(23) Behold, a virgin shall be with child.--It is not so easy for us, as it seemed to St. Matthew, to trace in Isaiah's words the meaning which he assigns to them. As we find them in a literal translation from the Hebrew, the words of Isaiah 7:14 run thus:--"Behold, the maiden conceives and bears a son, and calls his name Immanuel." If we read these words in connection with the facts recorded in that chapter--the alliance of the kings of Syria and Israel against Judah, Isaiah's promise of deliverance, and his offer of a sign in attestation of his promise, the hypocritical refusal of that offer by Ahaz, who preferred resting on his plan of an alliance with Assyria--their natural meaning seems to be this:--The prophet either points to some maiden of marriageable years, or speaks as if he saw one in his vision of the future, and says that the sign shall be that she shall conceive and bear a son (the fulfilment of this prediction constituting the sign, without assuming a supernatural conception), and that she should give to that son a name which would embody the true hope of Israel--"God is with us." The early years of that child should be nourished, not on the ordinary food of a civilised and settled population, but on the clotted milk and wild honey, which were (as we see in the case of the Baptist) the food of the dwellers in the wilderness, and which appear in Matthew 1:21-22, as part of the picture of the desolation to which the country would be reduced by the Assyrian invasion. But in spite of that misery, even before the child should attain to the age at which he could refuse the evil and choose the good, the land of those whom Ahaz and his people were then dreading should be "forsaken of both her kings." So understood, all is natural and coherent. It must be added, however, that this child was associated by Isaiah with no common hopes. The land of Israel was to be his land (8:8). It is hardly possible not to connect his name with "the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father "of Isaiah 9:6; with the Rod and Branch of the Stem of Jesse that was to grow up and present the picture of an ideal king (Isaiah 11:1-9). All that we speak of as the Messianic hopes of the prophet clustered round the child Immanuel. Those hopes were, as we know, not fulfilled as he had expected. They remained for a later generation to feed on with yearning desire. But, so far as we know, they did not suggest to any Jewish interpreter the thought of a birth altogether supernatural. That thought did not enter into the popular expectations of the Messiah. It was indeed foreign to the prevailing feeling of the Jews as to the holiness of marriage and all that it involved, and would have commended itself to none but a small section of the more austere Essenes. St. Matthew, however, having to record the facts of our Lord's birth, and reading Isaiah with a mind full of the new truths which rested on the Incarnation, could not fail to be struck with the correspondence between the facts and the words which he here quotes, and which in the Greek translation were even more emphatic than in the Hebrew, and saw in them a prophecy that had at last been fulfilled. He does not say whether he looked on it as a conscious or unconscious prophecy. He was sure that the coincidence was not casual.

The view thus given deals, it is believed fairly, with both parts of the problem. If to some extent it modifies what till lately was the current view as to the meaning of Isaiah's prediction, it meets by anticipation the objection that the narrative was a mythical outgrowth of the prophecy as popularly received. It would be truer to say that it was the facts narrated that first gave occasion to this interpretation of the prophecy. St. Luke, who narrates the facts with far greater fulness than St. Matthew, does so without any reference to the words of the prophet.

Emmanuel.--As spoken by Isaiah, the name, like that of The Lord our Righteousness, applied by Jeremiah not only to the future Christ (Jeremiah 23:6), but to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 33:16), did not necessarily mean more than that "God was with His people," protecting, guiding, ruling them. The Church of Christ has, however, rightly followed the Evangelist in seeing in it the witness to a Presence more direct, personal, immediate than any that had been known before. It was more than a watchword and a hope--more than a "nomen et omen"--and had become a divine reality.

Verse 23. - Behold, a virgin ( the virgin, Revised Version) shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son. The difficulty of this quotation from Isaiah 7:14 is well known.

(1) If the word translated "virgin" ('almah) properly means this, and

(2) if it be also implied in the promise that the virginity was to be maintained until the birth of the son, then

(3)

(a) the fulfilment can have been only in the case of our Lord, and

(b) the promise was no real sign to Ahaz, and

(c) the context of the promise (according to which Rezin and Pekah were to perish in the lad's early childhood, vers. 15, 16) has no apparent reference to the promise itself.

(4) If, on 'the other hand, 'almah means only "young woman," the promise might easily be a sign to Ahaz; but, then, how is it that St. Matthew, or rather the angel, apparently lays so much stress on "virgin "? The answer is, as it seems, that

(1) 'almah, by derivation, means "young woman" (vide Cheyne). but in ordinary usage, "virgin."

(2) When the promise was uttered by Isaiah, the word suggested" virgin," but not (for who would have supposed such a thing?) maintenance of the virginity.

(3) The child, thus naturally born, should be called "Immanuel," in sign of God's presence with his people to deliver them from Rezin and Pekah, and, while he was still in childhood, this deliverance should come. The definite article prefixed to "virgin" (ha-'almah) either designated a person who was known to the prophet and perhaps also to Ahaz, or, as "the article of species" (Cheyne), pictured the person more definitely to the mind, though in herself unknown. Thus the promise meant to Ahaz and Isaiah that a woman, at that time a virgin, should bear a son, synchronous with whose childhood should be the Lord's deliverance of his people. It is possible that Isaiah further saw in this child' the hoped-for Messiah, identifying it with that of Matthew 9:6, the long time that was yet to intervene being hidden from him.

(4) The angel sees a further meaning in the promise than either Ahaz or Isaiah saw, and perceives that, in the providence of God, the words were so chosen as to form a promise of a virgin-birth, the son being of suck origin that, in the highest sense, he could be truly called "Immanuel." "It seems not unwise to suppose that God, who designed to send his Son to be the Deliverer of mankind, so ordered the course of the world in his Divine providence that many things should tell of the coming Saviour, so that when he appeared those who had studied God's revelation should tirol that the scheme of salvation had been one and the same throughout all time. Thus by past events, which had specific meaning in their own time, are found to have further con-rained a prefiguration of greater things in time to come; and to have been promises, ready to receive their highest accomplish-merit as soon as the fitness of time should appear" (Dr. Lumby). And they shall call. Men generally, in virtue of his true nature. His name Emmanuel (Revised Version. Immanuel, as Isaiah 7:14), which being interpreted is, God with us. St. Matthew emphasizes the interpretation in order to, bring out the fact that this Son, now to be born to Joseph, shall not only be Jesus, Saviour, but also God with us; he is the manifestation of God in our midst. The thought is parallel to that of John 1:14.

1:18-25 Let us look to the circumstances under which the Son of God entered into this lower world, till we learn to despise the vain honours of this world, when compared with piety and holiness. The mystery of Christ's becoming man is to be adored, not curiously inquired into. It was so ordered that Christ should partake of our nature, yet that he should be pure from the defilement of original sin, which has been communicated to all the race of Adam. Observe, it is the thoughtful, not the unthinking, whom God will guide. God's time to come with instruction to his people, is when they are at a loss. Divine comforts most delight the soul when under the pressure of perplexed thoughts. Joseph is told that Mary should bring forth the Saviour of the world. He was to call his name Jesus, a Saviour. Jesus is the same name with Joshua. And the reason of that name is clear, for those whom Christ saves, he saves from their sins; from the guilt of sin by the merit of his death, and from the power of sin by the Spirit of his grace. In saving them from sin, he saves them from wrath and the curse, and all misery, here and hereafter. Christ came to save his people, not in their sins, but from their sins; and so to redeem them from among men, to himself, who is separate from sinners. Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, speedily, without delay, and cheerfully, without dispute. By applying the general rules of the written word, we should in all the steps of our lives, particularly the great turns of them, take direction from God, and we shall find this safe and comfortable.Behold, a virgin shall be with child,.... These words are rightly applied to the virgin Mary and her son Jesus, for of no other can they be understood; not of Ahaz's wife and his son Hezekiah, who was already born, and must be eleven or twelve years of age when these words were spoken; nor of any other son of Ahaz by her or any other person since no other was Lord of Judea; nor of the wife of Isaiah, and any son of his, who never had any that was king of Judah. The prophecy is introduced here as in Isaiah with a "behold!" not only to raise and fix the attention, but to denote that it was something wonderful and extraordinary which was about to be related; and is therefore called a "sign", wonder, or miracle; which lay not, as some Jewish writers (g) affirm, in this, that the person spoken of was unfit for conception at the time of the prophecy, since no such thing is intimated; or in this, that it should be a son and not a daughter (h), which is foretold; for the wonder lies not in the truth of the prediction, but in the extraordinariness of the thing predicted; much less in this (i), that the child should eat butter and honey as soon as born; since nothing is more natural and common with new born infants, than to take in any sort of liquids which are sweet and pleasant. But the sign or wonder lay in this, that a "virgin" should "conceive" or "be with child"; for the Evangelist is to be justified in rendering, by "a virgin"; by the Septuagint having so rendered it some hundreds of years before him, by the sense of the word, which comes from and which signifies to "hide" or "cover"; virgins being such who are unknown to, and not uncovered by men, and in the Eastern countries were kept recluse from the company and conversation of men; and by the use of the word in all other places, Genesis 24:43. The last of these texts the Jews triumph in, as making for them, and against us, but without any reason; since it does not appear that the "maid" and the "adulterous woman" are one and the same person; and if they were, the vitiated woman might be called a maid or virgin, according to her own account of herself, or in the esteem of others who knew her not, or as antecedent to her defilement; see Deuteronomy 22:28. Besides, could this be understood of any young woman married or unmarried, that had known a man, it would be no wonder, no surprising thing that she should "conceive" or "be with child", and "bring forth a son". It is added,

and they shall call his name Emmanuel. The difference between Isaiah and Matthew is very inconsiderable, it being in the one "thou shalt call", that is, thou virgin shalt call him by this name; and in the other "they shall call", that is, Joseph, Mary, and others; for, besides that some copies read the text in Matthew "thou shalt call", the words both in the one and the other may be rendered impersonally, "and shall be called"; and the meaning is, not that he should be commonly known and called by such a name, any more than by any, or all of those mentioned in Isaiah 9:6, but only that he should be so, which is a frequent use of the word; or he should be that, and so accounted by others, which answers to the signification of this name, which the Evangelist says,

being interpreted is God with us: for it is a compound word of "God" and "with us", and well agrees with Jesus, who is God in our nature, the word that was made flesh and dwelt among us. John 1:14, and is the one and only Mediator between God and us, 1 Timothy 2:5 (k). So the Septuagint interpret the word in Isaiah 8:8.

(g) Jarchi. in Isaiah 7.14. (h) Gaon. in Aben Ezra, in ib. (i) Kimchi & Aben Ezra in ib. R. Isaac Chizuk. Emun. p. 1. c. 21. (k) See more of this in a book of mine, called "The Prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah, literally fulfilled in Jesus", ch. 5. p. 92, 93, &c.