The Virgin and the Young Woman
Why Isaiah 7:14 Changes Everything
Hello brothers and sisters,
Welcome to the inaugural post of an illuminating journey through Scripture. If you’ve followed my work on the Genesis parallel Bible project, you know I’m fascinated by what happens when we compare translations; not to tear down our confidence in God’s Word, but to deepen it. Let’s begin with perhaps the most famous prophecy in the entire Bible.
A Christmas Memory
Every December, churches around the world proclaim it. Sunday school children memorize it. Christians of every tradition recognize it instantly:
“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, KJV)
This verse has anchored Christian faith in the virgin birth for two millennia. It appears in nativity pageants, on Christmas cards, and in theological treatises defending the deity of Christ. When Matthew quotes this prophecy in his Gospel, declaring its fulfillment in Jesus, he establishes one of the most foundational doctrines of Christianity.
But here’s where things get interesting; and why I’m writing this series.
The Hebrew Bible that sits on your shelf, the one behind your King James Version and your World English Bible, doesn’t actually say “virgin.”
Let me show you what it says, and more importantly, why that matters.
The Text Itself
The Masoretic Hebrew Text (basis for KJV and WEBUS, along with virtually every modern translation): “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the young woman (הָעַלְמָה, ha-almah) shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
The Septuagint Greek Text (translated by Jewish scholars 100–200+ years before Christ): “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin (ἡ παρθένος, hē parthenos) shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
And there’s the rub. The Hebrew uses almah (עַלְמָה), while the Greek uses parthenos (παρθένος).
This isn’t a minor grammatical quirk buried in some obscure genealogy. This is the verse Christians point to as proof that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. And the word choice matters profoundly.
What Do These Words Actually Mean?
Let’s be linguistically honest here.
Hebrew: Almah (עַלְמָה)
The Hebrew word almah appears nine times in the Old Testament. It refers to a young woman of marriageable age. Specifically, a woman who has reached sexual maturity but is unmarried. The cultural assumption in ancient Israel was that such a woman would be a virgin, but that’s not the explicit meaning of the word itself. The semantic range of almah emphasizes youth and marriageability, not necessarily virginal status.
If the Hebrew text wanted to unambiguously say “virgin,” it had a perfectly good word for that: betulah (בְּתוּלָה), which appears 50+ times in the Old Testament with explicit reference to virginity.
But Isaiah didn’t use betulah. He used almah.
Now, before you think I’m dismantling the virgin birth, hold on. Because here’s where Chuck Missler and other scholars make a compelling linguistic argument: Every single time the word almah appears in the Hebrew Bible, it refers to an unmarried woman. And in ancient Israelite culture, that meant a virgin. When the context is examined, almah never describes a married woman or a woman known to have been sexually active.
Genesis 24:43 uses almah to describe Rebekah before she married Isaac, and verse 16 explicitly calls her a betulah (virgin). Exodus 2:8 uses almah for Miriam, Moses’ sister, who was clearly unmarried and young. Proverbs 30:19 speaks of “the way of a man with an almah,” the context being courtship, not adultery. Song of Songs uses almah to describe young women in the royal court, women who would have been carefully guarded.
So while almah doesn’t technically mean virgin the way betulah does, its functional meaning in ancient Hebrew culture carried that strong implication. An almah was presumed to be a virgin unless proven otherwise.
Greek: Parthenos (παρθένος)
The Greek word parthenos, on the other hand, is unambiguous. It means “virgin.” It is clear and specific in referring to a woman who has not had sexual relations. When the Jewish translators of the Septuagint (the LXX) did their work in Alexandria somewhere between 250 and 140 B.C. (the exact date is a matter of scholarly debate) to translate the book of Isaiah into Greek, they chose parthenos to translate almah.
This was not a mistake. These were native Hebrew speakers, intimately familiar with their own Scriptures and culture. They understood the nuance of almah. And they chose the most explicit Greek word for virginity available to them.
Why?
The Historical Context: A Sign to Ahaz
To understand why this word choice matters so profoundly, we need to go back to the original context. Isaiah 7:14 isn’t floating in a theological vacuum, after all. It’s embedded in a specific historical crisis.
The year is approximately 735 B.C. Ahaz, king of Judah, is terrified. Two neighboring kings— Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel —have formed an alliance and are marching on Jerusalem. They intend to depose Ahaz and install their own puppet king. Ahaz is considering calling on Assyria for help, which would make Judah a vassal state.
God sends Isaiah the prophet to Ahaz with a message: Don’t be afraid. Trust Me. These two kings are finished. Their kingdoms won’t last.
Then God does something remarkable: He tells Ahaz to ask for a sign; any sign, as deep as Sheol (roughly equivalent to the Greek “Hades,” the place where the spirits of the dead are said to rest until the resurrection) or as high as heaven. Ahaz, in false piety, refuses: “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD” (Isaiah 7:12).
But here’s the thing: when God explicitly tells you to ask for a sign, refusing isn’t humility, it’s disobedience. Ahaz doesn’t want a sign because he’s already decided to trust Assyria instead of trusting God.
So God gives him a sign anyway: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.“ (v. 14)
Now stop for a moment and think about this. God has just offered Ahaz any miraculous sign in the cosmos, anything to prove His power and faithfulness. Ahaz refuses. So God says, “Fine, I’ll choose the sign.”
And the sign is... a young woman getting pregnant?
If almah just means “young woman” with no miraculous element, this makes no sense. Young women get pregnant every day. That’s not a sign; that’s Tuesday. Why would God respond to Ahaz’s refusal to ask for a miraculous sign by offering something utterly ordinary?
The sign only makes sense as a sign— something extraordinary, something that points beyond itself —if the conception is miraculous. A virgin conceiving isn’t ordinary. It’s a cosmic interruption, a divine stamp on history saying, “Pay attention. God is acting here.”
What the Church Fathers Understood
The early Church didn’t debate this. From the earliest Christian writers, Isaiah 7:14 was understood as a prophecy of virgin birth.
Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD), in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, explicitly argues that the Isaiah prophecy required a virgin birth to be a true sign. He writes that if the conception were merely natural, it would be no sign at all.
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180 AD) treats the virgin birth as foundational to Christian theology, citing Isaiah 7:14 as the primary Old Testament witness. He argues that just as sin entered the world through a virgin* (Eve before the Fall), redemption must come through a virgin.
*On a side note, this is technically incorrect. But I’ll be addressing that fallacy in a future post.
Origen (c. 240 AD) points out that the Septuagint’s use of parthenos predates Christianity by centuries. This wasn’t Christian manipulation of the text; it was how ancient Jews themselves understood Isaiah’s prophecy.
Now, to be fair, Jewish interpretation has historically pushed back on this reading. Post-Christian Jewish scholars have argued that Isaiah was referring to a contemporary woman in Ahaz’s time, possibly Ahaz’s own wife or Isaiah’s wife, and that the “sign” was simply that before the child reached maturity, the threatening kingdoms would fall.
This interpretation has merit from a historical-grammatical standpoint. Isaiah 7:16 does say, “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.” This clearly refers to immediate geopolitical events.
But here’s the tension: prophecy in Isaiah often operates on multiple levels; immediate fulfillment and distant fulfillment. The “sign” can address Ahaz’s crisis and point forward to the ultimate Immanuel who would save His people. This is called typological prophecy (otherwise known as “double fulfillment”), where near-term events foreshadow far-term realities.
The early Church recognized both layers. The conception of Isaiah’s son (or another contemporary child) functioned as a near-term sign to Ahaz. But the ultimate virgin birth of Immanuel— ”God with us” —was the sign that transcended Ahaz’s moment and echoed through history.
Why Matthew Quotes the Septuagint
This brings us to the most crucial point: When Matthew quotes this prophecy in his Gospel, he doesn’t translate from the Hebrew. He quotes the Septuagint.
“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, KJV)
Matthew uses the Greek word parthenos: virgin. He’s not just applying Isaiah 7:14 to Jesus; he’s intentionally using the Greek translation that makes the miraculous nature of the birth explicit.
Why does Matthew do this?
Because Matthew is writing primarily to a Jewish audience, and this was their Bible. By the first century, most diaspora Jews read the Scriptures in Greek, not Hebrew. The Septuagint was their authoritative text. When Matthew quotes the LXX, he’s quoting their Scriptures, showing that Jesus fulfills what they have been reading all along.
But there’s something deeper here: the choice of parthenos in the Septuagint— made at least 140 years before Jesus was born —means that the Jewish translators themselves saw something in almah that required the specificity of virgin. They understood the prophetic weight of this text.
When Christians today read Matthew’s Gospel and see him quoting “the virgin shall conceive,” we’re not reading a Christian spin on a Jewish text. We’re reading a Jewish understanding of Isaiah that predates Christianity. An understanding that Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recognizes as the true meaning all along.
If you found this helpful or illuminating, or especially if it challenged your assumptions about Scripture, please share it with a friend who needs to hear it.
What This Means for Reading Scripture
Here’s why this matters for my larger project, and why I’m inviting you to join me in this journey through the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text (in the form of contrasting the King James Version and the World English Bible).
The New Testament writers primarily used the Septuagint. When they quote the Old Testament— and they do so hundreds of times —they’re most often quoting the Greek translation, not the Hebrew original. This means that if we want to understand how the apostles read the Old Testament, how they saw Jesus in its pages, how they preached the Gospel from its prophecies, we must engage with the Septuagint.
Translation choices shape theology. The difference between “young woman” and “virgin” isn’t trivial. It affects how we understand prophecy, how we defend the virgin birth, and how we proclaim Christ. When we compare translations, we’re not playing academic games. What we’re doing is digging into the foundations of what we believe and why.
The text is more wonderful than we realized. Far from undermining faith, careful study of these differences actually deepens our awe. That Jewish scholars somewhere between 250–140 B.C. chose parthenos for almah, that Matthew saw this choice as prophetically significant, that the early Church recognized the continuity between Isaiah’s promise and Jesus’ birth… all of this shows us a God who has been orchestrating redemption history across languages, cultures, and centuries.
Where We’re Heading
With this publication, I’ll be exploring passages where the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text diverge. I do this not to sow doubt, but to enrich understanding. Some differences are minor; others, like Isaiah 7:14, are profound. Each one teaches us something about translation, about Scripture, and about the God who inspired it all.
This isn’t about declaring one translation “wrong” and another “right.” It’s about recognizing that translation is interpretation, that every linguistic choice carries theological weight, and that comparing these versions helps us see the text from multiple angles.
It’s almost like looking at a gemstone and discovering new facets of light with each turn.
Isaiah 7:14 is the perfect place to start because it shows us why this work matters. The Septuagint isn’t just an ancient curiosity. It’s the Bible Jesus read. It’s the Bible the apostles preached from. It’s the text that shaped the early Church’s understanding of who Jesus is and what He came to do.
When we read “the virgin shall conceive” and trace that reading back through Matthew to the Septuagint to the ancient Jewish translators who first rendered almah as parthenos, we’re standing in a tradition that spans millennia. We’re hearing the same promise that Ahaz heard, that Mary heard, that the shepherds heard.
We’re hearing the promise that God Himself would come to dwell with us.
Immanuel. God with us.
That’s the sign. That’s the Gospel.
And that’s why every word matters.
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