Some prophetic messages are lost in translation, and some became a much bigger deal than they were ever imagined. The Virgin who did or did not give birth in today’s chapter who was or was not one is one case in point.
A lifetime passes between chapters 6 and 7 - King Uzziah’s grandson, Ahaz, takes over for his father Yotam, and is now the king, confronted by Isaiah - by now an old man, a respected prophet but with unpopular political views. There is a war looming, Assyria is on the horizon, Isaiah proposes to action, Ahaz refuses to listen to him - it’s a clash of values. Ahaz is worried that the King of Israel, in alliance with the King of Aram, are about to launch a war on Jerusalem. Isaiah’s suggestions are not what he wants to hear. So to prove his point and YHWH’s intentions Isaiah brings a celestial sign - a peculiar promise that will become one of the biggest points of contention between Jews and Christians:
לָ֠כֵ֠ן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם א֑וֹת הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙ וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את שְׁמ֖וֹ עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל׃
Assuredly, my Sovereign will give you a sign nonetheless! Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:10
The next part of the prophecy is that this child named Immanu-El - God is with us, will barely wean and start to learn to differentia good and bad, by the time the current political threat will pass and a new one will appear. In other words - this kid will bring good news.
Isaiah doesn’t specify who the young woman who will give birth is - one of the king’s wives? Isaiah’s own wife? He also does not say ‘virgin’ - he says ‘Alma’ - which means young woman, or marriage-worthy-maiden, a term that appears in this precise context 9 times through the Hebrew Bible. The term does not refer explicitly to virginity. The Hebrew word for that is ‘Betulah.’ But the implication is that she is a virgin and by the time the Septuagint Greek translation of the Bible gets to Isaiah - the term they use is parthenos, which is the Greek word for virgin. Did the Septuagint translators consciously have perceived alma as a virgin because young girls were supposed to be virgins until marriage? Or did they have another agenda?
We won’t know what either Isaiah or his translators meant. And it doesn’t seem to have been very effective as far as convincing the king. But we do, however, know something of the astonishing afterlife of this verse. By the time The New Testament comes around, almost a millennia after Isaiah, this maiden-virgin becomes the basis for the sacred story first found in the Gospel of Matthew:
“His mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. … All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
Before this baby will be identified as Jesus, readers of Isaiah assumed that it’s either one of the prophet’s sons - they will be mentioned through the book with symbolic names, or King Ahaz’ future son and heir - Hezekiah. But Jesus, clearly, won. By the medieval era, the Italian Jewish scholar RADAK, Rabbi David Kimchi, living in a very Catholic context writes quite defiantly about this chapter “Alma means “young woman,” not “virgin,” and she is either the wife of the king or the prophet, not a virgin at all. “
Unclear how helpful this was to ongoing Jewish-Christian relations.
Regardless of whatever Isaiah and all future translators and clerics thought - is it not time for men to step away from any sort of spiritual or poetical references to the way women’s bodies work and the choices they should make over how and if they use them? In our ever so slow post-patriarchal path the mis-use of such verses and the legend of purity that comes at the expense of physical and mental health for so many - esp women - in this manmade culture — we need Immanuel to be not about a savior but about a a collective demand for change.
Back in Jerusalem: The political crisis is looming, and the king who wants to celestial signs or prophetic warnings, ignores Isaiah and proceeds to make a fateful vassal-promise to the Assyrian empire. Whoever comes after him will pay the price, regardless of divine promises and pregnant maidens with national hope within their mysterious divine beings.
image: The Pregnant Virgin ©Malagoli, 2002
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