Isaiah 7:14

Judah is faced with invasion by its northern neighbours, the Kingdom of Israel (also called Ephraim) and Aram-Damascus (Syria), but God instructs the prophet Isaiah to tell king Ahaz that God will destroy Judah's enemies (Isaiah 7:1–10):

When Ahaz ... was king of Judah, Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah ... king of Israel, marched on Jerusalem, they were unable to prevail against it. When the House of David was told that Syria had allied itself with Ephraim, their hearts and the hearts of their people trembled ... But the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shearjashub your son, ... and say to him, 'Be firm and keep calm, ... The Lord has said, 'It will not happen...' [6]

Isaiah delivers God's message to Ahaz and tells him to ask for a sign to confirm that this is a true prophecy (verse 7:11). Ahaz refuses, saying he will not test God (7:12). Isaiah replies that Ahaz will have a sign whether he asks for it or not, and the sign will be the birth of a child, and the child's mother will call it Immanuel, meaning "God-with-us" (7:13–14); by the time the infant "learns to reject the bad and choose the good" (i.e., is old enough to know right from wrong) he will be eating curds and honey, and Ephraim and Syria will be destroyed (7:15–16):

7:11 יא שְׁאַל-לְךָ אוֹת, מֵעִם יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ; הַעְמֵק שְׁאָלָה, אוֹ הַגְבֵּהַּ לְמָעְלָה.‎

"Ask a sign from the Lord your God, from lowest Sheol or from highest heaven."

7:12 יב וַיֹּאמֶר, אָחָז: לֹא-אֶשְׁאַל וְלֹא-אֲנַסֶּה, אֶת-יְהוָה.‎

But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not test the Lord."

7:13 יג וַיֹּאמֶר, שִׁמְעוּ-נָא בֵּית דָּוִד: הַמְעַט מִכֶּם הַלְאוֹת אֲנָשִׁים, כִּי תַלְאוּ גַּם אֶת-אֱלֹהָי. ‎

Then he retorted: "Listen, house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God?

7:14 יד לָכֵן יִתֵּן אֲדֹנָי הוּא, לָכֶם--אוֹת: הִנֵּה הָעַלְמָה, הָרָה וְיֹלֶדֶת בֵּן, וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ, עִמָּנוּ אֵל.‎

therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: the maiden is with child and she will bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel.

7:15 טו חֶמְאָה וּדְבַשׁ, יֹאכֵל--לְדַעְתּוֹ מָאוֹס בָּרָע, וּבָחוֹר בַּטּוֹב.‎

By the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good, he will be eating curds and honey.

7:16 טז כִּי בְּטֶרֶם יֵדַע הַנַּעַר, מָאֹס בָּרָע--וּבָחֹר בַּטּוֹב: תֵּעָזֵב הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה קָץ, מִפְּנֵי שְׁנֵי מְלָכֶיהָ.‎

For before the child knows to reject the bad and choose the good, desolation will come upon the land of the two kings before whom you now cower."[7]

Isaiah 7:17 follows, with a further prophecy that at some unspecified future date God will call up Assyria against Judah: "The Lord will cause to come upon you and your people and your ancestral house such days as have not been seen since Ephraim broke away from Judah—the king of Assyria" (verse 17). Verses 18–25 describe the devastation that will result: "In that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines ... will be turned over to thorns and briars" (verse 23). The "curds and honey" reappear, but this time the image is no longer associated with Immanuel: "In that day a man will save alive a young cow and two sheep, and there will be such an abundance of milk, he will eat curds and honey" (verse 21–22).[8]

Chapters 1–39 of the Book of Isaiah are made up of a number of smaller units from a variety of times.[9] Isaiah 7:1–8:15 apparently dates from the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah (late 8th century), during the lifetime of Isaiah, and its purpose was to persuade Hezekiah not to join an alliance in rebellion against Assyria. A century later, in the time of Josiah, the prophecy was revised to present Ahaz as the faithless king who rejected God's promise of protection for Jerusalem and the house of David, with the result that God brought Assyria to devastate keka the land until a new and faithful king (presumably Josiah) would arise to restore peace.[10]

Isaiah promises Ahaz that God will destroy his enemies and tells him to ask God for a sign that this is a true prophecy. A sign, in this context, means a special event which confirms the prophet's words.[11] Ahaz's sign will be the birth of a son to an almah. The word almah has no exact equivalent in English: it probably meant a young girl or woman who had not yet borne a child.[12] So the sign is that:

1. A young girl will conceive (or possibly has conceived and is already pregnant, the Hebrew is ambiguous) and give birth to a son;
2. She is to name the boy Immanuel, meaning God is with us (the grammar of the Hebrew is clear that the naming will be done by the baby's mother); and
3. God will destroy Ahaz's enemies before the child is able to tell right from wrong.[13]

The almah has been identified as either the mother of Hezekiah or the daughter of Isaiah.[14] There are, however, problems with both candidates: Hezekiah was born well before the war with Ephraim and Syria began, and although almah does not specifically mean virgin, it probably does mean a girl who has not yet had a child, and Isaiah already has a son. In any case the significance of the Immanuel sign is not the identity of the child and its mother but the meaning of the name ("God is with us") and, most important, the role it plays in identifying the length of time before God will destroy the Ephraimite-Syrian coalition (before the child learns right from wrong).[12]

The book of Isaiah was the most popular of all the prophetic books among the earliest Christians—it accounts for more than half the allusions and quotations in the New Testament and over half the quotations attributed to Jesus himself, and the Gospel of Matthew in particular presents Jesus's ministry as largely the fulfillment of prophecies from Isaiah.[15] In the time of Jesus, however, the Jews of Palestine no longer spoke Hebrew, and Isaiah had to be translated into Greek and Aramaic, the two commonly used languages.[15] In the original Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 the word almah meant a young woman of childbearing age who had not yet given birth; however the Greek translation, the Septuagint, rendered it as parthenos, a word which can mean virgin or maiden.[4] This gave the author of Matthew the opportunity to interpret Jesus as the fulfilment of the Immanuel prophecy: Jesus becomes God is with us (Matthew 1:23), the divine representative on earth, and Matthew further identifies Jesus with the Immanuel born to a parthenos by asserting that Joseph did not have sexual intercourse with Mary before she gave birth (Matthew 1:25).[4]

When the Revised Standard Version translators rendered "almah" as "young woman" in 1952 it immediately became a center of controversy for conservative Christians, who believed that this passage predicted the virgin birth of Jesus. The RSV quickly replaced the KJV in many churches across America, but fundamentalist American Christians argued that nowhere in the Old Testament was an almah anything other than a young unmarried girl, and one pastor publicly burned a copy of the RSV.[16] Isaiah 7:14 became a litmus test of orthodoxy among conservatives,[17] but most modern Bible translations use "young woman".[18]

The original meaning of the word parthenos in the Septuagint (i.e., the Hebrew Bible translated by Hellenistic Jews in Koine Greek) is "young woman", not "virgin",[1] but the word changed meaning over the centuries;[1] thus the authors of Matthew and Luke believed instead that Isaiah would predict a virgin birth for the coming Messiah,[1] so they endorsed their choice by quoting the Greek translation.[1]