Isaiah 7:14

Israel’s Sovereign Himself would give Ahaz and the house of David (plural "you") a sign that He was with His people-even though the king refused to ask for one. The sign no longer was an inducement to faith but a confirmation of divine displeasure. A particular pregnant young woman would bear a son and name Him "Immanuel" ("God with us"; cf. Genesis 16:11; Genesis 17:19; Judges 13:3). The definite article ("the") describes "virgin" in the Hebrew text. This sign should have encouraged Ahaz to trust God’s promise of deliverance and not rely on Assyria.

The Hebrew word for "virgin" is ’alma, which means a young woman of marriageable age, but the word never describes a married woman in the Old Testament. It is the only word in Hebrew that unequivocally signifies an unmarried woman. As the rest of this passage will show (through Isaiah 8:10), it seems most likely that Isaiah’s son Maher-shalal-hash-baz fulfilled the Immanuel prophecy initially. [Note: See Richard Niessen, "The Virginity of the ’almah in Isaiah 7:14," Bibliotheca Sacra 137:546 (April-June 1980):133-50.] In Hebrew society, an unmarried woman of marriageable age would be a virgin. Thus ’alma had overtones of virginity about it and, in fact, sometimes described a virgin (cf. Genesis 24:43). This probably explains why the Septuagint translators chose the Greek word parthenos, meaning virgin, to translate ’alma here. However, Hebrew has a word for virgin, bethula, so why did not Isaiah use this word if he meant the mother of the child was a virgin? Probably Isaiah used ’alma rather than bethula because he did not want to claim the virginity of the mother necessarily, but this word does not rule virginity out either. God evidently led Isaiah to use ’alma so the predicted mother could be simply a young unmarried woman or a virgin. This allows the possibility of a double fulfillment, a young woman in Isaiah’s day and a virgin hundreds of years later (cf. Matthew 1:23). [Note: See Paul D. Wegner, "How Many Virgin Births Are in the Bible? (Isaiah 7:14): A Prophetic Pattern Approach," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54:3 (September 2011):467-84. For a list of 22 messianic prophecies in Isaiah, see The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, p. 1049.]

The naming of a child by its mother was not uncommon in Israel (cf. Genesis 4:1; Genesis 4:25; Genesis 29:31 to Genesis 30:13, Genesis 30:17-24; Genesis 35:18; Judges 13:24; 1 Samuel 1:20; 1 Samuel 4:21). In Jesus’ case, it was appropriate that Joseph name Him rather than Mary, since He was the Son of God as well as Mary’s son. [Note: See Willis J. Beecher, "The Prophecy of the Virgin Mother," in Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation, pp. 179-85; and Wiersbe, p. 19.] The child’s mother evidently named her baby Immanuel ("God is with us" or "God be with us") since she believed God would demonstrate His presence with Judah by preserving the nation from the Syro-Ephraimitic threat. Whoever the child was, Ahaz must have learned of his birth since the birth was to be a sign to him. Some writers believed that Ahaz’s son Hezekiah was the initial fulfillment. Whether the initial fulfillment was Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Hezekiah, or someone else, the name "Immanuel" may have been a secondary or less used name.

Some very fine scholars have believed that there was no initial fulfillment of this prophecy in Isaiah’s day, that no child born then served as a sign. Conservatives in this group believe that the only fulfillment was the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. [Note: E.g., Delitzsch, 1:216-20; Charles L. Feinberg, "The Virgin Birth in the Old Testament and Isaiah 7:14," Bibliotheca Sacra 119:475 (July 1962):251-58; Dyer, pp. 532-33; and Alfred Martin, Christ in Isaiah, part 1, p. 23.] The problem with this view is the lack of a sign in Isaiah’s day. One response to this problem by an advocate of this view follows.

". . . the assurance that Christ was to be born in Judah, of its royal family, might be a sign to Ahaz, that the kingdom should not perish in his day; and so far was the remoteness of the sign in this case from making it absurd or inappropriate, that the further off it was, the stronger the promise of continuance to Judah, which it guaranteed." [Note: J. A. Alexander, Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, p. 171. See also The New Scofield . . ., p. 719.]