Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and she
shall call His name Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:14
The virgin conception and birth of Jesus Christ is one of the most well-known and universally
acknowledged doctrines of Christianity. Every major branch of the visible church affirms it as a
foundational article of faith, including Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Easter Orthodoxy.
Nearly all the visible church professes it in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. The New Testament
clearly teaches it in Luke 1:26-38 and Mat. 1:18-25. And a few other verses strongly imply or at least
hint at the possibility of a child being born without a human father, such as Gen. 3:15; Jer. 31:22;
Mic. 5:3; and Gal. 4:4. However, the clearest declaration of the Virgin Birth of Christ found outside
of the gospels is Isa. 7:14 quoted above. Matthew plainly states that Christ’s virgin conception and
birth occurred as a fulfillment of this prophecy of Isaiah. And this is where the controversy begins.
Critics have long insisted that Matthew (and the visible church ever since) distorted this text of
Isaiah. First, they claim that the Hebrew word used here, almah does not mean virgin, but only
“young woman.” And that Matthew was led astray by the Septuagint translation of the passage,
which uses the Greek word for virgin, Parthenos. This argument does not hold water for a
number of reasons. The author of Matthew clearly knew Hebrew and so could not have been
misled by a Greek translation of Isa. 7:14. Also, while the Hebrew word almah is the general word
for maiden and not the specific word for virgin, almah MUST mean an unmarried woman. In fact,
Martin Luther once issued a challenge, “If a Jew or Christian can prove to me that almah means a
married woman, I will give him 100 florins, although God alone knows where I might find them.”
Moreover, almah is always used positively, that is, with reference to a morally upright person.
Therefore, in accord with how the word is used in the other six places it appears in the Hebrew
Bible—Gen. 24:43; Exo. 2:8; Psa. 68:25; Pro. 30:19; Sol. 1:3; 6:8—here in Isaiah 7:14, we cannot
interpret this as an unmarried woman becoming pregnant by adultery or fornication. The text
demands that she be unmarried, pregnant, AND morally upright! Contrarily, if Isaiah had used
the Hebrew word for virgin: bethulah, instead of the word for unmarried woman: almah, the
prophecy would be thought to refer to a virgin, upon marrying, losing her virginity and
conceiving in the usual way. But by using a word that demands an unmarried woman, it cannot
have this meaning. Thus, the Holy Spirit wonderfully foretold of an unmarried, morally upright
woman (and therefore necessarily a virgin) conceiving and giving birth to a son.
Second, critics rejecting the virgin conception and birth of Isa. 7:14 claim that the verse refers to
Isaiah’s wife’s son, or to some unknown woman of Isaiah’s day, because vv. 16-17 refer to an event
that would happen in a few years: Syria and Samaria being conquered by Assyria. This argument
also fails, for when Isaiah’s wife conceives in 8:3, God tells him to call his name “Maher-Shalal-
Hash-Baz,” not Immanuel. Moreover, in 7:14 it is a woman and not a man who names the child.
Similarly, the boy referred to in Isa. 7:16, who is about to come to the age of moral discernment: to
“know to refuse the evil and choose the good;” is Isaiah’s already born son, whom God
commanded him to take with him when he went out to speak this prophecy in Isa. 7:3. Thus, in
verses 16-17 God is saying that before Isaiah’s already born son gets a little older, Syria and
Samaria will be conquered. But that is not the sign referred to in 7:14-15, where a child of a virgin
is born at some point far in the future, whose eating habits will be similar to Isaiah’s son’s present
eating habits and for the same reason: it will be a time of scarcity and want.
The final key to correctly interpreting the text is to understand to whom God is giving this sign.
Isaiah is sent to king Ahaz, David’s current heir, who is ruling over the nation of Judah. He is sent
to give a promise and a sign that God will not allow Syria and Samaria to achieve their boast in
7:6, of wiping out the line of David and setting up a new king and kingdom. But the Hebrew text,
by the use of plural pronouns, reveals that the message and sign are not given to Ahaz
personally, BUT TO THE WHOLE HOUSE OF DAVID. Thus, God is warning David’s whole house of
the danger of not believing and so not being established in 7:9, and then He says to them in 7:13-
14 (using perfectly good Pittsburgh English to make the plural forms clear) “Hear now, O house of
David! Is it a small thing for yinz to weary men, but will yinz weary my God also? Therefore the
Lord Himself will give yinz a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and she shall
call His name Immanuel.” The sign of God keeping His promise to always have a son of David on
the throne was not given to one king, but to the whole line of David. It was a humbling sign, a
rebuking sign; a sign both of God’s faithfulness & of Israel’s sin. For God would keep His promise
to raise up a future son to rule forever, even without a male descendant of David begetting that
son! David’s royal house will be reduced to one unmarried virgin girl. David’s line may have ended
up being faithless, but God was still faithful to His promise: for the virgin conceived and bore a
son, and she, and now we, all call Him Immanuel, God with us!
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