Sunday, September 15, 2024

René Laurentin on the Matthew 1:23 and הָעַלְמָה being translated as η παρθενος in Isaiah 7:14 (LXX)

  

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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