Isaiah 7:14

Isaiah 7:14 is a verse in the seventh chapter of the Book of Isaiah in which the prophet Isaiah, addressing king Ahaz of Judah, promises that God will destroy the king's enemies before a child born to an almah is weaned. The Hebrew word ‘almāh is said by some to mean a "young woman of childbearing age", but it was translated into Koine Greek in the pre-Christian Septuagint as παρθένος parthenos, meaning virgin, and was subsequently picked up by the gospel of Matthew and used as a messianic prophecy of the Virgin birth of Jesus. Isaiah 7:14 continues to be one of the most controversial Bible verses.

Context: Isaiah 7:1-25
The Book of Isaiah was assembled over several centuries, beginning in the 8th century BCE. Chapters 1-39 refer mostly to events of the 8th century, but Isaiah 7:1-25 are the product of a 7th century Josianic redaction (i.e., an editing in the reign of King Josiah, c. 640–609 BCE). They present the 8th century King Ahaz (reigned c. 732–716 BC) as a faithless monarch who rejects God's promise of protection for his dynasty and city, but the purpose of the original 8th century narrative was to dissuade Ahaz' son, Hezekiah, from entering into alliance with other kingdoms to oppose the Assyrian Empire, the regional hegemon of the day.

The oracle: Isaiah 7:1-10
Isaiah 7:1–8:15 deals with the prophet Isaiah's attempt to persuade King Ahaz not to join the kings of Israel (also called Ephraim) and Syria (Aram-Damascus) in their rebellion against their Assyrian overlord. Isaiah 7:1-8 make up a prologue explaining that Israel and Syria have laid siege to Jerusalem in an effort to replace him with a non-Davidic king who will join them.


 * 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 ...' In the face of the threat God announces to Ahaz: 'It will not succeed, it will not happen.'

God's sign: Isaiah 7:11-16
Having delivered God's message Isaiah tells Ahaz to ask for a sign to confirm that it is a true prophecy, meaning that Ahaz is being called upon to affirm the divine covenant made with the house of David and threatened by the coalition of enemy kings, but Ahaz refuses, and Isaiah replies that he will have a sign whether he asks for it or not:


 * 7:11
 * "Ask a sign from the Lord your God, from lowest Sheol or from highest heaven."
 * 7:12
 * But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not test the Lord."
 * 7:13
 * 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
 * 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
 * By the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good, he will be eating curds and honey.
 * 7:16
 * 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."

A sign, in this context, means a special event which confirms the prophet's words. Ahaz's sign is to be the birth of a son to an almah, who will name him Immanuel, "God is with us"; the significance of the sign is not the identity of the child or his mother (scholars agree that "almah" refers to a woman of childbearing age and has nothing to do with virginity) but the meaning of his name ("God is with us") and 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).

Aftermath: Isaiah 7:17-25
Ahaz turned to Assyria to fend off the threat from Israel and Syria, but the price he paid was to become an Assyrian vassal. His son and successor Hezekiah (ruled c. 715-686) rebelled, but the Assyrians devastated his kingdom and put Jerusalem under siege, and Hezekiah was able to save himself only by paying tribute. A century later, in the time of King Josiah, the prophecy of Isaiah was revised to present Ahaz as a faithless king who rejected God's promise of protection, with the result that God brought Assyria to devastate the land until a new and faithful king (presumably Josiah) would arise to restore peace. The added prophesy, describing the devastation that would come upon Judah at some unspecified future date (future, that is, from the perspective of Isaiah and Ahaz) when God would call up Assyria, is given in verses 7:17–25: "In that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines ... will be turned over to thorns and briars".

Simeon tradition
An Orthodox Christian tradition exists which states that one of the seventy scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the Septuagint was Simeon, and that he translated Isaiah 7:14 as saying "a young woman" would conceive rather than "a virgin" due to his disbelief. Because of this, a divine being told him he would live to see the fulfillment of this prophecy. When he was around 360 years old, he saw Jesus, uttered his benediction and died. This tradition aims to explain, which states that Simeon had been told by the Holy Spirit that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ".

Matthew's use of Isaiah
The Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus's ministry as largely the fulfilment of prophecies from Isaiah, but in the time of Jesus the Israelite Jews no longer spoke Hebrew, and Isaiah had to be translated into Greek and Aramaic, the two commonly used languages. The Greek translation, the Septuagint, translated the word almah, meaning a young woman of childbearing age who had not yet given birth, as parthenos in the Greek, which means virgin. Matthew 1:23 quotes the verse verbatim from the Septuagint. The one alteration is that the phrase "they shall name" is changed to "you shall name." This switches the meaning somewhat from Immanuel being a title proclaimed by the people to a name given by Joseph. The author of Matthew still treats the name as more of a title as Joseph actually names his son Jesus. The Masoretic text has the unspecified "and shall name".

There is much debate over the meaning of Isaiah 7:14. Most scholars today claim the Hebrew word 'almah, used in Isaiah, would more accurately be translated as young woman rather than virgin. However, the Septuagint version of Isaiah, which was translated by seventy Jewish scholars in the 2nd century BCE, and the Gospel of Matthew both use the Greek word parthenos, which unambiguously translates as virgin. Biblical scholar Margaret Barker points out that the text uses the definite article, reading ha-'almah and therefore The Virgin, an ancient title for the Holy Spirit. This view is supported by the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews in which Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as his mother. For a full discussion of this debate see Virgin Birth.

Scholars have other concerns with Matthew's reference to Isaiah. France, for instance, believes that it is far more likely that Isaiah is referring to the far more immediate future. The Hebrew can even be interpreted to say that the conception in question had already taken place when Isaiah was writing.

Carter believes the real importance of this verse is in its wider context in Isaiah. He argues that the readers of Matthew would have been very familiar with Isaiah and would immediately recognize the context of this verse. The verse occurs when Judah is under threat from the Syrians. Isaiah promises that God can save Israel from this threat, but that if the Jews continue to sin the Assyrian empire will be the instrument of God's vengeance. Carter believes that Matthew is using this situation as an allegory for the time in which he was writing. Immanuel if followed will lead to salvation from the empire, in Matthew's time the Roman, but if the messiah is rebuffed that same empire will be God's instrument of punishment for the Jewish people as presented by the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.

Revised Standard Version
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. Isaiah 7:14 became a litmus test of orthodoxy among conservatives, but most modern Bible translations use "young woman".

Music
The King James Version of this verse is cited as texts in the English-language oratorio "Messiah" by George Frideric Handel (HWV 56).