06. The Promise of the Virgin Birth

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.  (Isa 7:14 ASV)

The prophet Isaiah had a long ministry of more than 40 years.

‘The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.’  (Isa 1:1 ASV)

He was part of the Southern Kingdom of Judah but in his later years he witnessed the Northern Kingdom of Israel being taken into a terminal captivity by the Assyrians. He witnessed the godly king Uzziah being seduced by the lust for power and prestige and ending his days in quarantine as a leper. The superpowers were moving at the borders, and Isaiah predicted cataclysmic consequences for the nation state of Judah. In a time of international tension he witnessed the arrogant idolatry of Ahaz and brought him a word from God. He warned Ahaz that if Ahaz did not believe God’s word to him then his crown was at risk.

Reading the record in its context makes it clear that Ahaz ignored the warning and God gave him a second chance…

 ‘And Jehovah spake again unto Ahaz, saying…’  (Isa 7:10 ASV)

Ahaz: king of Judah (2 Kings 16; Isa. 7-9; 2 Chr. 28). He gave himself up to a life of wickedness and idolatry. Notwithstanding the remonstrances and warnings of Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah, he appealed for help against Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, who threatened Jerusalem, to Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, to the great injury of his kingdom and his own humilating subjection to the Assyrians (2 Kings 16:7, 9; 15:29). He also introduced among his people many heathen and idolatrous customs (Isa. 8:19; 38:8; 2 Kings 23:12). He died at the age of thirty-five years, after reigning sixteen years (B.C. 740–724), and was succeeded by his son Hezekiah. Because of his wickedness he was “not brought into the sepulchre of the kings.”

Easten’s Bible Dictionary

What grace! It brings to mind the history of Jonah and the record…

 ‘And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time…’  (Jonah 3:1 ASV)

In the face of Ahaz’s unbelief God was willing to give him a divine sign, and he gave Ahaz the prerogative of choosing just what the sign would be. Grace, grace! But Ahaz rejected the offer with rebellious piety; he would not ‘tempt God.’ Isaiah remonstrated with him and declared that God will choose a sign.

‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’  (Isa 7:14 ASV)

The original purpose of the sign was to show how quickly events would change. Before the child was weaned the international crises would be radically changed. We do not have the time to enter too deeply into the historical record but here we have another of those passages where the immediate fulfilment is only a prelude to a glorious fulfilment of the coming of the Messiah.

Seven hundred years before that glorious fulfilment, Isaiah bears witness to the truth of God that stirs in his heart. We have no sure record of the short-term fulfilment of this prophecy. But the record of the scripture bears witness to this fulfilment in the coming of the Messiah through virgin birth.  In fact, this will be a new beginning for the whole human race. We are coming into familiar territory now with the celebration of the miracle that brought God into our family, and would result in God bringing men and women into his family.

A detour

Here’s a brief detour. We just have the time to address a real ‘old chestnut.’ One of the latest to join this debate has been Richard Dawkins, the arch evangelist of atheistic neo-darwinianism. Unfortunately Richard Dawkins knows even less about the Bible than I do about biology. It concerns the Hebrew word ‘almah’ which is translated in the King James Version of Isaiah 7:14 as ‘virgin.’ Dawkins says that this is Christian re-editing and claims it ought simply to say ‘an unmarried woman’ with no implied comment as to the chastity of the said woman. The Christians, he claims, have ‘interpreted’ it to suit the myth of the incarnation. This is a centuries old ‘chestnut’ but in recent years it has re-emerged through the popularity of Dawkins’ books. So what are the facts?

The question has been answered many times, sometimes in a very comprehensive manner. I am just going to take a more gentle route. First it is true that the Hebrew word ‘almah’ does simply mean an unmarried woman. However in the context of the Sinai covenant and Old Testament law all unmarried women were required to be virgin. Sexual activity prior to marriage was punishable by death or forced marriage. So by implication the natural expectation would be that an unmarried woman would be virgin.

However the story doesn’t end there. Some 200 to 300 years before Christ the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in a famous work called the Septuagint, usually designated by the Roman number for 70, ie LXX. This was due to a legend that it was translated from the Hebrew in 70 days by 70 scholars. When those scholars wanted a Greek word for ‘almah’ they chose ‘parthenos.’ The LXX was the ‘King James Version’ of the early church, and is the version most frequently quoted in New Testament references. Now ‘parthenos’ can only mean ‘virgin.’

So if there has been any manipulation of the original Hebrew text it was done by Hebrew scholars who were translating into Greek three centuries before the birth of Christ. But why would those ancient scholars have wanted to introduce the idea of a virgin birth? The answer is simply that they understood the sense and context of the original and knew that the only logical Greek word in this context was ‘parthenos,’ a virgin.

Incarnation

The stage is being set for an even more profound truth. We sometimes use terms which don’t tell the whole story. We speak of the miracle of the virgin birth and we all know what that implies, but the truth of a virgin giving birth to a child holds an even greater marvel. As the angel messenger explained to Mary:

  ‘Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.’ (Luke 1:34–35 NKJV)

This was not merely a miracle of biology; this prophecy to a wayward king of Judah contains the first glimpse of the supreme miracle — incarnation.