Hf» ' I w.F /; ' i * v * Jr THE SIGN IMMANUEL / Warfield Library By John H. Raven, D. D., Professor of Old Testament Languages and Exegesis, New Brunswick Theological Seminary The word Immanuel occurs four times in the Bible (Isa. 7 : 14 ; 8:8; 8:10; Matt. 1 : 23 ). The Hebrew is the same in the three Old Testament passages, except that some Hebrew texts print it as two distinct words. This is always the case in the verses in the eighth chapter, but not so uniformly true where the word occurs in Isaiah 7 : 14 . The Septuagint ancient Greek translation trans¬ literates it as a proper name in Isaiah 7:14 and translates it W&v 6 Oso? in Isaiah 8:8 and 8:10. The original Greek of Matthew 1:23 is a quotation of Isaiah 7 : 14 , which follows the Septuagint exactly except for one word. Hence it makes Immanuel a proper name, spelling it Emmanuel as the Septuagint does. The Vulgate, or Latin version, makes it a proper name, not only in Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1 : 23 , but also in Isaiah 8:8. Furthermore, it spells the name Emmanuel, the spelling which had become familiar to the readers of the Greek Bible. The Targum of Jonathan, the ancient translation of the books of the prophets into Aramaic, like the Vulgate, has a proper name in Isaiah 7:14 and 8:8, but in Isaiah 8:10 it translates the word, or rather words: “God is our help.” Finally, the Peshitta, or transla¬ tion of the whole Bible into Syriac, makes our word a : proper name in all four places where it occurs not only in the Old Testament but in the New. Both the Authorized and the Revised Version have a proper 213 ) / 214 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW name in Isaiah 7:14 and 8:8 as well as in Matthew 1:23, but they both translate it: “God is with us” in Isaiah 8:10. The spelling of the name in the Authorized Version follows the Hebrew in the three Old Testament passages and the Septuagint in the quotation in Matthew 1:23. Of the four verses the one in which the name and its associated ideas originated is Isaiah 7:14. It is therefore appropriate that we should devote most of our study to that passage. Our consideration of it naturally arranges itself under three heads: The occasion of the sign, wherein the sign consisted, and the fulfilment of the sign. First, then, let us examine the occasion of the sign. This is found in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, as that is illuminated by contemporaneous history. In Isaiah’s time the politics of Judah were influenced by the two powerful kingdoms on either side, Assyria and Egypt. Tiglath-pileser III, coming to the throne of the former country in 745 b.c., revived and greatly enlarged the dominion of Assyria, especially in the region about the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. He conquered Hamath, which had been friendly to Judah, and in 738 b.c. laid Menahem of Samaria, Rezin of Damascus, and Hiram of Tyre under tribute. Menahem was succeeded by his son Pekahiah. Two years later Pekah assassinated Pekahiah and seized his throne. Pekah and Rezin, probably inspired or encouraged by Egypt, attempted to form a confederacy to throw off the domination of Assyria. Ahaz, king of Judah, refused to join with them because he considered Assyria too powerful. He was also probably com¬ mitted to allegiance to Assyria. On account of this refusal of Ahaz, Pekah and Rezin sought to depose THE SIGN IMMANUEL 215 him and put on his throne a man named “the son of Tabeel,” who would do their bidding. With this pur¬ pose they attacked Jerusalem but did not succeed in taking it. Elath, however, and part of the Negeb fell into their hands (2 Kings 16:5, 6). Under these circumstances Ahaz went outside of Jerusalem to inspect the water supply, to see whether the city could hold out during a protracted siege. Jehovah commanded the young prophet Isaiah to take his son, Shear-jashub, with him and go to meet Ahaz. This son, whose name meant “a remnant shall return,” was a living prophecy that, although the exile was certain, the nation would not be completely destroyed. On the contrary, the faithful remnant would be the nucleus o,f a new and better Israel after the chastisement of the exile. The presence of Shear- jashub with his father was intended to encourage the faith of Ahaz. As he looked upon the lad he should have remembered the promises of Jehovah through his prophets, that Israel’s future contained far more glorious things than its past. Isaiah’s words were also reassuring. He compared Rezin and Pekah to fire¬ brands almost extinguished and foretold that in sixty- five years Ephraim would cease to be a nation. This prediction was fulfilled by the colonization of Samaria by Esar-haddon, king of Assyria (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2). As proof of the failure of the confederacy of Rezin and Pekah, Jehovah offered Ahaz any sign in sheol or in Heaven. The literal rendering of the words is: “Make it deep to sheol or make it high upwards.” Although Ahaz was given absolute freedom of choice and could have selected any sign whatever, the refer¬ ence to sheol seems to suggest some sign in the under- 216 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW world, such as the resurrection of persons from the dead. In like manner the reference to the heights above suggests some marvelous appearance in the sky, such as an eclipse or a conjunction of stars. Thus the suggestions were calculated to stimulate the imagination and stir the faith of Ahaz to ask the hardest sign he could devise. Faithless Ahaz, however, did not respond to the stimulus which God gave him, but on the contrary he said: “I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah.” The hypocrisy of this answer is evident. It need scarcely be remarked that it would not be tempting Jehovah to ask a sign when Jehovah offered one and even commanded him to ask for one. On the contrary, the refusal of Ahaz was due primarily to lack of faith in God, and probably in particular to the fact that he was secretly committed to Assyria. Well might Ahaz tremble at the confederacy and inspect the water supply of Jerusalem, since it was only such material and political things that he could see. If he had examined the reservoirs of divine power with half the earnestness with which he examined the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field, he would have honored God by making a large draft upon them. If he had thought of the armies of Heaven instead of the armies of Assyria, Ephraim, and Syria, he would have trembled to oppose God more than to oppose the western confederacy. Disgusted with the faithlessness of Ahaz, the prophet turns away from him and addresses the house of David, that is, the entire royal family, as if in the hope that among them one man of faith could be found. He says: “Is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye will weary my God also?” Both pronouns are plural, showing that THE SIGN IMMANUEL 217 the reproof was meant not for Ahaz only but for the entire family. Not satisfied with wearying Isaiah by their faithlessness, they even had the audacity to weary God by refusing to ask for a sign when He offered it. Then Isaiah, by divine inspiration, spoke the memor¬ able words: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Our second inquiry relates to the sign itself. Wherein did it consist? There are three elements in the statement concerning the sign which God gave: 1. The mother of the child, 2, the name of the child, and 3, the history of the child as given in verses 15-17. The sign might conceivably consist in any one of these or in any two of them or in them all together or in the relation of these elements to one another. Let us take up these elements separately. 1. Does the sign consist in the mother? Following Matthew 1:23, the majority of exegetes in the Christian church have regarded this passage as a definite pre¬ diction of the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. The tendency of this exegesis is to fix the attention on the mother rather than on the child. Is such an emphasis justified? Let us understand clearly at the outset that the question we are considering is not whether Jesus was born of a virgin, as stated by Matthew and Luke, but whether his virgin birth was foretold by Isaiah. What¬ ever conclusion we shall reach on the latter question, the writer expresses his unwavering faith in the virgin birth of our Saviour. The first necessity is an examination of the exact meaning and usage of the word rendered “virgin” in the verse before us. This word is found only seven 218 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW i times in the Old Testament (Gen. 24:43; Ex. 2:8; Ps. 68:25; Prov. 30:19; Song of Sol. 1:3; 6:8; Isa. 7:14). Although not one of these verses refers to a married woman, it must be admitted that not one of them is decisive that the word necessarily means a virgin. Rebekah, to whom Genesis 24:43 refers, was indeed a virgin at the time to which that chapter refers, but we know that she was such not by verse 43 but by verse 16, where a different Hebrew word occurs. Moses’ sister was undoubtedly a virgin when she went to call his mother to nurse the infant Moses, but that fact does not prove that the word by which she is named in Exodus 2:8 connotes virginity. The same remarks apply to the young women spoken of in Psalms 68:25 and Song of Solomon 1:3. On the other hand, the reference in Proverbs 30:19 to “the way of a man with a maiden,” as one of the four mysterious things, seems to be to carnal intercourse, which was mysterious in its results. Of course, it might refer to the first instance of such intercourse, but this is very improbable, since the way of a man with a young woman on the first occasion is scarcely more mysterious than on later occasions. The carnal refer¬ ence is apparently confirmed by the next verse, which speaks of an adulterous woman. It is also confirmed by Psalm 139:13-16 and Ecclesiastes 11:5, which speak of the child in the womb and its growth as a great mystery. The Song of Solomon 6:8 may refer to virgins, but the context is rather against that reference. There Solomon tells Shulamite concerning his court: “There are threescore queens, and four¬ score concubines, and young women without number.” To sum up the evidence from the usus loquendi of the word rendered “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14, even if THE SIGN IMMANUEL 219 Proverbs 30:19 and Song of Solomon 6:8 may be understood as references to virgins, it cannot be affirmed that the context is decisive for such reference either there or in the other passages. In all the passages the context would be satisfied by translating the word young woman. This conclusion is con¬ firmed by the same word as found in the cognate languages. In the Arabic the verb of this stem means to be lustful, and the masculine noun denotes a young man. In Aramaic the feminine noun merely desig¬ nates a young woman. This is especially evident in the Targum, for in Judges 19 it uses this word of the concubine of the Levite who was unfaithful to him. In the Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic the word is used of harlots. Thus it evidently refers to a young woman of marriageable age but does not necessarily denote a virgin. The line of argument we are following becomes even stronger when we consider the usage of the common word for virgin in the Old Testament. This word occurs there no less than sixty times if we include the ten places where its derivative, rendered “virginity,” is found. In several of these places the context necessitates the idea of virginity. So, for example, in Genesis 24:16 we read of Rebekah: “The damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her.” In Deuteronomy 22:14, 15 this stem is used in designating the tokens of virginity. Again this is the word in Judges 11:37, 38, where the daughter of Jephthah speaks of bewailing her virginity. Such passages are meaningless unless the word con¬ notes virginity. It is unnecessary to examine all the verses where this word occurs; for if it necessarily means a virgin in one passage the case is proven. The 220 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW special point is that, while Isaiah uses the common word five times (Isa. 23:4, 12; 37:22; 47:1; 62:5) he uses the uncommon and indecisive word only in Isaiah 7:14. It is inconceivable that, if Isaiah had meant the sign to consist in the virginity of the mother, he would have passed by the common designation for this idea and used a word found nowhere else in his writings and which does not necessarily convey this idea. The Septuagint translates rcapOsvot; in Isaiah 7:14, but there is only one other passage where the word is rendered by this usual Greek word for virgin (Gen. 24:43). The Greek versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, which were made in the second century of our era because the text of the Septuagint had become almost hopelessly corrupt, improved the trans¬ lation at this point by the reading veavcg, meaning a young woman or girl, the very same word by which the Septuagint translates it in Exodus 2:8; Psahns 68:25; Song of Solomon 1:3; 6:8. The question of the virgin birth of Christ is a New Testament and not an Old Testament question. Of course, if there were a prediction in the Hebrew Scriptures, which by a fair grammatico-historical exegesis could be regarded as pointing to the virgin birth of the Messiah, we would be justified in using it in proof of such a birth. But we are not justified in reading into the Old Testament a meaning which is not there. Since there is no prediction of the virgin birth of Christ in the Old Testament, it is abso¬ lutely neutral on the subject. It cannot be used prop¬ erly in defense of the virgin birth nor can its silence be fairly used as an argument against it. The virgin birth of our Lord is one of many matters in connection with the incarnation which were THE SIGN IMMANUEL 221 not foretold in the older Scriptures. The coming of the Magi, the baptism in the Jordan, the temptation in the wilderness, the transfiguration, and many other incidents of His wonderful life were not foretold in a direct sense. Indeed, while many specific things were foretold, such as the birth in Bethlehem, the rejection, the sale for thirty pieces of silver, the piercing, that his bones should not be broken, etc., the bulk of the Messianic predictions point, not to details of His life, but to the broad and general outlines of His mission and work. The Messianic predictions of the Old Testament do not give us a life of the Messiah beforehand. Hence the absence of a prediction of any event in Christ’s life could be used as an argument against the historicity of that event only if there were any prediction of the Old Testament with which it was in conflict. This is not the case with the virgin birth. Although it was not foretold, we who live after the event can see how admirably it agrees with the conception of His person presented in those predictions which relate to His exalted nature and power. This is particularly the case with the names applied to Him in Isaiah 9:6, a passage whose close relation to the one before us has long been realized. It should not surprise us that the child whose name shall be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Ever¬ lasting Father, Prince of Peace,” was born of a virgin. Although we could not have foretold such a birth from these names, it agrees exactly with them. We can even say that such a character requires something exceptional in His birth, a very special relation to God. Human ancestry on both sides, with a merely human inheritance, would seem to conflict with His divine origin. This general argument for the virgin birth 222 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW from the broad lines of Messianic prediction is in reality far stronger than one derived from a single Old Testament passage. It is contended, however, by some that the quota¬ tion in Matthew regards the words of Isaiah 7:14 as a prediction of the virgin birth. This view seems to the writer altogether mistaken. After narrating that Mary “was found with child of the Holy Spirit,” the announcement of this to Joseph, and the command of the angel to name the child Jesus, the Evangelist says: “Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, And they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us.” The point of the fulfilment as of the prediction was not in the mother but in the child. Matthew did not regard Isaiah 7:14 as a prediction of the virgin birth but of the birth. This seems to be reflected in the formula, of introduction: All this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled, etc. All things in connection with the birth of Christ were in a general way a fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah, but not all the details were found in the prediction. Even if the word ^apOevo?, by which the Septuagint renders the Hebrew, were correct, and that word were found in Matthew in its earliest form, which is some¬ what uncertain, the conception of a virgin birth would not have been made upon the mind of Matthew or any other reader of the Old Testament in Matthew’s day. Almost exactly the words of Isaiah 7:14 were spoken by the angel of Jehovah to Hagar: “Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael” (Gen. 16:11). No one THE SIGN IMMANUEL 223 infers from this that the birth of Ishmael was a virgin birth. If such an announcement had been made to a virgin, she would have thought it referred to the first child of her marriage, for the Hebrew may mean either, thou art with child, or thou shalt be with child. In Hebrew the very same word is found in both places. The first birth of every marriage is in this sense a virgin birth. If Isaiah had meant to convey the idea that the mother of Immanuel would bear a child with¬ out intercourse with man and thus remain a virgin after the birth of Immanuel, it would have been necessary for him not only to use the word which always denotes a virgin but also to use a circumlocu¬ tion. This idea was so totally new to Jewish thought that the use of the word virgin alone would not suffice to express it. There had been remarkable births and that, too, in the Messianic line; but a virgin birth is not mentioned in the Old Testament. Such accompanying words are found in the account in Matthew. It is because of them, and not because of the quotation from Isaiah, that we believe in the virgin birth of Christ. This is another instance of a phenomenon familiar to all careful students of Scripture, that the fulfilment always contains more than the prediction. The very notion of fulfilment suggests this. The fulfilments of Scripture pour a new meaning into its predictions, a meaning indeed which was always there, but which was so hidden that the hearers of the prediction could not discern it perfectly. Thus it is only in the light of the fulfilment that we can see the full significance of the predictions. In the case before us, possibly we may be justified in looking back at the passage in Isaiah and surmising that the guiding Spirit led the prophet to pass by the 224 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW usual word for virgin, which he used five times else¬ where, and employ a word found nowhere else in his writings, as though to hint that the young woman referred to would be unique among women. As to the way in which she would be unique the prophet leaves us in the dark. 2. Next we examine the second element in which the sign might conceivably consist, that is the name of the child. In mentioning it we should not exclude the character of the child in so far as it is suggested by the name. If a mother should name her child Immanuel this in itself would scarcely satisfy the prediction, unless the child partook of the character suggested by the name. In fact, in the Bible to call a person by a given name almost invariably means that the person shall have the qualities or history which the name suggests. Such was the case in the names of Abel, Cain, Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, Judah, Moses, Ichabod, Nabal, etc. So true was this to the Hebrew conception of names that sometimes the expression, to call by a certain name, occurs where the meaning is not that the name mentioned shall be the usual designation of the person or even that he shall ever be addressed by it, but merely that he shall exemplify the idea of the name. One of the many examples of this is the list of names of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6. The idea was not that anyone would address the Messiah as Won¬ derful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father or Prince of Peace, but that these names were a delineation of His person and character. The same is true of the name Immanuel. That it was understood in this way by the Jews in the time of our Lord is evidenced by the fact that Matthew narrates the com- THE SIGN IMMANUEL 225 mand of the angel to call the child’s name Jesus and then affirms: “Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, And they shall call his name Immanuel.” It is passing strange that He should be called Jesus in order to fulfil a prediction that He should be called Immanuel. The strangeness disappears when we know the usage of the expression, to call His name. What is the meaning of the name Immanuel? The Evangelist adds his interpretation to the name: “God with us.” On the basis of their understanding of these words many exegetes have concluded that the name implies the essential Deity of the child, that the child is none other than God Himself manifest in the flesh. Here is another point in which the fulfilment surpasses the prediction. Jesus Christ was indeed God manifest in the flesh, but our firm belief in this fact should not influence our exegesis of this name. It should be interpreted in the light of other names of similar formation. The name was a sentence: “God is with us,” like the names of the two children of Isaiah, Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. The former name means: “A remnant shall return,” and the latter: “Hasten the spoil, hurry the booty.” Even the beginner in the study of Hebrew knows that the verb to be is commonly not expressed in the sentence. Thus a close parallel to the name Immanuel in its formation is Hephzibah which means: “My delight is in her.” It is well known that many Bible names contain one of the names of God. Those ending in jah and ah are compounded with the name Jehovah in its shorter form Jah, which occurs in Exodus 15:2; 326 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 17:16; Psalms 68:4, and often in the word hallelujah. Thus Isaiah means “Jehovah hath saved”; Jeremiah, “Jehovah doth establish”; Zephaniah, “Jehovah hath hidden”; Zechariah, “Jehovah hath remembered,” etc. Many other names ending in el contain the name of God, which occurs separately about two hundred and fifty times in the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis 14:18. Thus Ezekiel means “God is strong”; Daniel, “God is my judge”; Joel, “Jehovah is God,” etc. The possession of one of these names did not by any means imply that the man was in any sense an incarnation of God. The verb to be is omitted in every one of them. Yet we would not be justified in rendering Daniel, God my judge, and inferring that he was an incarnation of God, the judge of men, or in rendering Joel, Jehovah God, and concluding that the prophet whose name included two names of God must have been an incarnation of Deity. In like manner we are not justified in rendering the name Immanuel, “God with, us,” if by that rendering we express our belief that the name implies Deity. If, however, we render the name, “God with us,” implying that the child was a special token of the presence of God with His people, we are in line with similarly formed names, such as Daniel, Joel, etc. This is probably the sense in which Matthew interpreted the name. The name, then, requires that its owner should be a special proof of the presence of God with His people. Whether this proof was an incarnation or only a special answer to prayer, like Samuel, or the fulfil¬ ment of a divine promise, like Isaac and Samson, the name itself does not decide. Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Esau, Samson or Samuel might have been named THE SIGN IMMANUEL m Immanuel because each one of them was a special manifestation of the presence of God; but the posses¬ sion of the name would not have suggested Deity. Yet the name has a special significance when applied to our Lord. Although it does not necessitate the idea of Deity, it is very appropriate to the incar¬ nate Son of God. He was a proof of the presence of God with His people superior to all other proofs. If ever we doubt that God is with us, we have only to think of Him and our doubts should be dispelled. In this connection it is fitting to speak of the exact meaning of the parts of the name. There are two prepositions in Hebrew meaning with, as there are in Greek. Furthermore, they correspond quite nearly in meaning. One of them resembles and does not denote any very special intimacy of relation. The other, like the Greek wv, implies fellowship or com¬ panionship. There are indeed some exceptions to this explanation of these synonyms, but in general this is the point of comparison. The preposition in the name Immanuel is the latter one, suggesting intimacy. The name for God in Immanuel is not the most common one, but is found about two hundred and fifty times, while the other is found over five thousand times. It emphasizes the power of God and might be rendered the Almighty. Thus Immanuel may be translated: The Almighty is in fellowship with us. As applied to Jesus Christ, it suggests His real humanity, that He took on Himself our nature, suffered in all points as we suffer—was one with us. It is not that all this could be inferred from the name by the Old Testa¬ ment saint, but that, in the light of the fulfilment, we can see how all this is hidden in the name. 229 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW Some commentators object to finding the sign in Immanuel on the ground that the sign had to be a miracle. On the same ground they argue in favor of the virgin birth as the real essence of the sign. A study of the word sign as used in the Old Testament, and indeed in the New Testament, shows that the sign was not necessarily a miracle. The same Hebrew word was used of the rainbow which God took as a sign, or token, of the covenant He made with Noah and his descendants (Gen. 9:12, 13, 17). Circumcision was called by this name (Gen. 17:11). The Sabbath was a sign (Ex. 31:13). On the other hand, the miracles of Moses in Egypt were signs (Ex. 7:3; 8:23). Anything was a sign which was chosen to remind men of a covenant or promise. Hence there is nothing necessarily miraculous in it. The reason the sign was so often a miracle was because a miracle was calculated to fix the attention of men and keep before their minds the promise or covenant confirmed. Any unusual thing or event, however, would serve this purpose. Thus this criterion alone cannot decide for us whether the sign was the virginity of the mother, or the child Himself. Both were equally remarkable and, indeed, in the proper sense, both were miraculous. Surely Christ Himself was as great a miracle as the virgin birth. The reason we regard the sign as consisting in the child is the fact that He was mentioned as a sign later, while such was not the case with the mother, at least as a virgin. In Isaiah 8:8, where the prophet speaks of the impending invasion of Assyria, he says: “The stretching out of its wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.” The use of this name would remind his hearers of the former prophecy. The THE SIGN IMMANUEL 229 matter in that prophecy which he wished to keep in their minds was not the virginity of the mother, but it was the child. Even stronger is the case in Isaiah 8:10: “Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for Immanuel.” It is almost as if the prophet pointed to Immanuel as evidence that their counsel would be brought to nought. There surely it is not the mother who is the sign, but the son. For the time the mother seems to be forgotten, and the son is uppermost in the mind of the prophet. Would this be the case if the main point of the prophecy were the mother? There is one veiled reference to the mother in the prophecy of Isaiah’s contemporary, Micah. In connection with the memorable prediction of the birth of the Messiah he uses these somewhat enigmatic words: “Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth: then the residue of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel” (Mic. 5:8). The reference is to the same mother mentioned in Isaiah 7:14, but it is noteworthy that there is not the slightest hint of her virginity. She is simply designated as the one who travaileth, a description which would be appropriate to any mother about to bring forth a child. 3. The third element in the prediction is the history of the child as told in Isaiah 7:15-17. Before inquiring whether this is a part of the sign, it is necessary to interpret a few matters in these verses. The Revised Version reads: “Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refpse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon 230 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—even the king of Assyria.” The translation of verse 15 is better in the Author¬ ized Version. It is “that he may know,” instead of “when he knoweth.” The form in Hebrew is the infinitive with the preposition to, which is the regular way to express purpose. It is singularly naive to remark, as some commentators do, that eating butter and honey does not teach a child to refuse evil and choose good. Of course it does not, if the butter and honey were chosen from all other kinds of food. Butter and honey were not like the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which the serpent said to Eve: “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Eating butter and honey is here indicative of the reduction of the land to a state of pastoral simplicity. This becomes evident by a comparison with Isaiah 7:21, 22, where we read that as a result of the Assyrian invasion: “It shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall keep alive a young cow, and two sheep; and it shall come to pass, that because of the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst of the land.” Immanuel is to be brought up not in the lap of luxury but in the midst of hardship and privation. These hardships will be a means of grace to him so that, as so often happens, he will develop character. Such was the case with Christ who “learned obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). The reference in Isaiah 7:16, to “the land whose two kings thou abhorrest,” is to verse 2, where the THE SIGN IMMANUEL 231 fear of Ahaz for the kings of Syria and Ephraim is mentioned. The inhabitants of those countries are to be carried into exile before Immanuel comes to years of discretion. Verse 17 makes plain how this is to be accomplished by the terrible Assyrian invasion, not only of Syria and Ephraim, but of Judah as well. The reference is not to the deportation of Judah, which did not occur until 586 b.c., but to the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 b.c., when Judah would have fallen but for the special interposition of God. Now, there seems to be a conflict between the name of Immanuel and his history. The name as usually understood contains a promise of blessing, but his history refers to a condition of hardship and political doom. How can we reconcile this conflict? This reconciliation comes from a consideration of the relation of the sign actually given with the sign offered to Ahaz. As we have seen, Ahaz was origi¬ nally given the privilege of choosing any sign what¬ ever that the confederacy of Syria and Samaria would not succeed and that the lands of Ephraim would cease to be a people. We have also seen that when Ahaz refused to ask such a sign Isaiah turned away from him and addressed the whole house of David, reproving them for their lack of faith and announcing the sign which we are studying. We must not expect that the sign actually given, therefore, was intended to confirm the same prediction as that which had been spoken to Ahaz. Here is another illustration of the truth that God does for us far more abundantly than we can ask or think. Ahaz was offered a sign that the confederacy of Syria and Ephraim would not stand, but God gave to the house of David something far greater than this. The failure of the confederacy. 232 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW like the failure of anything else that was directed against the Kingdom of Judah, was related in the last analysis to the Messianic promise. If the con¬ federacy succeeded, the Messianic promise might fail or at least be postponed. Thus the fortunes of Judah were bound up in the religious fortunes of the world. Hence the prophet goes to the root of the matter and gives a sign, not only that the confederacy shall fail, but that everything else directed against the Kingdom of God shall fail. That sign was Immanuel, the Messiah. The occasion of giving the sign was the faithless¬ ness of Ahaz. Therefore the sign contains both a blessing and a curse. These are always the two elements in the Messianic promise. The aged Simeon said to the Virgin Mary: “Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel; and for a sign which is spoken against” (Luke 2:34). For Ahaz the sign contained no blessing. It meant reproof for his faithlessness and the failure of his policy of subservience to Assyria. In so far as this policy was shared by the royal house it meant the same thing for them, but if anyone in the royal house or out of it trusted in God and His promises, the sign meant for him incalculable blessing. It included in germ, not only the deliverance of Judah in its emergency, but the salvation of all mankind and that for which we daily pray, the coming of the Kingdom of God in all its fulness. In the light of this fact it is very significant that the sign Immanuel is given in the plural to the whole house of David, while the history of the child which contains hardship and doom is given in particular to faithless Ahaz. Possibly the royal family included one man of faith who could THE SIGN IMMANUEL 233 appreciate the promise of Immanuel. He could appro¬ priate it as his own for his lasting comfort. To Ahaz, however, the prophet says: “Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—even the king of Assyria.” To Ahaz Immanuel was a savor of death unto death, but to those who believed he was a savor of life unto life (2 Cor. 2:16). In passing it is worth while to remark that several of the most important Messianic promises were occa¬ sioned by the faithlessness and wickedness of men. The protevangelium was occasioned by the sin of our first parents. It was addressed to the serpent who brought sin into the world and all our woe, and was a part of the curse upon him (Gen. 3:14, 15). The Messianic promise to Noah was occasioned by the sin of Ham (Gen. 9:25-27). The promise of the star out of Jacob was occasioned by the desire of Edom and Moab to curse Israel (Num. 24:17, 18). God turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing. Nowhere else is the saying of the Psalmist more perfectly exemplified, that the wrath of man shall praise God. As it was the awful sin of Israel in rejecting their Messiah which brought to all men the priceless blessings of Calvary, so it was the sin of men which gave to others the comfort of the promise of His coming. “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Thus we do not agree with the ingenious interpretation of F. C. Porter, who found the sign of our passage in the contrast between the name of Immanuel and His history. The contrast is in reality not between 234 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW Immanuel and His history but between those who accept Immanuel and those who reject Him. We now pass to our third and last inquiry, the fulfilment of the sign. Here we will find a wide diversity of views. To begin with, it is very surprising that there is no documentary evidence that the Jews have ever interpreted the name Immanuel as referring to the Messiah. Neither the Targum of Jonathan nor the Jerusalem Targum gives any hint of such an inter¬ pretation, nor is Immanuel mentioned in the Talmud, nor is the name in the list of Messianic names prepared by Hamburger. However, Isaiah 9:6 and 11:1 are interpreted Messianically in Jewish writings of ancient time, arousing the suspicion that such was originally the case with Isaiah 7:14 also. Possibly the Jews abandoned their Messianic interpretation of the pas¬ sage because of the use the Christians made of it in confirmation of the Messiahship of Jesus. It seems strange, indeed, that Matthew should apply the verse to Jesus in his Gospel for the Jews unless it was customary for them to regard it as a Messianic prediction. The principal fulfilments of the sign which are sought are as follows: (1) The usual rabbinic interpretation refers Immanuel to Hezekiah. This has the great advantage that Immanuel was evidently of the Davidic line. He is addressed in Isaiah 8:8 as the owner of the land implying that he was the occupant of the royal throne. Furthermore, the child whose birth is foretold in Isaiah 7:14 was evidently the same as the child represented as already born in Isaiah 9:6 and chapter 11; but in Isaiah 9:7 he is said to sit upon the throne of David, and in Isaiah 11:1 he is called “a shoot out of the stock of THE SIGN IMMANUEL 235 Jesse.” Moreover, if Immanuel were Hezekiah, the Messianic application is plain. Other things being equal, it is more in accord with other Messianic pre¬ dictions to refer Immanuel to the Messiah through the medium of a type than directly. Yet, attractive as this identification is, it is made impossible by chrono¬ logical facts. The reign of Ahaz lasted sixteen years (2 Kings 16:2; 2 Chron. 28:1). His son Hezekiah immediately succeeded his father and was twenty-five years old at his accession (2 Kings 18:2; 2 Chron. 29:1). Hence, Hezekiah was born nine years before Ahaz came to the throne and a still longer time before the prophecy of Immanuel. (2) Other commentators seek to identify Immanuel with the second son of Isaiah, Maher-shalal- hash-baz. The principal argument in favor of this is in the fact that the birth of that child is told in Isaiah 8 as though it were a fulfilment of the prediction of chapter 7. The explanation of his name bears a marked resemblance to that of Immanuel. Before Immanuel “shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken” (Isa. 7:16). Before Maher-shalal- hash-baz “shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the king of Assyria” (Isa. 8:4). There is, however, this important difference between them. The latter was a sign only of the fall of Damascus and Samaria, while the former, as we have seen, has a much larger significance. The decisive argument against this interpretation is in the fact that Maher-shalal-hash-baz was not of the royal line. To accept it we must separate the Immanuel of chapter 7 from the child of chapters 9 and 11 and 2361 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW violate the uniformity of exegesis in which the types of Christ as king are all in the Davidic line. Another incidental objection is found in the names of the two mothers. Isaiah would scarcely have referred to his own wife as the maiden, especially since he calls her the prophetess in Isaiah 8:3. (3) In 1778 a Roman Catholic commentator named Isenbiehl, and since then others, favored the idea that Immanuel was the child of some mother who was present in the crowd before Isaiah. Umbreit and others have even suggested that the prophet pointed to a woman in the company who was already pregnant and spoke the words of this prophecy. The chief and only argument which can be used in favor of this very offensive interpretation is the article with the word rendered virgin. The most common usage of the article in Hebrew is to designate a person or thing which has been mentioned or is well known. However, the use of the article can be adequately explained without resorting to an interpretation which would be so indelicate as this. Any exegesis which represents the mother as well known, whether present or absent, would explain the article. (4) A somewhat different interpretation is advanced by several modern exegetes, viz., that the mother was any Jewish woman of Isaiah’s time who would name her child, soon to be born, Immanuel, as an expression of her faith in the promise of God delivered through the prophet. Parallels may be found for such a use of the article; but this interpretation separates the passage from those in chapters 9 and 11 and confines the significance of the sign to the faith of the unknown mother, as shown in the name she gives her child. The child himself has no importance I THE SIGN IMMANUEL 237 and of course could not properly be a type of the Messiah. (5) Still another group of interpreters, of whom Whitehouse is the most prominent representative, regards the mother as a personification of the house of David or of Zion. They refer to Amos 5:2 and Jeremiah 18:13; 31:4, 21, where the expression, “virgin of Israel,” is a personification of the nation. The word for virgin in these passages, however, is not the one in Isaiah 7:14, but the other word already explained. Furthermore, this exegesis leaves the child quite indefinite, and some make it a general name of the next generation. It also cuts off the prediction from those in chapters 9 and 11. (6) Rosenmiiller, and more recently Gressmann, Jeremias, and other very advanced scholars have admitted that this verse (Isa. 7:14) is a prediction of the virgin birth of the Messiah, but have attempted to explain that expectation and its alleged fulfilment by comparison with similar virgin births in ancient mythology. They refer especially to the fact that Sargon of Agade was represented as the son of the goddess Ishtar, although there was no male deity in the Babylonian mythology who was the consort of Ishtar. Hence it is inferred that the birth of Sargon was a virgin birth. It is a sufficient reply to this to draw attention to the figurative sense in which Sargon was considered as the son of Ishtar, and that Ishtar was a goddess and not a woman. Others compare the myth that the infant Zeus was fed on milk and honey in the cave on Mount Ida, as though only one child in human historv could have eaten such food, and %/ therefore Zeus and Immanuel dissolve into one. They also find an argument for the mythical origin of our 238 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW passage in the fact that the Virgin Mary is associated with Virgo, one of the signs of the zodiac, on a side door of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The date of the building of Notre Dame shows that this association was a medieval afterthought. The cathedral was founded in 1163 a.d. on the site of a church of the fourth century. The explanation of the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah and its fulfilment, as derived from heathen mythology, utterly fails, because no connection between those myths and our prediction can be established. All these interpretations proving inadequate, we are driven to the conclusion that we have here a direct and immediate prediction of the birth of Jesus Christ. The air of mystery in the passage indicated by the unusual name of the mother and of the child, an air which is reflected in the reference in Micah 5:3, fits well with this fulfilment. Incensed by Ahaz’s faithless¬ ness, the prophet’s eye foresees the birth of the Messiah as the supreme sign that all he had foretold should be accomplished. As was usual with the prophets, he did not distinguish the distant from the near future. To him Immanuel seemed to grow up during the Assyrian invasion, just as, in the predictions of the second advent, that glorious event seems to synchronize with the fall of Jerusalem (Matt. 25). The objection that the birth of Christ could not be a sign to Ahaz and the people of his time proceeds from a misunderstanding of prophecy. The coming of the Messiah had been long foretold, and to the viewpoint of faith it was as good as accomplished. It was a commonplace of Isaiah’s time. From the promise of the great Son of David (2 Sam. 7:12-16) and other Messianic predictions the people were THE SIGN IMMANUEL 239 familiar with the idea. The reference in Micah 5:3, in connection with the prediction of the birth of the Messiah at Bethlehem, shows that our passage was interpreted as a direct prediction of the Messiah in Isaiah’s own day. This promise was a sign to Ahaz and the whole house of David. As Franz Delitzsch put it: “The Future One, although he has not yet appeared possessed of a body, leads an ideal life in the Old Testament history.” The existence of this ideal was a proof to the Old Testament saints that the prophecies would be fulfilled. A somewhat anala- gous case is found in the promise of God to Moses, at the burning bush: “This shall be the token unto thee, that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (Ex. 3:12). This sign to Moses, like that to Ahaz, was not fulfilled for a long time. During the period when Moses was pleading with Pharaoh to let Israel go, he needed the confirmation. Yet it was not until after the Exodus, when the people encamped at Sinai, that the sign was fulfilled. The significant thing for us here is that in the long interval the promise was itself a sign. So the promise of the birth of Immanuel was a sign to all who knew it before He came; and since He has come, He is the supreme sign of the truth of all that the prophets foretold. “How many soever be the promises of God, in him is the yea: wherefore also through him is the Amen” (2 Cor. 1:20). To the prophetic view of Isaiah the birth of the Messiah seemed imminent. He could not distinguish the distant from the near; but he was sure that before the child would reach years of discretion, the Assyrian invasion would bring misfortune to the land. How much before 240 THE BIBLICAL REVIEW 9 the maturity of the Messiah this invasion would occur he could not tell. To Ahaz and his contemporaries the Messiah was given as a sign of events near by. To us He is given as a sign of all the glorious events yet unful¬ filled in the history of the Kingdom of God. New Brunswick, New Jersey.