Core Doctrine · Christ
The Virgin Birth
Two writers who were not copying each other — one telling it through Joseph, one through Mary — say the same impossible thing about how Jesus came into the world. And seven hundred years earlier, a prophet had handed a frightened king a sign he did not want.
THE ARTWORKTanner gives Mary no halo and no throne. She is a teenage girl sitting on the edge of a rumpled bed in a plain room, and the angel is not a figure at all — only a column of light she has to look up at. That is the scene this page is about: something enormous arriving in an ordinary room, to somebody nobody had heard of.
A Sign for a King Who Did Not Want One
— Isaiah 7, before anyone quoted itTwo kings had marched on Jerusalem. Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel meant to pull the house of David off the throne and put their own man on it. Ahaz was king of Judah, and Isaiah found him out by the water channel, checking his defences.
The message was short: these two are smoking stumps of firewood. Stand still. This will not happen.
Now in the days that Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, Rezin king of Aram marched up to wage war against Jerusalem. He was accompanied by Pekah son of Remaliah the king of Israel, but he could not overpower the city. When it was reported to the house of David that Aram was in league with Ephraim, the hearts of Ahaz and his people trembled like trees in the forest shaken by the wind.the crisis: two kings on the march, and a royal house shaking like trees in wind.
Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, “Ask for a sign from the LORD your God, whether from the depths of Sheol or the heights of heaven.” But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask; I will not test the LORD.”God tells Ahaz to ask for any sign at all — and Ahaz dresses his refusal up as piety.
Then God did something He almost never does — and Ahaz said no. Isaiah’s patience broke, and the sign was given anyway.
Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God as well? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.the sign itself: a child, a mother called ha-almah, and a name that means God with us.
By the time He knows enough to reject evil and choose good, He will be eating curds and honey. For before the boy knows enough to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.the deadline attached to it — before the boy can tell right from wrong, the two kings are gone.
And they were gone. Damascus fell in 732 BC and Samaria in 722. But the shape of the chapter is what a reader should carry away: the sign was handed to a king who had already decided not to want it.
What Ahaz did instead — and what it cost2 Kings 16 · 2 Chronicles 28
Ahaz ignored the sign, emptied the temple treasury, and bought the king of Assyria’s protection. The rest of Isaiah 7 is the bill for that purchase. Chronicles fills in who he already was.
Then Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to wage war against Jerusalem. They besieged Ahaz but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin king of Aram recovered Elath for Aram, drove out the men of Judah, and sent the Edomites into Elath, where they live to this day. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the hands of the kings of Aram and Israel, who are rising up against me.” Ahaz also took the silver and gold found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the king’s palace, and he sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria responded to him, marched up to Damascus, and captured it. He took its people to Kir as captives and put Rezin to death.the actual decision: silver and gold out of the house of the LORD, sent to Assyria.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. And unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD. Instead, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even made cast images of the Baals. Moreover, Ahaz burned incense in the Valley of Hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.who Ahaz was before Isaiah ever found him at the water channel.
The Word Isaiah Used
— the whole language question, laid out where you can check itIsaiah wrote ha-almah. It means a young woman of marriageable age. By itself it does not make a technical claim about virginity, and an honest page says that out loud rather than hoping the reader never finds out.
There is also a word he did not use. Bethulahis the ordinary Hebrew word for a virgin. It occurs about fifty times in the Bible — and not once in Isaiah 7. That is the strongest card the other side holds, and Jerome, who defended the Christian reading for a living, hands it over himself.
Isaiah tells of the mystery of our faith and hope: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." I know that the Jews are accustomed to meet us with the objection that in Hebrew the word almah does not mean a virgin but "a young woman." And, to speak truth, a virgin is properly called bethulah, but a young woman, or a girl, is not almah but naarah! What then is the meaning of almah?
Jerome· Against Jovinianus 1.32, 420Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
EVERY PLACE THE BIBLE USES THE WORD ISAIAH USED
seven times in the whole Bible · the seventh is the sign
1 · REBEKAH AT THE WELL
Here I am, standing beside this spring. Now if a maiden comes out to draw water and I say to her, ‘Please let me drink a little water from your jar,’
Genesis 24:43→2 · MIRIAM BY THE RIVER
“Go ahead,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. And the girl went and called the boy’s mother.
Exodus 2:8→3 · GIRLS WITH TAMBOURINES
The singers lead the way, the musicians follow after, among the maidens playing tambourines.
Psalm 68:25→4 · ONE OF FOUR THINGS TOO WONDERFUL
the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship at sea, and the way of a man with a maiden.
Proverbs 30:19→5 · THE YOUNG WOMEN OF THE SONG
The fragrance of your perfume is pleasing; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens adore you.
Song of Solomon 1:3→6 · COUNTED BESIDE QUEENS
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number,
Song of Solomon 6:8→7 · THE SIGN GIVEN TO AHAZ
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14→AND ONE WOMAN IS CALLED BY BOTH WORDS, IN ONE CHAPTER
Now the girl was very beautiful, a virgin who had not had relations with any man. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up again.
Genesis 24:16→the ordinary Hebrew word for a virgin — and the verse says it twice over
Here I am, standing beside this spring. Now if a maiden comes out to draw water and I say to her, ‘Please let me drink a little water from your jar,’
Genesis 24:43→the word Isaiah would use — same chapter, same woman, twenty-seven verses later
A young woman of marriageable age — the word Isaiah actually used. Seven occurrences in the whole Bible, and every one of them is in the strip above.
Virgin — the ordinary Hebrew word, about fifty occurrences, and none of them in Isaiah 7. Genesis 24:16 uses it of Rebekah and then adds that no man had known her.
Virgin — the Greek that Jewish translators in Alexandria chose for Isaiah's almah, long before there was any Christian argument to win, and the word both Matthew and Luke use. Fifteen occurrences in the New Testament.
God with us — four occurrences in the whole Bible: two here in the sign, and two in the very next chapter, where the name is spoken over a flood of invasion.
The strongest piece of evidence on this page: the Seventy
Somewhere around 250–150 BC, Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. For Isaiah’s almah they wrote parthenos — which in Greek does mean virgin. That was more than a century before Jesus of Nazareth was born, and nobody involved had a Christian argument to win. Chrysostom made the point in the fourth century, and it is still the point.
but the Seventy, as having entered upon this work an hundred years or more before the coming of Christ, stand clear from all such suspicion, and on account of the date, and of their number, and of their agreement, would have a better right to be trusted.
John Chrysostom· Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 5, 407Church Father
Matthew 1:23
For the one and the same Spirit of God, who proclaimed by the prophets what and of what sort the advent of the Lord should be, did by these elders give a just interpretation of what had been truly prophesied; and He did Himself, by the apostles, announce that the fulness of the times of the adoption had arrived, that the kingdom of heaven had drawn nigh, and that He was dwelling within those that believe on Him who was born Emmanuel of the Virgin.
Irenaeus· Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 21), Section 4, 202Church Father
Matthew 1:18-23
And then say what happened next, honestlythe second-century Greek translations
Later Greek translators — Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, all working in the second century AD, all after the argument between church and synagogue had begun — rendered the same word neanis, “young woman.” That is a fact of translation history, and this page reports it as one. It does not guess at anybody’s motives, then or now.
Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, met the same objection gently, and his answer is worth more than an accusation:
Some translators translate the word for "virgin" as "young woman." There is no reason to think that the virgin was not also a young woman; in fact it is likely that the virgin who conceived the Savior was not fully grown but a young maiden.
Eusebius of Caesarea· Commentary on Isaiah 1:44.56-105, 339Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
Three Readings of Isaiah 7:14
— each named, each with who holds it, each given its best caseThis page does not settle the question for you. It lays out the three readings that serious Christian commentators have held, says who holds each, and lets each one make its own best case. Albert Barnes sets the right expectation before anyone starts.
Perhaps there is no prophecy in the Old Testament on which more has been written, and which has produced more perplexity among commentators than this. And after all, it still remains, in many respects, very obscure.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832–1869Reformed
Isaiah 7:14
READING ONE
One fulfilment, in Ahaz’s own lifetime
A child born in the eighth century BC is the sign Ahaz was given, and Matthew later applies the language to Christ in a fuller sense. Held by Albert Barnes, who states it about as carefully as anyone ever has.
Its general original meaning is not difficult... within the time when a young woman, then a virgin, should conceive and bring forth a child, and that child should grow old enough to distinguish between good and evils - the calamity which Ahaz feared would be entirely removed.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832–1869Reformed
Isaiah 7:14
READING TWO
Two fulfilments — one near, one far
The sign lands in Ahaz’s day and in Bethlehem, the first being the shadow of the second. Matthew reads the old prophecy the way a teacher of his century would: he takes the words and shows you where they landed. Held by Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, and this is where most of the church has stood.
The New Testament application of such prophecies is not a strained "accommodation"; rather the temporary fulfilment of an adaptation of the far-reaching prophecy to the present passing event, which foreshadows typically the great central end of prophecy, Jesus Christ (Re 19:10).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Isaiah 7:14
READING THREE
Isaiah wrote of Messiah and of no one else
No eighth-century child fulfils the sign at all. Held by John Gill, who works through the proposed candidates by name and rules each of them out. Jerome and Chrysostom reach the same place by a different road, arguing from the word sign: an ordinary birth is not a sign of anything.
Behold, a virgin shall be with child,.... These words are rightly applied to the virgin Mary and her son Jesus, for of no other can they be understood; not of Ahaz's wife and his son Hezekiah, who was already born, and must be eleven or twelve years of age when these words were spoken; nor of any other son of Ahaz by her or any other person since no other was Lord of Judea; nor of the wife of Isaiah, and any son of his, who never had any that was king of Judah.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1746–1748Reformed Baptist
Matthew 1:23
But when it is said, 'The Lord himself will give you a sign,' it must be new and marvelous.
Jerome· Commentary on Isaiah, 420Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
Were she not to be a virgin, the birth would not have been a sign. A sign is something that differs from the normal way things happen, that is outside the natural manner. A sign is so unusual and unexpected that someone who sees it or hears of it sees that it is out of the ordinary. It is called a "sign" because it is significant. Were the birth to be like normal births, it would not have been significant. If the prophecy is about a woman giving birth in the normal manner, like what happens every day, then why call it a sign?
John Chrysostom· Commentary on Isaiah 7:5, 407Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
The same argument, from the century after the apostlesJustin Martyr · Irenaeus · Chrysostom
Justin Martyr is making this argument before AD 165, and Irenaeus before 202. Whatever a reader concludes, the Christian reading of Isaiah 7:14 is not a late invention bolted onto the text — it is there as early as we have Christian writing at all.
This, then, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive," signifies that a virgin should conceive without intercourse. For if she had had intercourse with any one whatever, she was no longer a virgin; but the power of God having come upon the virgin, overshadowed her, and caused her while yet a virgin to conceive.
Justin Martyr· The First Apology, Chapter XXXIII, 165Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
Moreover, the prophecy, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," was uttered respecting Him. For if He to whom Isaiah referred was not to be begotten of a virgin, of whom did the Holy Spirit declare, "Behold, the Lord Himself shall give us a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son?" For if He also were to be begotten of sexual intercourse, like all other first-born sons, why did God say that He would give a sign which is not common to all the first-born sons?
Justin Martyr· Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter LXXXIV, 165Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
And when He says, "Hear, O house of David," [Isaiah 7:13] He performed the part of one indicating that He whom God promised David that He would raise up from the fruit of his belly (ventris) an eternal King, is the same who was born of the Virgin, herself of the lineage of David.
Irenaeus· Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 21), Section 5, 202Church Father
Isaiah 7:13-14
And what goes before also establishes this interpretation. For he doth not merely say, "Behold, the Virgin shall be with child," but having first said, "Behold, the Lord Himself shall give you a sign," then he subjoins, "Behold, the Virgin shall be with child." Whereas, if she that was to give birth was not a virgin, but this happened in the way of marriage, what sort of sign would the event be? For that which is a sign must of course be beyond the course of common events, it must be strange and extraordinary; else how could it be a sign?
John Chrysostom· Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 5:3, 407Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
Where Marcus Lands
Two Witnesses, Not One
— Matthew tells it through Joseph; Luke tells it through MaryYou do not have to take anyone’s word for this. Set the two accounts side by side.
TWO ACCOUNTS THAT SHARE ALMOST NO WORDING
Matthew 1
WHOSE STORY
Joseph's — a man working out what to do about the girl he is engaged to
THE CRISIS
he finds out she is pregnant, and plans a quiet divorce (1:19)
THE MESSENGER
an angel, in a dream, at night
THE PROPHECY
Isaiah 7:14 quoted outright (1:22-23)
THE FAMILY LINE
traced through Solomon (1:6-7)
Luke 1—2
WHOSE STORY
Mary's — a girl answering a messenger to her face
THE CRISIS
her own question: how can this be, since she has not been with a man? (1:34)
THE MESSENGER
Gabriel, awake, named, in daylight
THE PROPHECY
none quoted at all — the fact is simply reported (1:35)
THE FAMILY LINE
traced through Nathan (3:31)
AND THEY MEET HERE, ON THE ONE THING NEITHER LEFT OUT
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means, “God with us”).
Matthew 1:22-23 →“How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.
Luke 1:34-35 →This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged in marriage to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and was unwilling to disgrace her publicly, he resolved to divorce her quietly.Joseph's side of it: a quiet man deciding to end the engagement without shaming her.
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin pledged in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. The angel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”Mary's side of it: a named town, a named angel, a girl greeted by name.
But after he had pondered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to embrace Mary as your wife, for the One conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.”the dream that changes his mind — and the name he is told to give the child.
So the angel told her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end!”Gabriel's promise runs straight to David's throne.
How, &c.--not the unbelief of Zacharias, "Whereby shall I know this?" but, taking the fact for granted, "How is it to be, so contrary to the unbroken law of human birth?" Instead of reproof, therefore, her question is answered in mysterious detail.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Luke 1:34
It is observable, the words in Isaiah are, Thou (namely, his mother) shalt call; but here, They - that is, all his people, shall call - shall acknowledge him to be Emmanuel, God with us. Which being interpreted -- this is a clear proof that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek, and not in Hebrew.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Matthew 1:23
When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and embraced Mary as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a Son. And he gave Him the name Jesus.Joseph obeys, and the account is careful about what did not happen before the birth.
While they were there, the time came for her Child to be born. And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.and then the plainest sentence in the whole story: she gave birth.
What This Doctrine Holds Together
— two truths meet here, and neither survives without itThe reason to care is not that a creed requires it. It is what the doctrine holds in place. Gregory of Nazianzus said it in two clauses in the fourth century, and nobody has improved on them.
Humanity was blended with God, and he was one. The more powerful predominated in order that I might become god just as he became human. Although he was already begotten, he was born of a woman, who was a virgin. Because his birth was from a woman, it was human. Because she was a virgin, it was divine. He had neither a human father nor a divine mother.
Gregory of Nazianzus· On the Son, Theological Oration 3(29).19, 390Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
Really human
He is born of a woman— flesh out of Israel’s own flesh, out of Abraham’s line and David’s. Not a visitor wearing a body. Tertullian was hammering that home in AD 220 against people who said otherwise.
But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons.Paul's whole doctrine in one clause: made of a woman, made under the law.
What is the sign? "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son." In fact, a virgin did conceive and gave birth to "Emmanuel, God with us." This is the new birth: a man born from God. God was born in the man, taking the flesh of the old human race without the help of the old human seed. God took the flesh in order to reform the old human race with a new seed. In other words, he spiritually cleansed the old human race by removing its old stains.
Tertullian· On the Flesh of Christ 17, 220Church Father
Isaiah 7:14
But when the fulness of the time - Appointed by the Father, ver. 2. Was come, God sent forth - From his own bosom. His Son, miraculously made of the substance of a woman - A virgin, without the concurrence of a man.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Galatians 4:4
Really God
The child of Luke 1:35 is called the Son of God, and the name in Isaiah’s sign is Immanuel— God with us. The name turns up twice in the sign and twice in the next chapter, and then never again in the whole Bible.
“How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.Mary's question, and the answer that names the child Son of God.
It will pour into Judah, swirling and sweeping over it, reaching up to the neck; its spreading streams will cover your entire land, O Immanuel!the name spoken again one chapter later — over a land about to be flooded with invasion.
And the oldest thread of all
In the third chapter of the Bible, the promise is made to the seed of the woman— the one place in Scripture where a promised offspring is reckoned to the mother rather than the father.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”the first promise, and the only one in Scripture reckoned to the woman's seed.
C.S. Lewis, who spent a career arguing that Christianity is the one story where the myth stopped being a story, put the point about this birth in a single sentence in God in the Dock (1963): “Those who do not know that this great myth became fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied.”
Sixteen Hundred Years of Saying It the Same Way
— the creeds, and one modern controversyThe creeds
The Apostles’ Creed has carried the line conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary in the West since roughly the fourth century; its ancestor, the Old Roman Symbol, is older still. The Nicene Creed of 381 says incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. This has never been a fringe Christian belief. It is one of the few things every branch of the church has said in the same words for sixteen hundred years.
A twentieth-century argument
In the early 1900s the virgin birth became one of the flashpoints of the split between modernists and fundamentalists in American Protestantism, appearing in the lists of essentials issued by the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1910 and reaffirmed in 1916 and 1923. The classic book-length answer from that period is J. Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ(1930), a full examination of the textual and historical evidence and still the standard reference. Among writers today, Lee Strobel’s The Case for the Real Jesus (2007) defends classical Christology against the alternative reconstructions.
Where Scripture Says Nothing
— named as silence, and left as silenceA page that fills in the Bible’s gaps is not being generous; it is making things up. Here is what the text does not tell us.
Mary's later life
Scripture puts her at Cana, at the cross, and in the upper room in Acts 1 — and then stops. Everything after that is tradition, not text.
Joseph
He disappears from the story after Luke 2. The Gospels never record his death.
What Mary told Luke, and when
Luke says he traced everything carefully from eyewitnesses. Whether Mary was one of his sources is a reasonable guess. It is not a stated fact, and this page keeps that line visible.
Who the near-fulfilment child was
If Isaiah's sign had a first, eighth-century fulfilment, the text never names the child or the mother. The first two readings above are readings of a silence, and they should be heard that way.
The date and the season
The Bible gives neither. December 25th is a much later church calendar decision, not a biblical one.