Matthew
The first evangelist
gives us the key to the prophecy of Is. 7:14.
“The maiden (ha ‘almah)
is with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Emmanuel.”
Mystery and ambiguity
enshroud the text of Isaiah. Too often short cuts are taken in the task of
discovering the virginal conception in it. The text does not have the Hebrew
word betulah which properly means “virgin,” but ‘almah
which means “a maiden of marriageable age,” not necessarily a virgin (Gn.
24:43; Ex. 2:8; Ps. 68:26; Song 1:3, 6, 8, and especially Prov. 30:19). Some would
say that the Greek translation of the Septuagint before Christ’s time took a
great step forward in this regard when it translated the Hebrew word by parthenos,
the Greek word for “virgin.” But one can hardly insist on any progress in
terminology therein implied, since in the same Septuagint translation Dinah,
who was raped, is nevertheless called by the same name “virgin” (Parthenos here
also) in Gn. 34:3. If the prophecy of Isaiah is read in the framework of the
time when it was written it is not clear that he wished to affirm a virginal
conception. What the term “maiden” or “virgin” does signify in this text,
surely, is that the child spoke of if her first-born.
At times much is made
of the fact that apparently this maiden receives the task of giving a name to
her son and thus exercises a right that normally belongs to the father; no
father therefore seems to have been involved in this birth. But the mother of
Ishmael (Gn. 16:11) and the mother of Samson (Jg. 13:24) also fulfill this
name-giving role, even though the fathers in both cases are quite active, as
appears from each of the narratives.
Moreover, if the
Septuagint translation is said to show some “progress” toward a recognition of
virginity here (Parthenos for ‘almah), mention should also be
made of the fact that this same translation exhibits a regression on the other
point of the name-giving, since according to the Septuagint translation the
king Achaz is to give a name to the child on Is. 7:14: “You will give
him the name Emmanuel,” the prophet says to the king.
On the other hand,
Isaiah’s oracle cannot be tossed off lightly. It presents evident intimations
of a messianic character such as the eschatological coloring of the immediate
context and the transcendental qualities of Emmanuel in passages that follow
(Is. 9:1-6; 11:1-9).
Even if, as is most
probable, for the immediate future the oracle envisages the birth of Hezekiah,
it envisages the Messiah and his Mother on a further and distant level. The Septuagint
has brought this eschatological level into relief. The mysterious prophetic
present of the Hebrew principle is there made into a future verb: “The maiden
is with child “ becomes more specific in “The virgin will conceive.”
In citing this
Septuagint reading Matthew recognizes Mary, the mysterious Virgin, sketched in
dim outline. It is she who conceived virginally, by the Holy Spirit (Mt. 1:18,
21; cf. Is. 11:2), to the exclusion of all carnal intervention (Mt. 1:18, 25).
Certainly it was not Is. 7:14 that gave him the idea a priori of a
virginal birth. Rather, in order to discover the meaning of this disconcerting
fact about Jesus’ origin, known from traditions emanating from Jesus’ own
family, he had recourse to Isaiah’s oracle.
With the above
consideration in mind it is possible to read his entire text with profit:
“This is how Jesus Christ
came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came
to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her
husband Joseph, being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity,
decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when the
angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she was conceived what
is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name
him Jesus because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ Now
all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him
Emmanuel,’ a name which means ‘God-is-with us.’” (Mt. 1:18-23)
“God-is-with-us”: In
Isaiah’s context these words had only an indeterminate sense and could be
understood to mean a simple divine assistance (Is. 8:8, 10). With Matthew they
begin to disclose the sense that the Church recognizes in them today, the
divinity of the Messiah. In this fullness of meaning is to be found the
conjunction of two great series of texts that run through the whole Old
Testament, one of them elevating the Messiah even to divine attributes, the
other describing the descent of a divine hypostasis (the Word, Wisdom) among
men. (René
Laurentin, A Short Treatise on the Virgin Mary [6th ed.;
trans. Charles Neumann; Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2022], 12-15)
The ascending movement which tends toward a divinization
of the Messiah proceeds from 2 Sam 7:12-17 and Is. 9:5-6. Cf. Ps. 2:2;
45(44):7; 72(710:5-12; 110(109):1-5. The movement suggesting the descent of a divine
hypostasis appear in Pr. 8; Sirach 24 (cf. 1:1-10); Wisd. 7:15-30; in these
texts Wisdom, coming from the mouth of God, is pleased to dwell among men. Dan.
7:13-14 is in this same direction.
The two movements are seen to merge particularly as one
follows the evolution of the idea of kingship in the Old Testament. At the
beginning, in Samuel’s day, there was opposition and contradiction between the
kingship of Yahweh, on whom the theocratic regime was founded, and kingship
conferred on a man (1 Sam. 8:6-19). But little by little Yahweh King of Israel
(Num. 23:21; Dt. 33:5; Is. 6:1-12; Mich. 2:13; Zeph. 3:15) and the Messian Son
of David (2 Sam. 7:12-17) tend to coalesce. The trend can be followed in Is.
9:6 and Ps. 2, 44, and 109 cited at the beginning of this note; cf. also Ps. 72(71).
The point of convergence most remarkable on the level of the Old Testament is
undoubtedly Dan. 7:13-14, where the “Son of Man” appears on the clouds of
heaven and seems to exercise the royal functions of Wisdom (Pr. 8:15-16; Wisd.
8:1).
The two lines merge again in the gospel of the annunciation
where the Son promised to Mary realizes, to a degree superior to all the Old
Testament texts, the traits of both the Davidic descendent and Yahweh, the
transcendental king. (Ibid., 15 n. 5)
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