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Isaiah
7:14 - "Virgin" or
"Young Woman"
Which is the correct translation?
By Gary Butner, Th.D.
Therefore the Lord himself will give you* a
sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and* will call
him Immanuel.*
Isaiah
7:14 (NIV)
Skeptics
often claim
that the word translated virgin in Isaiah 7:14 (Hebrew ‘almah) refers to a “young woman.”
However, it actually refers specifically to a “maiden”—that is, to a young girl,
who is on the cusp of becoming a woman, hence a virgin (see
Gen. 24:16,
43;
Ex. 2:8,
“girl”). Thus when the Septuagint translators, 200 years before the birth of
Christ, rendered ‘almah with the Greek parthenos (a specific term for “virgin”)
they rightly perceived the meaning of the Hebrew term; and when Matthew applied
this prophecy to the virgin birth of Christ (see
Matt. 1:23),
it was in accord with this well-established understanding of parthenos
(“virgin”) as used in the Septuagint and in other Greek writers.
The very fact that Christianity
was unknown at the time,
and the translators were not followers of Jesus, mitigates against any bias on
their part as
favored the
word virgin
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