Isaiah 7:14 - Virgin or Young Woman? (5/14/21)

Among the verses we will discuss at the second session, on 5/16, is Isaiah 7:14.  The known key “facts” are as follows:  (1) The biblical Hebrew for the verse refers to a “young woman” meaning just that, young woman, without necessarily being a virgin; (2) in translating Isaiah 7:14 into Greek for the Septuagint, the translator(s) used the Greek word Parthenos which did mean virgin; and (3) the Christian tradition took their “Old Testament” from translations influenced by the Septuagint. Hence, Matthew and Luke anchor their narratives in a virgin birth prophesied by Isaiah.

Isaiah 7:14 (NRSV) says (emphasis supplied): 

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

[a] Isaiah 7:14 Gk the virgin

Isaiah 7:14 (KJV) says (emphasis supplied):

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The NRSV has gone back to the best translation of the Biblical Hebrew. 

Kugel (pp. 539-552) addresses this verse as follows after translating the Biblical Hebrew verse as follows (emphasis supplied):

Suppose a certain young woman gets pregnant and gives birth to a son; she should give him the name “God-amidst-us” [Hebrew: ‘Immanu-’el].

* * * * 

Immanuel 

The exact identity and nature of the “certain young woman” who gets pregnant in Isaiah’s above-cited oracle is somewhat controversial: was she a real person, or merely hypothetical? * * * * The next word, ha-‘almah, translated as “a certain young woman,” might also be rendered simply as “the young woman.” Some scholars have in fact suggested that the definite article here implies a known individual—perhaps Ahaz’s own wife, or Isaiah’s. * * * * However, biblical Hebrew sometimes also uses definite articles and even demonstratives in an indefinite sense, in the same way that an English speaker might say, “This guy came up to me and started talking French,” where “this guy” really means “an undefined person, someone I never met before.” Considering this ambiguity, “a certain young woman” seems to preserve better the vagueness of the Hebrew: she might be known or might not be. As for “young woman,” that is how ‘almah is usually translated nowadays; the word does not necessarily tell us whether she is married or not.

It is interesting, however, that when the Bible was translated into Greek, starting in the third century BCE, Isaiah’s “young woman” was translated as parthenos, which probably did mean “virgin” to the translators. (It seems unlikely, however, that in so translating they meant to imply an actual parthenogenesis or virgin birth; more likely, they simply meant that a virgin would get married, become pregnant in the usual way, and then give birth.) Since, at least in Greek, the Bible now specified that the young woman was a virgin, this verse was cited by the Gospel of Matthew in connection with its account of the virgin birth of Jesus:

When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had decided to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son, and he named him Jesus. 

     Matt. 1:18–25

The name to be given to this child thus came to acquire a new meaning: “God-amidst-us” referred not to God’s presence in the Jerusalem temple, but to God’s presence in the midst of Israel in the person of Jesus. Once again, the Old Testament seemed to early Christians to have predicted the events of the New. For that reason, the precise meaning of Isaiah’s words apparently became a much-discussed item in the early debates between Jews and Christians: 

Also the words “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son” were spoken in advance of him [Jesus] . . . But you [Justin’s Jewish interlocutor Trypho] dare to pervert the translations which your own elders [the translators of the Septuagint] made at the court of King Ptolemy of Egypt and say that the text does not have the meaning as they translated it but “Behold, the young woman shall conceive”—as if something of importance were being signified by a young woman giving birth after human intercourse, which all young women do, save for the infertile, and even these God can, if He will, cause to give birth. 

    Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 84