­ed her moth­er Mary. every prophe­cy must be ful­filled so as he was on the earth no one ever call him Emmanuel. Com­mon sense.

  2. ibodi Avatar
    ibodi

    Oh, sor­ry, I am an idiot.

  3. ibodi Avatar
    ibodi

    Adding com­ments does­n’t work. You are a bunch of deceivers !

  4. ibodi Avatar
    ibodi

    There is a lot of work put into the arti­cle, but I’ve stopped on the 2nd cri­teri­um and made a con­clu­sion that the arti­cle is a piece of dung.
    >we would then be able to affirm that this author is not divinely-inspired
    Why ? The cita­tion is almost exact­ly the same. It con­tains the full mean­ing of the orig­i­nal text.

  5. rob Avatar
    rob

    shamoun, if you try to refute this then try to help your broth­er praxeus who is get­ting blast­ed over at http://​www​.iidb​.org/​v​b​b​/​s​h​o​w​t​h​r​e​a​d​.​p​h​p​?​t​=​196002&​p​a​g​e=8

  6. heman Avatar
    heman

    …known as Sep­tu­agint (LXX), offers the erro­neous term parthenos, mean­ing vir­gin”.

    mean­ing of vir­gin” for matthew but partheonos does not have strong can­o­ta­tion for vir­gin­i­ty”. Chris­t­ian Greek trans­la­tions of the Jew­ish Bible use parthenos” for Dinah after she was raped.

    parthenos , Lacon. parsenos Ar.Lys.1263 (lyr.). hê,

    A. maid­en, girl, Il.22.127, etc. ; hai ath­li­ai p. emai my unhap­py girls, S.OT1462, cf. Ar.Eq.1302 ; also gunê parthenos Hes. Th.514 ; p. kora, of the Sphinx, dub. in E.Ph.1730 (lyr.); thugatêr p. X.Cyr.4.6.9 ; of Perse­phone, E. Hel.1342 (lyr.), cf. S.Fr.804 ; vir­gin, opp. gunê, Id.Tr.148, Theoc.27.65.

    2. of unmar­ried women who are not vir­gins, Il.2.514, Pi.P.3.34, S.Tr.1219, Ar.Nu.530.

    3. Parthenos, hê, the Vir­gin God­dess, as a title of Athena at Athens, Paus.5.11.10, 10.34.8 (hence of an Att. coin bear­ing her head, E.Fr.675); of Artemis, E.Hipp.17 ; of the Tau­ric Iphi­ge­nia, Hdt.4.103 ; of an unnamed god­dess, SIG46.3 (Hal­ic., v B.C.), IG12.108.48,54 (Neapo­lis in Thrace); hai hierai p., of the Vestal Vir­gins, D.H.1.69, Plu.2.89e, etc. ; hai Hes­ti­ades p. Id.Cic.19 ; sim­ply, hai p. D.H.2.66.

    4. the con­stel­la­tion Vir­go, Eudox. ap. Hip­parch. 1.2.5, Arat.97, etc.

    5. = korê 111, pupil, X.ap.Longin.4.4, Aret. SD1.7.

    II. as Adj., maid­en, chaste, parthenon psuchên echôn E.Hipp. 1006 , cf. Porph. Marc.33 ; mitrê p. Epigr.Gr.319 : metaph., p. pêgê A.Pers.613 .

    III. as masc., parthenos, ho, unmar­ried man, Apoc.14.4.

    IV. p. gê Sami­an earth (cf. parthe­nios 111 ), PMag.Berol.2.57.”

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