Virgin Birth

"Therefore my L-rd Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the maiden will become pregnant and bear a son, and she will name him Immanuel."

This passage is the first of many used by the Gospel of Matthew to indicate that the Nazarene was predicted in the T'nakh. Accordingly it is the first one that is run across when reading the Christian Bible cover to cover. This prominent position and the importance of the Virgin Birth in Christian theology probably led to this "prophecy" being one of the better known ones applied to the Nazarene. It is also one that Christians go to great lengths to defend as Messianic, with many different approaches taken by different missionaries to resolve the difficulties of such an interpretation. The most significant thing to know in this discussion is that the word generally translated as virgin, “almah”, does not mean virgin. I don't wish to elaborate on that point at this time, but we will. This argument is well known and Christians have several standard responses, which we will also explore latter. So the first thing I wish to do is show what the passage does mean, and then deal with what it doesn’t. In doing so we will see that regardless of the actual meaning of the word rendered as "virgin", that the passage is not Messianic nor does it refer to the Nazarene. With that, let’s look at the passage in context. After we understand the passage in its context we will be better suited to explore the true meaning of "almah" and it’s proper translation:

When Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah King of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem, but they could not overpower it. Now the house of David was told, ‘Aram has allied itself with Ephraim’; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken ...Then Isaiah said, ‘Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my G-d also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The ["virgin"] will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid to waste.’" Isaiah 7:1-2,13-16. (NIV)

One may recall that after Shlomo (Solomon) passed away the nation of Israel split into two kingdoms. The southern kingdom was ruled by the House of David and was know as Judah (Yehudah). The capital of Yehudah was Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) and Achaz ben Yosam (Ahaz son of Jotham) was the king. The northern kingdom was known as Israel (Yisrael) and/or Ephraim. The capital of the northern kingdom Yisrael was Shomron (Samaria) and Pekach ben Remaleyahu (Pekah son of Remaliah) was its king. Chapter 7 opens with an alliance made between Aram and Israel to attack Judah. Hashem proceeds to tell the king of Judah that a child will be born as a symbol that the alliance would not be successful. To find out whom the child in the passage refers to one need only turn the page to Isaiah chapter eight.

A comparison of the two reveals the obvious intent of chapter seven is the child mentioned in chapter eight (the numbers identify the root word identified in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, a popular Bible reference among Christians). Chapter 7 verse 14 reads "The maiden will become pregnant (2030) and bear a son (3205), and she will name him Immanuel." While chapter 8 verse 3 is "I approached the prophetess, and she conceived (2030) and bore (3205) a son." Notice that 8:3 uses the same language to describe the birth of Isaiah's son as was used in 7:14, one describing future action and the other describing completed action.

In 7:16, "For before the child knows to abhor evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you fear will be abandoned." The two kings they feared being King Pekah and Rezin of Israel and Aram (see 7:1, 2). Then compare 8:4, "For before the child knows how to say ‘My father’ and ‘My mother’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be carried off before the king of Assyria.” Damascus was the capital of Aram, and we mentioned earlier that Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom, Israel. In 8:4 we see that before Isaiah’s son would mature that Aram and Israel would be fall, just as was said concerning the child of 7:14 in slightly different language, but with the same meaning. 7:14 "and she will name him Immanuel." Then 8 "and its wingspan will be the full breadth of your land, O Immanuel." These two verses are the only two verses in T’nakh which use this contraction.

The child foretold in 7:14 is none other than Isaiah's own son born in the next chapter. The NIV Study Bible concedes that the subject of Isaiah 7 is the son born to Isaiah in chapter 8. So too the very conservative Dake’s Annotated Study Bible (page 505 column 4) sees these verses as referring to Isaiah's son, with the exception of verse 14 which he rips it from the surrounding context and says refers exclusively to the Nazarene (full disclosure requires that I note that while Dake is extremely conservative and might represent the extremity of the Christian point of view, he is not considered normative by other Christians for good reason). This despite the fact we have shown that the exact same language used in verse 14 is used in reference to the conception of Isaiah's son.

And of course this opinion is prominent among those held by the Jewish sages such as Rashi who understands Isaiah 7:14 as referring to Isaiah's son born in chapter 8. The context is clear and Christians who wish to maintain a legitimate interpretive methodology accept this explanation and seek alternative ways of applying it to the Nazarene.

Almah, Virgin or Young Woman?

Now, as we mentioned before, the passage does not say virgin. The Hebrew word for virgin is besulah; the word here is almah which means young woman, or “maiden”. To this point there are a whole host of objections, so I apologize if I stumble in my attempt to systematically respond. One objection, which I surprisingly have not seen, is that there is a comment by Rashi that seemingly equates the two terms. While Messianic Christians often find Jewish literature an exciting and new frontier for evidence of their claims, the truth is that this has been done for centuries, and more often than not these sources are recycled from earlier Christian works. With as much time and effort that has been put into such research, the prominence of Rashi, and the infrequency of the term almah I am actually quite amazed that I have never seen this Rashi mentioned. Commenting on Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) 1:3, Rashi explains “maidens (almaos) as “virgins” (besulos). What then, shall we make of the objection that almah doesn’t mean virgin?

But what if the term almah meant virgin? It would not imply a virgin birth. Justin Martyr, one of the earliest Christian apologists, argued “This, then, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive,” signifies that a virgin should conceive without intercourse. For if she had had intercourse with any one whatever, she was no longer a virgin” (First Apology, chapter 33, www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.xxxiii.html). This assertion is in error. Scripture states, “while the barren women bears seven” (1 Sam. 2:5), following Justin Martyr’s reasoning she is still barren even though she has borne children! Rather, virginity, if that is what almah had meant, would simply refer to her status at the time of the prophecy.

Hobart E. Freeman challenges, "Furthermore, it is not true that almah can sometimes designate a married woman. In not one single instance either in the Scriptures or in extrabiblical literature is there any support to the critical claim that almah is used of a married woman. On the contrary, the presumption was that every almah was, by implication, a virgin and unmarried." An Introduction to Old Testament Prophets, Page 208. So too, Hal Lindsey writes, "The term almah may sometimes mean a young maiden but it always means an unmarried young girl. About this Martin Luther said, ‘If a Jew or Christian can prove to me that in any passage of scripture almah mean a married woman, I will give him a hundred florins.’” (The Promise, page 66).

While we will return to the aforementioned Rashi, this claim has no basis in fact. First of all, there is nothing to suggest the word refers to an unmarried woman other than the fact that young women are more frequently unmarried. The word usually and best translated as virgin in Hebrew is בתולה besulah (alternatively betulah and bethulah), and this would be used to unequivocally identify a woman as a virgin. Almah (עלמה) has no such clear meaning. It is interesting to note, that both Jews and Christians have translated this passage into Aramaic which is closely related to Hebrew. In the Targum, the Jewish translation the word is rendered by the Aramaic cognate for almah (עולמתא). In contrast the Peshitta, the Aramaic Christian Bible, in Matthew quote of this verse uses the Aramaic cognate for the Hebrew besulah (בתולתא), not Almah! Apparently these early Semitic language speaking Christians recognized that the Aramaic for besulah was a better indicator of virginity than the Aramaic for almah.

For a table of Syriac/Aramaic letters see Wikipedia.

Secondly, the word is used rather infrequently in the T'nakh. I seem to recall a “Jews for Jesus” pamphlet that said it was used seven times. And none of the other passages use it in such a way that demands that it means "virgin" as opposed to young woman. Not only would it be an argument from silence to say that all instances in the T’nakh refer to an unmarried woman so the word can only refer to an unmarried woman, it is an argument from silence based on a very few number of usages. And though we have only a few verses to derive the meaning from context, when we read Proverbs 30 we see a clear example of an almah being a married woman. In verses 18-33 the author gives four groups of four things that have something in common. The first example is;

There are three that are beyond me and a fourth that I do not know; the way of an eagle in the heavens; the way of a snake upon a rock; the way of a ship in the heart of the sea; and the way of a man with a young woman (almah). Such is the way of the adulterous woman: She wipes her mouth and says, ‘I have done no wrong.’

We have a list of four things that leave no evidence of having occurred. After listing the fourth, a man with an almah, the author proceeds to elaborate calling an adulterous and that she wipes her mouth and denied anything happened. One might suggest the author is giving another example in verse 20, separate from the way of a man with an almah but that would make five examples rather than the four mentioned by the author. Or one may suggest that this verse is completely unrelated, but then it would be out of place in this passage, which mentions groups of similar things. Such a suggestion also ignores the fact that the verse shares the characteristic of the preceding examples. And some have objected to identifying the subject of this verse with intercourse as being a result of our contemporary fixation on the topic in society which is rather absurd when the very next verse speaks about adultery.

This is all of secondary importance, since among the seven times T’nakh uses almah, once is in Isaiah 7:14, our text in question, and we have shown that in context it clearly refers to Isaiah's wife, so it certainly does refer to a married woman. Although I am not sure how much a hundred florins are worth… Unable to establish that the Hebrew word means virgin, apologists try to base their interpretation on a translation. The will argue that 70 Jewish Rabbi’s translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and they translated the word almah as parthenos, which means virgin. The first problem is that the tradition that Seventy Jewish Rabbi’s translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek only applies to the first five books, the Torah (never mind the incongruity of citing Jewish tradition by those who deride and scoff at unless it serves their purpose and then they treat it as if it were from the most reliable source in the world). The rest of the Hebrew Bible was translated at different times by different people. The next problem is that it must be pointed out that extant copies of the Hebrew Bible into Greek do not accurately reflect the pre-Christian translations for Greek speaking Jews, so it is not at all certain that the term parthenos was used at all, much less by 70 Jewish Sages. Furthermore, even if we assume that in the time between such translations were made and the time which the Christian Scriptures were written, the term parthenos did not undergo a change in meaning or implications, it is not at all certain that the translator considered the full nuance of the term when choosing it, rather than utilizing the first seemingly appropriate term which came to mind. It is a dangerous thing to try to read the minds of people who lived centuries earlier and you know next to nothing about.

Another line of objection goes that since the child is to be called Immanuel, which literally means “G-d is with us”, then the child can’t be a normal child (see Freeman, page 205, see also John Calvin on Isaiah 7:14). The assumption here seems to be that the statement of “G-d is with us” is due to the fact that this child is born. However if you recall this message of this passage is that Judah will be safe from the alliance of Aram and Israel. G-d is with Judah because He is protecting them from their enemies, “Plan a conspiracy and it shall be annulled; speak your piece and it shall not stand, for G-d is with us.” (Isaiah 8:10). One must wonder why the name Immanu-el (G-d is with us) is seen as any more an indicator of divinity than Sh’mu-el (His name is G-d) or any of the other many Hebrew names with references to G-d in them?

Then you have the objection that a non-virgin birth in not miraculous. The child was a sign, an אוֹת. “Unless almah be translated with the implication of virgin there is no announcement worthy of being constituted as a sign of the birth of Immanuel, who was to be called Mighty [G-d].” (An Introduction to Old Testament Prophets, Hobart E. Freeman, Page 208, see also The Promise, Hal Lindsey page 66.) Or in the words of John Calvin:

Though we should admit what they say, that עלמה (gnalmah) sometimes denotes a young woman, and that the name refers, as they would have it, to the age, (yet it is frequently used in Scripture when the subject relates to a virgin,) the nature of the case sufficiently refutes all their slanders. For what wonderful thing did the Prophet say, if he spoke of a young woman who conceived through intercourse with a man? It would certainly have been absurd to hold out this as a sign or a miracle. (John Calvin on Isaiah 7:14, ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom13.xiv.i.html).

Yet Calvin himself had just noted that:

Now, there are two kinds of signs; for some are extraordinary, and may be called supernatural; such as that which the Prophet will immediately add, and that which, we shall afterwards see, was offered to Hezekiah. (Isaiah 38:7.) Some are ordinary, and in daily use among believers, such as Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which contain no miracle, or at least may be perceived by the eye or by some of the senses. (John Calvin on Isaiah 7:12, ibid).

Another approach utilized is to argue since the Bible condemns an unmarried, non-virgin, to death, then the almah had to be a virgin. In addition to being incorrect, since the death penalty was only prescribed for adultery and not fornication, it is clear from the Gospels that this was not a possibility. Mary, being “betrothed” and technically married to Joseph by Jewish law, would have been guilty of adultery for a relationship with another man. Even though Joseph had not yet had the source of Mary’s pregnancy “revealed” to him, his intent was merely to divorce her. She was never under any threat of execution. Furthermore, as we have noted, nothing in the term almah implies an unmarried woman. Isaiah’s wife was a young woman, but a married young woman. Nothing was illicit about their relationship.

With this in mind, perhaps we can better understand “What is bothering Rashi?” such that he explains “maidens’ as “virgins”. Sifsei Chachamim explains that while Rashi would offer both the simple and allegorical meanings of Shir haShirim, “maidens” is a bit straightforward, so “virgins” is offered as an alternative. But is it really a simple mathematical equation of the two. No. Rashi does not explain that the two terms are synonymous. “Virgins” are simply [generally] a subcategory of “young women” who do happen to be unmarried. Rashi is narrowing in on the identity of these “maidens” in the verse “Therefore do the maidens love thee.” Of course Scripture isn’t portraying this gentlemen as a lady’s man who attracts the attention of married women, so Rashi uses a term that refers to the subcategory of “young women” who are not married, virgins. It is not the term almah which requires this, since as we have seen it is used to refer to non-virgins, but it is the context of the verse itself where such a qualification is helpful.

In contrast many who have conceded that the plain meaning of the text refers to Isaiah’s son, still maintain that this is a dual prophecy or that it alludes to the Nazarene’s virgin birth. They argue that the very reason Hashem used the word almah is because it could refer to a non-virgin (Isaiah’s wife) or a virgin (Mary). This approach is without merit. You can not derive a specific fact from a general statement. That would be similar to saying the prophecy that Messiah would be from Judah predicts that he would be from the family of Joseph the carpenter. It’s foolish, the passage doesn’t give that information. It doesn’t answer the question. Since the word in question could mean a virgin or a non-virgin, one could just as easily say it foreshadows that the Messiah would be born of a non-virgin. One cannot make such a specific inference from such a general premise. Superficially one might see such a claim as similar to how we have explained Rashi, but in Rashi their is additional contextual reason to limit the scope of the term. In Isaiah 7:14 there is not additional context to change the implication of the term, since the term in context refers to the wife of Isaiah. And unlike Rashi's comment on Shir HaShirim which simply explains/teaches the meaning of a verse, Matthew is not merely stating that Isaiah 7:14 refers to the Nazarene, but he implies that there is a fulfillment of prophecy in the Nazarene's virgin birth, but were there is not the ability to derive such a specific meaning until after the fact then one cannot claim that a prophecy has been "fulfilled". Even if it had been intended, it wasn't predicted.

We should also consider the claim that the term almah was necessary to refer to a woman who was a virgin and of marriageable age. In addition to having no supporting evidence indicating that the word has such a connotation, it is simply not the case that the more common word for virgin is insufficient for such an implication. To the contrary we read in Psalms 148:12, “young men and also maidens (besulos), old men together with youths” Here “maidens”, the word we have otherwise translated as “virgins” is used to parallel “young men.” The term may technically apply to younger girls, but that is not usually the context it is used.

In addition to the above considerations we must remember that this was a sign for king of Yehudah that his enemies would not defeat them. One must ask how this sign could be of any significance if it occurred hundreds of years after the death of those for whom the sign was intended? Freeman tries to address this difficulty by citing Zechariah 3:8 and he writes, “It cannot be maintained, therefore, that the essential purpose in every sign is for it to have immediate significance to that particular generation in which it is given” (page 206).

Now, the Jewish interpreters understand the passage to mean Yehoshua the Kohen Gadol (Joshua the High Priest); “you and your companions who are sitting before you, for they are men [worthy] of miracles” rather than men that are a sign. That being said, if we were to concede that they were themselves signs, they are not signs for anyone specific as was Immanuel, who was a "sign" specifically for the king of Yehudah. Also note the irony that Freeman argues that Immanuel must be a miraculous birth to be a sign but then cites these regular humans as examples of signs to show that a sign doesn’t have to be for the generation it is given.

There is no support in Isaiah 7:14 for the virgin birth. It is a clear prophecy of Isaiah’s own son in the following chapter. Context shows that it is his wife who is the “almah” of our verse, and his son who is the “sign”. Perhaps most significantly of all, however, is that none of us can claim knowledge that this verse was fulfilled by the birth of the Nazarene. The “claim” of a virgin birth isn’t the same thing as a fulfillment. No one, not even the apostles, witnessed this miracle, it is indemonstrable. Rather, even if one believed that Isaiah 7:14 predicted a virgin birth, even of the Messiah, one would have no reason to accept the claim that it had been fulfilled unless one already was a Christian who accepted Christian doctrine.

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