Matthew 1:23

23. Behold, a virgin Isaiah 7:14. This memorable prophecy was delivered by Isaiah, under the following circumstances: Ahaz, king of Judah, was invaded by the combined hosts of the kings of Israel and of Syria. He was reduced to the last extremity. Jehovah then sent Isaiah the prophet to offer him a SIGN that God would bring deliverance. The object of the command was to bring Ahaz to repose his faith in Jehovah. But though the prophet offered him a sign either in heaven or in earth, yet the idolatrous king refused to accept any sign. Whereupon the prophet, rebuking the king for wearying God, declares that God will give a sign, whether the king ask it or not, and whether it should be to him a sign or not. That sign is the standing sign for Israel for all ages, the future MESSIAH. As that Messiah should come, so Judah should be preserved until his coming. And when he should be born of the virgin, he should not grow to years of intelligence in a shorter time than would be required to sweep away those two invading kings from their power.

The words of the prophet, in our translation, are as follows: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call him 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.”

To this we will append the elegant and exact version of Bishop Lowth: And Jehovah spake yet again to Ahaz, saying:

Ask thee a SIGN from Jehovah thy God:

Go deep to the grave, or high to the heaven above.

And Ahaz said: I will not ask; neither will I tempt Jehovah.

And he said: Hear ye now, O house of David:

Is it a small thing for you to weary men,

That you should weary my God also?

Therefore Jehovah himself shall give you a sign:

Behold, the virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son;

And she shall call his name Immanuel.

Butter and honey shall he eat,

When he shall know to refuse what is evil, and to choose what is good:

For before this child shall know

To refuse the evil, and to choose the good;

The land shall become desolate,

By whose two kings thou art distressed.

Upon this memorable passage we remark:

1 . The word virgin has, in the original Hebrew, the definite article the, THE virgin. This implies that a particular and known virgin is predicted, (specially recognized by the mind of the prophet,)* who, though a virgin, should bring forth an Immanuel; that is, a God-with-us, a God-man. Now we have already remarked (on Matthew 1:18) that a Virgo Deipara is truly predicted in the first promise in Eden; and that the expectation was familiar to the ancient world. Melkarth, so near as in Syria, was fabled to be such a god-man. The virgin, then, of Isaiah, was THE virgin of prophetic foresight. 2. The tenses of the Hebrew in this passage are not all future.

Hengstenberg renders it thus: “Behold THE virgin has conceived and bears a son, and she calls his name Immanuel.” All this shows that Hengstenberg’s view of prophetic vision is correct. The powerful conceptions of the prophet’s mind become as a present reality. His mind’s eye sees the panorama of future objects and events now standing and moving before him. Time is dropped out of the account. 3. This explains what to many commentators has been a great difficulty in the following verse, Isaiah 7:16.

Before this ideal child, beheld in vision as now being born, is able to know good from evil, these two invading kings shall disappear. Isaiah takes the growth of the infant, conceptually present, as the measure of the continuance of the invading kings. That Immanuel, the predicted seed of the woman, the prophet sees as already being born; he is being fed on nourishing food, namely, butter and honey, to bring him to early maturity; but in a briefer period than his growth to intelligence shall require, these invading kings shall be overthrown, and Israel be rescued. Thus was the Messiah, yet to be born, a sign, not indeed to unwilling Ahaz, but to Israel, of her speedy deliverance and permanent preservation. Well and wisely, therefore, does the inspired evangelist, now that the Messiah is born, adduce this prophecy to show its fulfilment in him. The amount of the whole is, that the spirit of prophecy availed itself of the occasion of Ahaz’s unbelief, to utter and leave on record a striking prediction of the Incarnation.

(*Prof. Nordheimer, in his Hebrew Grammar, gives the following rule of syntax in regard to the Hebrew article: “The article is subjectively prefixed to a common noun by way of emphasis, and to point it out as one which, although neither previously or subsequently described, is still viewed as definite in the mind of the writer.” In Biblical Repository, October, 1841, Prof. Nordheimer showed the express application of the rule to this passage.)

They shall call his name Emmanuel This name they are directed by God to give him; and there could be no reason with God to select this name but because (as noted on Matthew 1:21) its meaning denoted a reality. The person bears the name because he is what the name signifies. As the Lord was called Jesus, saviour, because he is Saviour; and as he is called Christ, anointed, because he is the Anointed, so is he called Emmanuel, God-with-us, because he is God with us. He is God with man; he is Divinity with humanity. And he is called God with us because he is virgin-born, for the prophet conjoins these two facts as antecedent and result. That is, because he has only a human mother, and so a divine Father, therefore he is in name, and thereby in reality, God with us. No Jewish or Unitarian gloss can evade this. It demonstrates that Messiah is by birth, God with us; and therefore that he is so by person, by nature, and by substance.