The Problem of Isaiah 7:14: The Virgin Birth Prophecy

For the Christian, the Bible is the book that tells them all that they need to know about God, life, the afterlife and the hows and whys of it all. This is why it is so important for so many Christian denominations to establish that the Bible is without error, was preserved by God and inspired by the very Spirit of God as he breathed upon the very authors of the sacred text. For most Protestants and Baptists, for example, the Bible and God are so closely linked that belief in the one is linked to belief in the other. This can be established biblically.

For example, the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them and that he did so by his spoken word (… and God said, let there be light). Later in the book of Genesis, Abraham had a question of doubt. God gave an answer and Abraham believed the word of God. As a result, the Bible records that God counted it to him for righteousness and Abraham was made righteous before God by his faith in God's word. As we approach the New Testament, we find that the word of God becomes forever linked with the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In John chapter one, for example, we are told:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1:1

And in verse 14 of the same chapter we read:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

And thus the Bible presents Jesus as the word of God in human flesh. Just as righteousness before God was achieved by Abraham by his faith in God's word, in like manner, according to the New Testament, a man is made righteous by his faith in Jesus, the word of God.

From this we can see that both Testaments teach the way to God (through righteousness) is the same: faith in the word of God.

The Bible is proclaimed to be the very word of God. Because God is declared to be perfect and without error, then it would stand to reason that his word would also be perfect and without error. Jesus, the word of God, is declared to be without sin and to be perfect and without error (after all, he is the truth, according to the Bible). God, Jesus and the written word are so closely linked together that it is difficult to talk about the one without talking about the other. It would stand to reason that the Bible, if it is the very word of God, would, in like manner, be perfect, spotless and without error. If the pages of the holy writ could be proven to contain error then what would that say about God himself?

There are those that believe that they do not need to accept all of the Bible. For example, some people accept the moral code of the Bible, but reject the miracles recorded therein. On what grounds do they do this? Human reasoning? Because they do not believe in miracles? What criteria do they use to make such assumptions? How can a mere man weed through what is proposed to be the very words of God and determine what he did and did not say? How can a mere mortal determine, with certainty, what is the word of God and what is not? Wouldn't the one that says a certain passage in the Bible is not from God have to be God (or at least claim to be) in order for them to know for certain that the particular passage was not of God? Or could it be that they have a source outside of the Bible itself that helps them to determine what is and is not from the mouth of God? And if a source, how can it be known if this source is divine or simply another imagination of man?

While I don't claim to know the answers to all of that, I do want to examine the concept of the veracity of the Bible. Whether a person believes in the inerrancy of the Bible or not, all who claim to be Christian rely , to some degree, on the pages of this book to determine what they know about God and how he functions in the affairs of men. This is why it is so important to examine the Scriptures to see if there is any error within. If God is perfect and his word is perfect and Jesus and the word are so closely linked together, then you would expect perfection in his word. If there is error within, then what does that say about God? About Jesus? What does it say about the trust-worthiness of what we read in the pages of the Scriptures themselves?

I would like to begin this study with a common prophecy that most Christians know. We will begin by looking at Isaiah's prophecy of the virgin birth as found in Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

When one reads this verse it seems obvious that this is speaking of Jesus. And the Apostle Matthew would agree:

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. -Matthew 1:22-23

For most people, this is the end of the line. If the Bible says it, that settles it! However, what if Matthew is in error? What if Isaiah 7:14 is not speaking about Jesus at all? Let's go back and examine the verse in Isaiah to see what it is all about.

It would help to put it in a bit of context. If we begin reading in the very first verse of Isaiah chapter seven, then we can find out what is going on.

And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, [that] Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. - Isaiah 7:1-2

As can be seen from the verses above, Rezin, king of Syria and Pekah, king of Israel, were planning to go to war against Jerusalem. In those days, the nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom was called Israel and the southern, Judah. Jerusalem was the capital city of Judah. As we can see from these verses, the two northern kings had banded together with the purpose of setting out to destroy the capital city of Judah. Ahaz, the current king of Judah, was afraid as he was very much outnumbered. Because God, according to the verses that follow, wanted to calm the fears of Ahaz and let him know that God was with Judah, he sent to Ahaz the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was to tell Ahaz not to fear:

And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. - Isaiah 7:4

God went even further and told Isaiah to ask Ahaz to declare a sign that God would perform in order to further help Ahaz know that God was with him (verse 11). Ahaz refused and God, a bit angry, determines to give him a sign of his own choosing:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. - Isaiah 7:14

This is the context of the passage ... or most of it. We will examine what comes after verse 14 a bit further on. Before getting too deeply into the passage, it might be helpful to know when this was all taking place. According to Bible commentaries, Ahaz ruled in Judah in the early 700's B.C. (about 720 +/-). So the events that we are reading about take place about 700 years before Jesus was born. This is important to keep in mind.

This brings up an immediate question: How does Isaiah 7:14 apply to Ahaz if the promise is not to be fulfilled until some 700 years later? In other words, if the sending of Isaiah and the sign given were to comfort the heart of Ahaz because of the enemy that was about to attack him, how could a prophecy about someone that would be born 700 years later accomplish this? Please keep this in mind as we examine the passage in context a bit further.

One thing that is interesting is that many will stop at verse 14 and do not even think about the verses that follow. However, verse 14 is not in a vacuum. In fact, one vital rule of interpreting Scripture is context. It is imperative that the student of the Bible examine any passage within the context in which it was written. And, yet, many seem to violate this principle when it comes to Isaiah 7:14. Could this be because an honest evaluation of the passage would show that Matthew was wrong and the passage does not apply to Jesus of Nazareth? We shall see.

Let's begin by adding verses 15 and 16 onto verse 14:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

A simple and common reading of the passage would lead one to believe that the "he" and "the child" of verses 15 and 16 would be the same child that was said to be born of a virgin in verse 14. To put the verse in my own words, it could read like this:

Therefore the Lord will give you a sign: Pay attention! A virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call his name Immanuel. This child will eat butter and honey in order that he will be able to refuse evil and choose good. Before this child is old enough to know to refuse evil and choose good, the two kings that threaten you, Pekah and Rezin, will no longer be a problem.

Yes, I took liberty with the wording and, no, this is not a translation from the Hebrew in which Isaiah was originally written. The point here is that the virgin born child of verse 14 is the child that is spoken of in verses 15 and 16. Now you may be asking yourself, "Who cares?" Here is the reason we should care: According to this verse, the sign that God gave to Ahaz was to be fulfilled in Ahaz's lifetime. The child would still be an infant, not able to discern either good from evil, when the two kings that threatened Ahaz were removed from their thrones. In fact, according to historians, these two kings were no longer a threat within two years. Therefore, this baby had to have been born in that time frame ... not 700+ years later. This passage could not be talking about Jesus. And that is not the only proof.

Before moving on to some other points about Isaiah 7:14, let's examine how some Christians get around this theological knot. Some believe in what is called a double or dual fulfillment of prophecy. The idea here is that in order to prove a prophet true there must be an immediate fulfillment of the prophecy, but that the final fulfillment would be in the future at some point. Therefore, there would have been a child born in Ahaz's day as a sign to him, but the ultimate fulfillment would be found when Jesus of Nazareth was born. For people that adhere to this there are a multitude of problems.

Verse 14 is states that the child would be born of a virgin. If double fulfillment is true, then Jesus would not have been the only virgin born child and that would throw some of his credentials out the window, wouldn't it? If double fulfillment were true, then the child born in Ahaz's day would also have been named Immanuel, God with us. Therefore, there would have been another besides Jesus that shared this title. In other words, if double fulfillment were the solution, then Jesus is not a unique entity because there was another just like him born 700 years earlier.

Many reject double fulfillment for this verse and try to tackle this another way. They say that verses 15 and 16 do not apply to the child of verse 14 at all ... that another child is in view. As if the prophet had said:

Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel. But this child that you see here (and not the virgin born one that I had just mentioned earlier) will still be an infant when those two kings are gone from their thrones!

While this is an interesting theory, there is no evidence within the text itself that another child is in view. The original language in which the passage was written, Hebrew, also makes it clear that the "he" and "child" of verses 15 and 16 are in fact the same child of verse 14. So this theory goes down in flames as well.

Others try to tackle this problem in another way. They say that the sign was not to Ahaz at all. After all, the king had rejected the sign (see verse 12). They say that the sign was for the house of David (verse 13). According to this theory, the sign would occur to someone in the lineage of David and therefore it was not a sign particularly to Ahaz himself. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph, his adoptive father, were both of the house of David (according to some Bible scholars) and, therefore, the virgin birth of Jesus would have been a sign to them. While this may be the most logical way to attempt to resolve the problems of Isaiah 7:14 being a prophecy about Jesus, it fails in several places. The first place that it fails is that, once again, the child was to still be an infant before the two kings that threatened Ahaz were taken care of. Since these events predate Jesus' birth by 700+ years, then this sign could not have been to some distant descendent of David's lineage. Again, the main reason that God had sent Isaiah to Ahaz was to comfort his heart concerning the two kings that were coming against him. But the best evidence against this passage being about the birth of Jesus is in verse 14 itself. Let's take a look at it.

The passage says that a virgin will conceive and bear a son. The Hebrew word used for virgin here is almah. However, the common Hebrew word for virgin is betullah. A study of the word almah will reveal that this word can refer to both a virgin and one that is not a virgin. But it always refers to a young woman or a maiden. This is why the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1909) translated Isaiah 7:14 and replaced the word virgin with the word young woman. In fact, all of the Hebrew (or Jewish) translations use the term young women (or something similar) and none use virgin. Even many of the Christian translations use young woman. If this is the case, then this passage is not talking about a virgin birth at all, but that a young lady would bring forth a child.

The next point to consider is where it says that the mother would name her child Immanuel. When Mary, the mother of Jesus, gave birth to her child, she name him Jesus and not Immanuel. What is up with that? The prophecy seems pretty explicit that the child's name would be Immanuel. Some hold that the Hebrew concept of name is more in line with a title. As such, the term Immanuel would be a title and not the name by which Jesus would be called. However, it is interesting that Jesus is never called Immanuel at all within the New Testament.

Let's sum this up:

1 - The child of Isaiah 7:14 was to be born of a young woman (an almah)
2 - The child of Isaiah 7:14 was to be named Immanuel (not Jesus)
3 - The child of Isaiah 7:14 was to be born and still be an infant before the two kings, Pekah and Rezin, were removed from being a threat to Ahaz, king of Judah

Jesus was born of a young woman, but then again, so are most people on planet earth. Nothing special there. However, the New Testament (and Matthew in particular) says he was born of a virgin. The New Testament was written in Greek and the Greek word used in Matthew is unmistakably the word for virgin. Therefore the New Testament insists on the virgin birth. However, as we have seen from the Hebrew Old Testament, it does not. Where did Matthew get the idea? Possibly from the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament written about 200 years before the birth of Christ. Now some may say that the fact that the Septuagint used the Greek word for virgin in Isaiah 7:14 is proof enough. Fine. If the Septuagint becomes the standard then let's accept the rest of what it says as well. It is well known among scholars that the Septuagint is a poor translation that takes many liberties in its translations. Would it not be easy to assume that they did the same with Isaiah 7:14? In other words, if your proof is from the Septuagint, then you are on shaky ground.

Another point is that Jesus was not named Immanuel by his mother, Mary, though the Bible did claim him to be God with us (which is the meaning of Immanuel). But was not the Isaiah 7:14 passage explicit? Was not the child to be called Immanuel? Do we ever see anyone calling Jesus Immanuel in the New Testament? How then does Jesus fulfill the Isaiah prophecy then?

The main problem is that Jesus was born some 700+ years too late to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. Again, verses 15 and 16 state that the child would still be an infant when the two kings would be done away with. This occurred within two years or so from when Isaiah came to Ahaz the king. Therefore the child spoken of by Isaiah would have to have been born within that two year time frame some 700 years before Jesus.

My conclusion:

Matthew got it wrong. And therefore, there was no virgin birth. Thus, Jesus is nothing special as his birth was no different than any other man who is born into this world. His mother named him Jesus and not Immanuel. Therefore Jesus could not be the one spoken of in Isaiah 7:14. The sign was both to the house of David and to Ahaz. The child of Isaiah 7:14 was to be born before the two kings that threatened Ahaz were no more. Therefore, Jesus came 700 years too late! But that doesn't surprise me. The Bible says that Jesus is coming again soon and devout Christians have been waiting for almost 2000 years.