“For this reason the sovereign master himself will give you a confirming sign. Look, this young woman is about to conceive and will give birth to a son. You, young woman, will name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14, NET Bible)
In its original context, Isaiah 7:14 is a small prophecy, as small as the smallest seed, as short as toddlerhood. But from it grew one of the most famous prophecies of all time.
The Hebrew text says that “hā·‘al·māh” meaning “the young woman” will conceive. For the other six occurrences of this root word in the Hebrew scriptures, all are women and all are young, and that’s it. The word only communicates age.
But did you catch the other word? She is “the” young woman. What does that definite article “the” mean?
Isaiah is speaking to King Ahaz, presumably in court, including Ahaz’s queen, Abijah. I agree with J. Richard Middleton that most likely, Isaiah pointed at Queen Abijah and said “the young woman” will conceive. The baby would be Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, of whom we hear a lot more in 2 Kings and later in Isaiah. (Middleton’s argument can be found on his blog at https://jrichardmiddleton.com/2014/06/02/does-tom-wright-believe-in-the-second-coming/)
In Isaiah 36-37, Hezekiah is besieged by the Assryians as his father was besieged by the two nations. He learns, as his father did, that God is with him. If Hezekiah knew that before he was born, Isaiah named him “God with us,” that would be a source of strength through the siege.
This interpretation requires that Hezekiah has more than one name in some sense, but isn’t that also scriptural? After all, “To the one who is victorious, I will give … a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.” (Revelation 2:17) Many Jewish interpreters of the text also think that Immanuel was Hezekiah.
Then centuries passed while the word endured. The Hebrew text of Isaiah was translated into Greek, in Egypt during the third century BC. Greek was the language of the educated Empires, so it was also the language the New Testament authors wrote in. Therefore, even if they, like Paul, clearly knew the Hebrew text as well, they would gravitate toward the Greek.
The Greek translation was an amazing accomplishment, and like any translation between two living languages, it had to bridge gaps where words did not line up exactly. So in the Greek, the “young woman” who will conceive is the word “parthenos.” This word’s meaning had shifted, so that it gained a shade of meaning beyond “young” to mean “virginal.” It’s hard to tell when the meaning shifted, and whether the word changed by itself or was “pushed.”
In the end, we have the Hebrew text of Isaiah, the Greek text of Isaiah, and the New Testament gospels quoting the Greek text. In Hebrew, the prophecy is local and common occurrence to assure Ahaz that the siege will end. Then around 250 BC, a nameless Egyptian translator chose the word “parthenos” = “young” and/or “virgin/” Then three hundred years after that, for events under King Herod rather than King Ahaz, the Gospel writer Matthew highlighted the narrow meaning and said, “Folks, this happened!”
Matthew sees meaning in the words of Isaiah, shades of meaning that Isaiah may not have known. But God was with Matthew, inspiring Matthew as he put pen to parchment. God was with Isaiah when he pointed at the young queen. God was with that anonymous Egyptian translator writing “parthenos,” and in fact, only God knows who he (or even she?) was.
And God was with Mary on that first Christmas night, with her down to her very bones, down to the breath in her baby’s cry. God can create meaning, and with God, words can shift in meaning to become both more impossible and more true.
Remember what the whole point of the baby’s name is: Immanuel, “God is with us”! If God is truly with us, then He can take the meaning of a small prophecy, and expand its scope over centuries and through different cultures, sharpening the meanings of the words, to do something truly miraculous with them.
I can’t force you to interpret the prophecy this way, I can only present it as a choice. We have existing texts as snapshots in time and here I connect them with a story where the main actor is God. The story makes sense if and only if God is really with us. If God is both near and at work, He is bringing out new meaning from old words, and new life from the dead.
The details of how the words changed are interesting, but not essential. What is central is to ask the one real question of faith: Is God really with us or not? If He is, then His words are infused with transformed meaning. If He’s not, then it’s just an accidental and will decay like everything else in this world.
So this is not entirely beyond experiment. There’s one test of this, and it takes time, your own life applied to answering this question, is God with us or not? The Creator who is “with us” will create, sustain, and transform us, according to his purposes. And His purposes are to bring us to be with Him, however long it takes.
The things that are eternal, that are established by God, will last. They might not be obvious, they might not be pleasant, they might not even BE right now, but God “calls into being things that were not.” (Romans 4:17 NIV)
That quote from Romans 4 comes from Paul’s argument about how Abraham is the father of all the faithful, including us. Paul describes Abraham: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” (Romans 4:19-21)
If Abraham and Sarah believed that God could bring them a son in their old age, then I can believe that God could bring Mary a son in her young age without human help. Just a few verses later, Paul says “we have peace WITH GOD through the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1) The rest of Romans 5 to tells how Immanuel offers much more than we imagine.
We are indeed more than conquerors — we are “with God,” through his Son named “with-us-God,” Immanuel. When we are “with God,” all things are possible, even a virgin conceiving, even a dead man living, even a rich man like myself entering the Kingdom of God. Can this be?
(Image: The Annunciation, 1898 by Henry Ossawa Tanner, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104384)