Two matters are clear: (1) The Isaiah passage per se has no interest in the virginal status of the woman. It is not interested because the focus is not on the birth but on the child. (2) The church’s subsequent development of the interpretation of the virgin, rich tradition as it is, cannot be said to be “wrong,” but it can be said to go in a quite fresh direction, surely other than the Isaiah text itself. Second, the crucial element in the sign concerns the child whose name is “Immanuel,” that is, God is with us. We have seen a particular child’s name in 7:3, there a quite ominous name. Here this child’s freighted name is positive and reassuring, for it asserts the entire affirmation of Davidic theology rooted in the ancient oracle of 2 Samuel 7. The child is to be a visible, physical, concrete reassertion of the core conviction of royal Israel that God is present in and with and for Israel as defender, guardian, and protector, so that Israel need not be afraid. Indeed, Ahaz in this context need not be afraid and, therefore, need not turn to the savage resource of Assyria. It is this confidence about which Israel sang in the temple.

Third, the function of the child is to monitor the time of the current threat of the northern neighbors, a time that will be short indeed (v. 16). It is conventionally reckoned that a child knows the difference between “good and evil,” right and wrong, by two years of age. Thus by two years of age, that is, two years from the moment of utterance by the prophet, the two kings-Rezin and “the son of Remaliah”-will be terminated. That is, the threat noted in verses 7-9a, which preoccupies the king, is a short-term danger and should not be taken as seriously as does the king. It is the lack of trust in Yahweh and his consequent fearfulness that causes the king to misassess his true circumstance and tempts him with the pseudo-help of Assyria. His is not a world without Yahwistic reliability. It should be noted, in the move from the reassuring name in verse 14 to the reassuring time in verse 16, that verse 15 is odd. It is most likely that “curds and honey” refer to a time of abundance, prosperity, and well-being. If so, then the lines suggest that this child, by two years, will face no threat of war but will live in peace and prosperity. There will be a return to glad normalcy, because “God is with us.”

1. The prophet Isaiah’s counsel to the king came in the form of a sign: “The young woman [ʿalmah] is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Isa 7:14). The term generally refers just to a young woman of marriageable age. It seems likely that the young woman here is Ahaz’s wife and that the son she would bear was the future king, Hezekiah (“Immanuel” in Isa 8:8 certainly refers to Hezekiah). The prophet’s word of comfort was that Ahaz would not be deposed by Aram and Israel; his line would carry on in a soon-to-be-born son. Ahaz just needed to trust in God’s protection.
2. Unfortunately, Ahaz chose a different path. He appealed to Assyria for help, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me” (2Kgs 16:7). He even sent gold and silver from the temple as tribute. While Assyria did come and defeat Ahaz’s northern enemies, this rescue came at a cost. Judah became essentially an Assyrian vassal, and Ahaz’s son Hezekiah would be saddled with the consequences of this arrangement. Perhaps as a condition of serving Assyria, Ahaz also introduced foreign religious practices into the land (2Kgs 16:18). This, in particular, earned him the ire of later biblical and postbiblical authors. The account of Ahaz’s reign in the Deuteronomistic History (2Kgs 16:1-20) focuses its retelling mainly on condemning Ahaz’s illicit worship (vv. 1-4, 10-20), a pattern followed by the Chronicler as well (see 2Chr 28). Drawing upon the Chronicler’s version of events, the Talmudic sages highlight Ahaz as the very model of sustained wickedness (Meg. 11a) and suggest Ahaz’s troubles were meant to produce repentance but only produced ruinous idolatry instead (Sanh. 103a). Some modern historians offer a more sympathetic picture of Ahaz, suggesting Ahaz’s submission to Assyria may have actually saved the nation whereas Hezekiah’s rebellion nearly destroyed it. Given the great power and destructive bent of the Assyrian empire, it may be that no king of Judah, Ahaz included, could preserve the nation unscathed when Assyria decided to act.

Isaiah’s prediction is about his own immediate future: he expects the boy to be born within the next year or so. Jewish interpretation of this prophecy understood it to have been fulfilled in the birth of Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, the king to whom the prophecy was ad dressed. This interpretation is attested by Justin, to his chagrin, in Dialogue with Trypho 67:1. Contemporary Jewish tradition did not understand Isa 7:14 to be a prophecy about the messiah. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 147n42: “Isa 7:14 was not applied messianically in Jewish usage. A list of 456 such ‘messianic passages’ is given in Edersheim, Life, II 710–41; and Isa 7:14 is not among them. Knowing this, Justin, already in the second century, was accusing . . . Jewish scholars of tampering with OT evidence pertinent to the Messiah (Dialogue lxxi–lxxiii).”

Is there a virgin in Isaiah 7:14? (Prof. Miller)

The Hebrew text ofIsa 7:14 refers simply to “the young woman” (almah). The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible for hellenistic Jews, translates the Hebrew almah with the Greek word parthenos, which also means “young woman”. The Hebrew text clearly has nothing to do with virginity. There is no rea son to think that the Septuagint does, either. Certainly no Jewish source takes Isa 7:14, in any language, to refer to a virgin. But parthenos can mean “virgin” and it’s possible-though unlikely-that Matthew saw that meaning in the Greek version of Isaiah’s prophecy (see pp. 203-4). Nevertheless, “the parthenos/virgin will conceive and will have a son” does not describe a virginal conception. Even if we take parthenos to mean “virgin,” Septuagint Isa 7:14, understood in its nor mal sense-apart from Christian theological concerns that were read into this passage centuries after it was written-means only that a woman who is now a virgin will become pregnant. No miracle is intended. (Every woman who gets pregnant was once a virgin.) The key to the meaning here lies in the tense of the verb “be pregnant.” The Hebrew language does not have different verb forms for future and present; that has to be determined from context. But Greek does distinguish these tenses and in the Septuagint the verb is future. A miracle would be in view if the text said that the virgin has conceived or is pregnant. In Isa 7:14, in both Hebrew and Greek, the divine sign is the timing of the con ception, not its manner. Christianity has misunderstood Isa 7: 14 because it has interpreted this prophecy from the perspective of the traditional Christian understanding of Matt 1:23.