Therefore will the Lord himself give you a sign Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, and call his name Immanuel.
Two allied kings were about to invade Judah. God offered its king, Ahaz, a sign to steady his faith, and Ahaz turned it down. The answer God gave anyway reaches far past that crisis: a virgin's son named Immanuel, "God with us."
The plot behind the promise
Writers point to the plot that hung over Jerusalem at that moment.
Rezin, King of Syria, and Pekah, King of Israel, had joined forces against Judah and Jerusalem. They meant to set aside the royal line of David, and with it the Messiah, and to put the son of Tabeal on the throne (v. 6). Even so, "thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass" (v. 7).
Refusal met by grace
Ahaz refused the sign God offered. One writer looks at how God answered a man who did not want Him close.
Ahaz did not like God to draw too near. God answered it with Immanuel — God with us… Was it not the most wonderful grace to promise this to such a man? Yet grace condemns unbelief and every other sin as the law never did and never could. If Ahaz had asked for any sign he could imagine on earth or in heaven, it would have fallen far short of God's sign. If man refuses to ask through unbelief, God does not fail to give a sign for His own glory: the virgin's Son, the woman's Seed, Immanuel!
Depth and height in one child
God had told Ahaz to ask for a sign either in the depth or in the height above. One writer sees both in the sign God chose.
The Virgin's Son becomes THE SIGN, given by God in "the depth" and in "the height" too. Who but the blessed God, infinite in wisdom, could have thought of such a sign or given it? Look at "the depth" of human weakness: that wonderful baby held on the virgin's lap. Yet even there His name tells us of "the height" of His glory — "Immanuel," "God with us."
Why "virgin" must mean virgin
The Hebrew word behind "virgin" has long been argued over. Writers answer first from the passage itself: a sign has to be something out of the ordinary.
Here the context needs the word to mean virgin, and nothing less. There is no sign or wonder in a young married woman bearing a son. People knew from the very start that the One who would rescue mankind from the serpent, our enemy, must be born of a woman in some unusual way… The virgin's Son is Immanuel, the Lord Jehovah.
There is also the old Greek translation of the Old Testament. Jews made it long before anyone was arguing over this verse.
Christ came, and the prophecy was fulfilled. After that, the Jews worked hard to deny that the Hebrew word means virgin. They said it meant only a young woman, and unbelievers still follow them today. But the Greek version of the Old Testament was made by Jews long before that prejudice arose. They translated the word by the Greek word that can only mean virgin. That one fact undoes the whole attack on the prophecy.
The Hezekiah theory and the dates
Some have read the child as Ahaz's own son Hezekiah. The arithmetic rules it out.
The idea that Hezekiah was the virgin's son cannot stand. Ahaz reigned sixteen years, and Hezekiah was twenty-five when he began to reign. So Hezekiah was already a boy of at least eight before his father's reign began. Isaiah could not have foretold his birth to Ahaz, who was on the throne by then.
The meaning of the name
Matthew's Gospel opens with this verse as its first quotation from the Old Testament.
The royal line of David's house was to continue until the Messiah came, but how much further the sign goes! He would be not only the virgin's son, the woman's seed of Genesis 3:15, but "Immanuel." Matthew's Gospel opens by showing Him to be the son of David (v. 1). Then this first quotation from the Old Testament shows Him to be more than a man born by a miracle. He is God Himself come down in grace.
What the sign secures
The comfort here reaches past one threatened royal line.
This was enough. God had promised that the Messiah would come from David's line. So God kept the house of David safe until the appointed hour, unworthy as it was… My whole aim is to point to one fact, so full of comfort to the believing heart: God's purposes never fail, however great man's sin may be.
Summary
- Threat. Two kings planned to remove David's line from the throne; God said their plan would not stand.
- Refusal. Ahaz would not ask for a sign, so God gave one Himself. Grace answered unbelief with far more than the king would have asked for.
- Sign. A married woman bearing a son is no wonder. The sign needs a virgin — which is how the old Greek translation read it, before any argument began.
- Name. Immanuel means "God with us." The child is man, and He is God — the deepest humility and the highest glory in one person.
- Guarantee. Because the Messiah had to come from David, God kept David's house safe. His purposes hold, however far people fail.