Prophecy of Isaiah

I have actually been wrestling with this post for a while and it involved a good deal of research...even a note to my pastor! What has happened is that Judah has inherited a bad king (Ahaz) and because of his disobedience, is facing attack from the armies of Israel (under Pekah) and Aram (or Syria, with it's capitol of Damascus) under King Rezin. God wanted to assure Ahaz that he would protect Judah by sending destruction upon those two nations in the form of an Assyrian invasion and sent Isaiah to communicate that. But Ahaz was not interested in assurances from God and instead went to King Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria himself to pay tribute and ask to be bailed out of the jam he was in. He did not trust God to take care of him and took matters into his own hands, actually summoning the very nation who would destroy them 150 years later.

What puzzled me was Isaiah's prophecy regarding the "sign of Immanuel". The text reads "Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and call his name Immanuel (which means God is with us). By the time the child is old enough to chose what is right and reject what is wrong, he will be eating yogurt and honey. For before the child is that old, the lands of the two kings you fear so much will both be deserted."

I don't know how to consolidate all that I have read on this passage. There are so many components that are debated. Is this a reference to the Messiah or something that had immediate fulfillment in Ahaz's time? How is the word used for "virgin" to be translated? Does thIe Hebrew meaning connote a virgin or simply a young maiden? Is this the same child referred to in chapter 8:3, by the name of Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz or are they two different children? Who was the prophetess mentioned as his mother? It's really convoluted.

Let's start with the first issue...the relevance of the Immanuel sign to present and future audiences. Some scholars say this applies to Ahaz and his immediate circumstances, others say it refers only to christ, and still others favor a "dual fulfillment" position, meaning that the passage had an immediate and future fulfillment. Isaiah is speaking to the house of David, spelled out in 7:13, as opposed to Ahaz alone. At the time of the prophecy, the throne had been threatened by kings Pekah and Rezin, who wanted to overthrow Ahaz and seat the "son of Tabeel" on Judah's throne. God had promised that a descendant of David would always occupy the throne, so the sign of Immanuel was meant to reassure them that this still held true. So did a virgin give birth to a son called Immanuel at that time? We have no record of such, but this Immanuel would not have had the historical importance that the future Immanuel would have. We really don't need to know anything more about him, as he(the present fulfillment) was meant to confirm that God was with them in terms of being on their side. The later fulfillment of Immanuel meant that God was with them literally.

Some scholars argue that the rendering of the word translated "virgin", which is the Hebrew word "almah", should really read "maiden or young woman". This would significantly change the expectation of the prophecy, because we would no longer be looking for a miraculous birth. The word "almah" is used 8 other times in scripture, always referring to unmarried women. The expectation in that culture was that an unmarried woman was a virgin, so the two terms were interchangeable. There was anther word more commonly used for "virgin" ("betulah") and both were used to describe Rebekah when she was discovered by Abraham's servant. In keeping with dual fulfillment, the "almah" in the present situation could have been a virgin at the time Isaiah spoke the prophecy, which would not be miraculous. Future fulfillment would render the word virgin as someone who remained a virgin though pregnant. In addition, the definite article "the" was put before the word
"almah" indicating that this woman was a specific, special person... THE virgin. A unique person. All of these things point toward fulfillment in Jesus as opposed to an Immanuel of that time. Remember that Isaiah was a prophet who saw visions. And he could just as easily have had a vision of something imminent as well as something that would occur centuries later.

So then, who was the child spoken of in chapter 8? His name is given as Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, which means "speed to the spoil, hurry to the plunder", intended to encourage the routing of those two nations by the Assyrian invaders. This child is the son of Isaiah, though scholars disagree about who the mother is. Our text reads "then I slept with my wife" but most translations read "then I went to the prophetess". Some say she was Isaiah's wife, the mother of his son Shear-Jashub, mentioned in 7:3. She was called a prophetess because of her marriage to a prophet. In the same way that a princess is married to a prince. Others who want to blend this account with 7:14 and make these two children one and the same, need for the prophetess to be a virgin. Since Isaiah's wife already had a son, she could not fit the bill, so they conclude that Isaiah's first wife must have died and that he was engaged to a virgin prophetess who would conceive on their wedding night. But chapter 8 does not say that Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz would be born of a virgin, and Immanuel clearly was to be born of a virgin, so why not conclude that these are two separate signs...two separate children? Immanuel was meant to encourage the nation of Judah that someone from the line of David would always reign over them and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz's purpose was to give chronology to the impending doom of the kings of Aram and Israel. If isaiah's wife became pregnant right away, this would put about 2 1/2 years between this point in time and the beginning of the judgment, since a child usually says "mama" and "dada" before the age of two. This prophecy was given in 734 BC and Damascus (Aram) fell in 732. The child from the first passage in 7:14, indicates that the destruction of these kings would take place before he was old enough to "choose the right and reject the wrong". This age of accountability is generally considered to be 12, which is the exact number of years between the prophecy and the invasion of Israel by the Assyrians. It seems that the children served the purpose of a timeline and nothing more. We never hear of Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz again nor do we hear of a child named Immanuel born in this time. They seem to be merely a means of dating the fulfillment of the prophecy in a poetic way, as opposed to Isaiah simply saying "in 2 years... and then in 12 years...".

But if you believe that Isaiah 7:14 has a prophetic link to the Messiah, there is a much deeper meaning than the immediate context.

Tomorrow's reading: isa. 8:1-22, 9:1-10:34, 11:1-16