Isaiah 7:14

Behold, a Virgin Shall Conceive

Quoted by the apostles in Matthew 1:23, in the older Greek wording

Side by Side

The Older Text

Septuagint, translated before Messiah

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel.

The Later Text

Masoretic, as Jewish Bibles translate it (1917)

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.

Quoted in Matthew 1:23

The apostle’s Old Testament

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.

Your KJV reads: “a virgin,” the meaning the Greek gives and Matthew quotes, not the “young woman” of the Jewish translations.

See what changed and why ↓

What Your Bible Says

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

Matthew quotes this verse when Mary is found with child before she and Joseph came together. The sign is a virgin who conceives. That is why it is a sign.

What the Jewish Bible Says

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.
Isaiah 7:14, Jewish Publication Society, 1917

Here the sign is a young woman who has a baby. Young women have babies every day. The wonder is gone, and so is the claim that Isaiah spoke of Mary.

What Changed

The Hebrew word is almah. The Jewish scholars who made the Greek translation, long before Messiah was born, chose parthenos, the plain Greek word for a virgin. No one accused them of a Christian slant. There were no Christians yet.

After Matthew used the verse, the fight began. In the second century after the cross, new Jewish translations into Greek, such as Aquila’s, replaced parthenos with a word meaning only “young woman.” Today’s Jewish Bibles follow that later choice. The Hebrew letters stayed; the meaning was pushed down.

Which One Is Right?

The Greek Bible, made by Jewish scholars before Messiah, says virgin.

Genesis 24 shows how Scripture uses the word. Rebekah is called a virgin no man had known (verse 16), and the same Rebekah is called almah (verse 43). The Greek translators rendered that almah as parthenos too.

Matthew 1:23 quotes the Greek.

The later Jewish translations are the ones that changed the word, and only after the verse was used of Mary.

Purpose of the Change

Lowering the word from virgin to young woman removes the sign. The effect is that Isaiah no longer points to a birth no man could cause, and Matthew appears to have stretched the prophet.

The Bottom Line

Before Messiah, Jewish scholars read “virgin.” Only after He came did the word grow younger.

The child of the sign is caught up to the throne of His Elohim: “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne” (Revelation 12:5).

Dig Deeper The evidence, for anyone who wants it

Rebekah at the Well

Abraham’s servant prays for “the virgin” who comes to draw water (Genesis 24:43). The Hebrew there is almah. Earlier the same chapter describes Rebekah plainly: “a virgin, neither had any man known her” (Genesis 24:16). The Jewish translators of the Greek rendered the almah of verse 43 with parthenos. They used the same word in Isaiah 7:14. In their hands, almah meant an unmarried maiden, and an unmarried maiden in Israel was a virgin.

The Virgin in Luke

To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
Luke 1:27 KJV

Luke uses the same Greek word twice in one verse. The sign Isaiah gave is the birth Luke records.

God With Us

Some teachers say the name Immanuel proves the child is Elohim Himself. Hebrew names regularly carry a statement about Elohim: Elijah means “my El is Yah,” Ezekiel “El strengthens.” No one thinks those men were El. The name declares what Elohim is doing: He is with His people through this Son. The Son Himself spoke of “my God, and your God” (John 20:17).

An Honest Note

Almah by itself means a young unmarried woman, and Hebrew has another word that stresses virginity more directly. The Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14 was not altered. The difference here is in how the word is translated. The honest point is this: the oldest translation, made by Jewish scholars with no stake in the argument, understood Isaiah’s word as virgin. The change to “young woman” came later, and it came in answer to Matthew.