Matthew 1:23

The virgin (ἡ παρθένος) Note the demonstrative force of the article, pointing to a particular person. Not, some virgin or other. They shall call (καλὲσουσιν) In Matthew 1:21, it is thou shalt call. The original of Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14) has she shall call; but Matthew generalizes the singular into the plural, and quotes the prophecy in a form suited to its larger and final fulfilment: men shall call his name Immanuel, as they shall come to the practical knowledge that God will indeed dwell with men upon the earth. Immanuel (Hebrew, God is with us) To protect and save. A comment is furnished by Isaiah 8:10, "Devise a device, but it shall come to naught; speak a word, but it shall not stand, for with us is God." Some suppose that Isaiah embodied the purport of his message in the names of his children: Maher-shalal-hash-baz (speed-prey), a warning of the coming of the fierce Assyrians; Shear-Jashub (a remnant shall return), a reminder of God's mercy to Israel in captivity, and Immanuel (God is with us), a promise of God's presence and succor. However this may be, the promise of the name is fulfilled in Jesus (compare "Lo, I am with you alway," Matthew 28:20) by his helpful and saving presence with his people in their sorrow, their conflict with sin, and their struggle with death.

23 . a virgin shall be with child ] Properly, according to the Greek text and to the original Hebrew, “ The virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they (Hebr. she) shall call his name God with us;” see Isaiah 7:14 . The historical crisis was this, Ahaz is alarmed by the threatened invasion of Pekah and Rezin—the confederate kings of Samaria and Damascus. Isaiah reassures Ahaz, who hypocritically refuses to ask for a sign. Yet a sign is given. She, who is now unmarried, shall bear a son, probably a scion of the royal house of David; he shall be called Emmanuel, and before he arrives at years of discretion the deliverance shall come, though a heavier distress is at hand. The prophecy is distinctly Messianic, but the sign in Isaiah is not concerned with the manner of the child’s birth, but with the name and the deliverance which should happen in his infancy. Therefore, the weight of the reference is to the name “Emmanuel” and to the true Son of David, whose birth was the sign of His people’s deliverance.

Matthew 1:23 . Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth, &c. — Some have unhappily supposed that this famous prophecy immediately related to the birth of a child of Isaiah’s in a natural way, and that it only referred to Christ in a secondary sense. But surely a son’s being born of one then a virgin, when she was married, was no such extraordinary event as to answer such a pompous introduction as we meet with in the viith of Isaiah. Had this been all, what need was there of these words, The Lord himself shall give you a sign? What need of that solemn notice, Behold! there being nothing new or strange in all this. Besides, the promise, A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, is made as a sign or miracle, to confirm the house of David in God’s promise made to him, respecting the perpetuity of his kingdom. But what sign or miracle could it be, that a woman should be with child after the ordinary manner? what wonder was there in this? As to Isaiah 7:16 , Before the child (or, as it is in the Hebrew, this child, ) shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings, it seems most reasonable to interpret it as referring to Shear-jashub, whom Isaiah was ordered to take in his hand for no other imaginable reason but that something remarkable was to be said of him.

So that their deliverance from the two kings of Syria and Israel, before Isaiah’s son, (whom he had taken in his hand,) should be able to distinguish between good and evil, was to be considered by them as typical of a much greater deliverance by the Messiah, in due time to be born of a future virgin. See notes on Isaiah 7:11-16 . Thus, according to the usual manner of the prophets, the people of God, in their present distress, are comforted with the promise of the Messiah hereafter to appear. They shall call his name — That is, his name shall be called; a personal verb being put for an impersonal, as is frequently the case; or, as some copies read it, Thou shalt call, or, he shall be owned and accounted; Emmanuel, God with us — God in our nature, by whose incarnation, God is united to our nature; and by whose mediation, God is reconciled to us and is present with us. The names of Christ, it must be observed, are of two kinds: 1st, proper and distinguishing, pointing out his person; 2dly, descriptive, either of his person or offices, such as there are many in Scripture, as David, the Branch, Wonderful, Counsellor. It is to be observed, that in the Scripture language, to be called, and to be, are the same thing. It is, therefore, no objection against the application of these words to Christ, that he did not bear the name Emmanuel, if he really was God with us, which is the import of it. And that he was, is sufficiently proved from his being entitled the mighty God by Isaiah, ch

Behold, a {k} 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. (k) There is an article added in the Hebrew and Greek text, to point out the woman and set her forth plainly: as we would say, the virgin, or a certain virgin.

23. Behold, a virgin—It should be "the virgin" meaning that particular virgin destined to this unparalleled distinction. shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us—Not that He was to have this for a proper name (like "Jesus"), but that He should come to be known in this character, as God manifested in the flesh, and the living bond of holy and most intimate fellowship between God and men from henceforth and for ever.

(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 1:23 . Ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται Υἱὸν , καὶ καλέσουσι τὸ ὄνομα Αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουὴλ — Behold the virgin shall have in her womb [or conceive], and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel .—The LXX. render Isaiah 7:14 , thus— Ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ λήψεται Υἱὸν , καὶ καλέσεις κ . τ . λ .— Behold the virgin shall conceive in her womb a Son, and thou shalt call , etc.— ἰδοὺ , Behold! )—a particle especially adapted for pointing out a Sign .—See Isaiah 7:14 .— ἡ παρθένος , the virgin ) In the original Hebrew, the word employed is העלמה ;[63] and עלמה denotes a virgin ;[64] whether you derive it from עלם ,[65] so that it may be one who has escaped the notice of man,[66] who has not been known by man (cf. Matthew 1:25 , and Luke 1:34 ), for נעלם ( to be hidden, to lie hid, to escape the notice of ), and ירע ( to know , etc.), are opposed to each other, both in their general signification, as in Leviticus 5:3-4 , and also in this special one: or whether עלמה (the verb cognate with which the Syriac translator has employed to represent ἨΚΜΑΣΕΝ [67] in Revelation 14:18 ), signify ἀκμάια , in the flower of her age . The Hebrew article ה ( the ), prefixed in the original to the word under consideration (concerning which article cf. Gnomon on ch. Matthew 18:17 ), points out a particular individual visible on the mirror of Divine prescience.