Kids say the craziest things. If you follow my wife’s blog, she routinely shares the gems that come out of the mouths of our boys. Whether it’s the cute way they phrase their sentences or how they mispronounce words, it’s fun to listen to them. Sometimes a quick conversation with a toddler is all it takes to change a crummy day into a joyful day.
As they grow up, their pronunciation tends to get better, but then we begin with the questions. Curious minds want to know things. A while back I was talking with my oldest son. He asked me, “How do the weather people know the weather?”
I tried to explain to him how they study the wind and the air pressure. They have tools they can use to help predict what the weather will be like. In the middle of my explanation he interrupts me and declares, “Oh. Maybe they just watch the news.”
As we get older, our curiosity and desire to know things continues to grow, but it becomes an irregular occurrence to come to such… interesting conclusions. Instead, the answers to our questions require effort and research. YouTube has helped with this, but there are still times when we must scour our sources in search of a reasonable answer to our questions.
To understand all of this, we must go back to the original prophecy and read it within its appropriate context. The specific prophecy referenced by Matthew can be found in Isaiah 7. In this passage Ahaz, King of Judah, is faced with a problem. Numerous enemies had already attacked Jerusalem unsuccessfully. He now received news that another enemy had joined with them in order to overthrow his kingdom.
In Isaiah 7:3, God then calls on Isaiah to take his son and go to meet King Ahaz. In Isaiah 7:4-9, God reassures King Ahaz by telling him that within sixty-five years these enemies will be gone. Sixty-five years is a long time, but at least he has the reassurance from God that everything will be okay. However, God concludes by saying, “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” But that was not the end of the conversation.
God continues by telling King Ahaz to ask for a sign, anything from the heights of heaven to the deepest depths. It was a common understanding in that time that the rulers of Israel and Judah didn’t often take the word of the prophet without some miraculous sign. As we discussed before, miracles were God’s stamp of approval. Anybody could claim to have a word from God, but only God’s true prophets would accompany their message with a sign.
This is much like God had done with Moses at the burning bush. God didn’t wait for Moses to ask for a sign. Instead, he gave him one so that he might prove to the people that he came from God. King Ahaz, however, refused God’s sign saying, “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.”
It may sound like a noble thing, but here’s one thing we should all understand. When God tells you to do something, it’s always in your best interest to do it, even if you don’t want to. There is no taking the high ground when dealing with God. If he tells you to ask for a sign, you are doing a disservice and insulting him to refuse. Hence God’s response in Isaiah 7:13-17.
Notice that while the New Testament authors clearly understood this prophecy to be speaking of the virgin birth of the Messiah, the context in which the prophecy was given seems to be drastically different. Many scholars have poured over this text in hopes to fully understand what was being said. Some have even come to the conclusion that the New Testament writers got it wrong.
As I studied this passage this week, I came across a blog post titled, Why I Deny the Virgin Birth of Jesus. For the record, I do not agree with this author’s conclusions, but in order to better understand what we do believe, we must solidify our footing by tackling the question of the skeptics. Most of this author’s arguments against the virgin birth stems from the Hebrew word almah. This word has been the topic of much debate regarding this passage.
The argument of many scholars is that this “mistranslation” as virgin instead of young woman has led to a false theology that is believed by all of Christendom today. However, was it really a mistranslation? Clearly in the Greek New Testament the writers used the Greek word for virgin rather than the Greek word for young woman. They say that is was because, being simple, uneducated men, the writers didn’t understand the nuances of the word. However, what these skeptics fail to realize is that these men were not the first to interpret this as a prophecy of virgin birth.
When translating older documents, not only do we have the challenge of translating from one language to another, but we also have the challenge of translating across time. Even in our own language, words and their meanings change. To understand how the original readers understood this word almah, we must go back to their time.
Fortunately for us, there were other writers during that time that have written about this same prophecy. You may have heard of a book called the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It was written about 132 B.C. and was the Jewish scriptures that are often referred to in the Bible. When we look at this passage in the Septuagint it is translated exactly the same as is done by the New Testament writers, as “virgin.”
Skeptics will then say that the writers that translated the Septuagint must have also mistranslated the word almah. However, there is a much stronger case that the ancient scholars that devoted their lives to the scriptures understood the nuances and context of their own language far better than we do. This is not the only place that the word almah appears in the Old Testament. It is used seven times in total. Even in the Septuagint, there are only two times in which it is translated as virgin, as it is here. The other five times it is translated as young woman. That means that the seventy Jewish scholars that translated the Septuagint understood the context well enough to differentiate between the times when almah should be translated as virgin and when it should be translated as young woman.
There are many other arguments that skeptics try to put forward, but most of them can be easily refuted by a brief study and proper understanding of the scriptures. Isaiah’s prophecy to King Ahaz is two prophecies in one. He first tells of the to come who will be born of a virgin. He then goes on to tell of the trials and difficulties that the people of Israel will have to face before these leaders and their armies will be brought to ruin. Despite the arguments made by skeptics, the prophecy of the virgin birth of the one to come, Immanuel, is exactly that.
Jesus Christ came, born of a virgin, to be “God with us.” While many people have been given that name over the years, He is the only one that personifies that name. We don’t simply call him Immanuel because a prophecy told us to. We call him Immanuel because that is who he is. He is God with us.
That is why we make such a big deal about Christmas. This wasn’t the birth of a great teacher or a great leader. The story of Christmas is the story of when God set aside his heavenly splendor to take on earthly flesh and be born of a virgin. The story of Christmas is the story of Immanuel, God with us.