Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. The Hebrew word rendered "virgin" in the A.V. would be more accurately rendered "damsel." It means a young woman of marriageable age, and is not the word which would be naturally used for virgin, if that was the point which it was desired to emphasise. (Prof. A. F. Kirkpatrick.)Our English word "maiden" comes as near, probably, as any to the Hebrew word. (Speaker's Commentary.)The Hebrew lexicons tell us that the word almah, here translated virgin, may denote any mature young woman, whether a virgin or not. So far as its derivation is concerned, this is undoubtedly the case; but in Biblical usage, the word denotes a virgin in every case where its meaning can be determined. The instances are, besides the text, that in the account of Rebekah (Genesis 24:43), that of the sister of Moses (Exodus 2:8), the word used in the plural (Psalm 68:25, 26; Song of Solomon 1:3; Song of Solomon 6:8), its use in the titles of Psalms (Psalm 46; 1 Chronicles 15:20), and its use in Proverbs 30:19. The last passage is the one chiefly relied on to prove that the word may denote a woman not a virgin; but, "the way of a man with a maid" there spoken of is something wonderful, incapable of being traced or understood, like the way of an eagle in the air, a serpent on a rock, a ship in the sea, and it is only in its application to that wonderful human experience, first love between a man and a virgin, that this description can find a full and complete significance. The use of the word in the Bible may not be full enough in itself to prove that almah necessarily means virgin, but it is sufficient to show that Septuagint translators probably chose deliberately and correctly, when they chose to translate the word, in this passage, by the Greek word that distinctively denotes a virgin, and that Matthew made no mistake in so understanding their translation. (Prof. W. J. Beecher, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. |
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