Unto Us a Child Is Born

Isaiah, Advent, and Our Jewish Neighbors

Tyler D. Mayfield

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780802873989
• eBook ISBN: 9781467459853
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Whether through a hymn, Handel's  Messiah, or the lectionary reading, the book of Isaiah provides a familiar voice for congregations during the season of Advent. So how do we create faithful, Christian interpretations of Isaiah for today while respecting the interpretations of our Jewish neighbors? 

Integrating biblical scholarship with pastoral concern, Tyler Mayfield invites readers to view Isaiah through two lenses. He demonstrates using near vision to see how the Christian liturgical season of Advent shapes readings of Isaiah and using far vision to clarify our relationship to Jews and Judaism—showing along the way how near vision and far vision are both required to read Isaiah clearly and responsibly.

PART TWO

Isaiah’s “Messianic” Texts

THREE

Isaiah 7:10–16

The Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year A

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today!

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

¹⁰ Again The Living God spoke to Ahaz:¹¹ “Request a sign of confirmation from The Living God, your God. Make it deep like the underworld or high like the sky.”¹² And Ahaz said, “I will neither request nor test The Living God.”

¹³ Then Isaiah said, “Hear, O House of David. Is it a little matter for you all to weary people that you weary also my God?¹⁴ Therefore, my God will give you all a sign: Look! The young woman is pregnant and about to give birth to a son. She will name him With-us-is-God.¹⁵ By the time he knows to reject evil and choose good, he will eat cream and honey.¹⁶ Before the youth knows to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings whom you abhor will be abandoned.”

This short passage from the larger narrative of Isaiah 7 contains the well-known story of the child named Immanuel. In this chapter, we focus on four historical contexts for understanding Isaiah 7: the eighth-century BCE context of the prophetic announcement, the first-century CE reuse of the prophecy by the Gospel of Matthew, the rabbinic understanding of the prophecy, and our contemporary context. We see the richness of this passage as it gains new interpretations in different historical contexts and as it continues to resonate during the Advent season.

The Originating Context of Isaiah 7

The first word of the first verse in this passage—“again”—alerts us to the detail that the passage does not contain the first divine message delivered to Ahaz, the king of Judah. We must begin reading earlier in the chapter. Isaiah 7:1–9 relates a prophetic announcement to King Ahaz of Judah during a particularly scary time of his reign, when the neighboring kings of Aram and Israel—both to the north of Judah—sought to attack Jerusalem, Judah’s capital. These kings—Rezin of Aram/Syria/Damascus and Pekah of Israel—wanted Ahaz to ally with them against the campaigning superpower, Assyria, and they were willing to use coercion to build this crucial alliance. Some of the details of this period are found in 2 Kings 15–16 or by researching the Syro-Ephraimitic War/Crisis in scholarly resources. Isaiah was divinely commanded to take his son, whose name means “a remnant will turn back,” and go to Ahaz to calm and reassure the king. Isaiah instructed Ahaz not to fear because Rezin and Pekah would not succeed in their plan. The prophetic reason for the kings’ assured failure was based on Isaiah’s understanding of Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty. The prophet believed strongly that the city and the throne of David were invincible given their special status with God. Thus, the neighboring kings were doomed to failure; King Ahaz needed only to believe this prophecy and rely on Isaiah’s Zion theology. The first divine address concludes in verse 9 with the admonition, “If you will not trust, then you will not endure.” Verse 10 then introduces the second divine speech of the chapter, a speech that includes the giving of a divine sign to the kingdom of Judah.

How might we understand this sign from God? First, within the literary and historical context of this passage, the sign, which God initiates, serves to confirm the judgment prophecy in verses 7–9 concerning Rezin and Pekah and their countries. The sign functions as authentication of earlier prophecy. In other words, it does not serve as a prediction of a future event but as the evidence the event has already come to pass.

The Hebrew term used for this divine sign does not speak only of a miraculous act but is a word used within both miraculous and mundane contexts. For example, Exodus 4 provides an excellent example of the supernatural possibilities of this Hebrew word; the story uses the term “sign” when speaking of Moses’s staff turning into a snake and his hand becoming leprous. Indeed, these signs are miraculous and to be ascribed to God insofar as they are supernatural events that do not naturally occur. Yet, Judges 6 uses the same word when Gideon asks the messenger of God to show him a “sign” that it is genuinely the messenger who is speaking to him. The sign requested by Gideon is for the messenger to stay until Gideon can enter his house and prepare food for the guest. The sign is naturalistic and commonplace: to remain and wait. In this context, it does not involve a miracle, per se. Of course, later in the Gideon story, the messenger causes the fire to come from a rock to consume the food. Strictly speaking, this supernatural action is not the sign Gideon initially requested, but it does indeed serve to heighten the original sign.

Whether a sign is marvelous or ordinary, it serves to call particular attention to God’s actions. The sign confirms those actions even as it adds its own phenomenal element to the narrative. In 1 Samuel 2:34, we find a prophetic context similar to that addressed in Isaiah 7. A man of God prophesies concerning Eli, whose family was judged because of him and his wicked sons. After the prophecy of judgment occurs, a sign is given: both of Eli’s sons will die on the same day. The sign and its surrounding prophecy share similarities with our Isaiah passage; the sign serves to confirm a previous prophecy. Also, the sign concerns death, a natural occurrence, but this is an unusual circumstance—the death of brothers on the same day.

Isaiah 7:13 shifts the address away from Ahaz alone to the collective House of David with the introduction of prophetic speech. The rhetorical question (“Is it a little matter . . . ?”) provides further evidence of a shift to a broader audience by its use of plural verbs and objects. The sign may have begun as a matter between God and the king, but it ultimately extends to the whole kingdom of Judah. To understand this passage within its originating context, we need to note the literary addressee here. While the story certainly has power within our religious communities today, it also proved influential to the struggling and endangered kingdom of Ahaz, the House of David.

However, what exactly was the sign? Even if we know it confirmed the earlier judgment prophecy and was addressed to a plurality, it is not clear what element of the story represented the sign. Was it the young woman, her pregnancy, the name of the child, or perhaps the enemy kings’ loss of land during the early years of the child’s life? All seem possible candidates for the designation of a sign.

One of the most discussed aspects of Isaiah 7 concerns the young woman. She has garnered considerable attention in the history of Christian interpretation of this passage because of the focus on her virginity. In his writing, Isaiah did not have a virginal figure in mind. Her status as a virgin must be attributed to later (Christian) interpretation. Contemporary translations used in churches every week maintain the tension in countering interpretations of the passage. For example, the King James Version and the New International Version both translate the Hebrew term as “virgin,” while the New Revised Standard Version and the Common English Bible both use “young woman.” The Hebrew word does not focus primarily on the virginity or chastity of the woman, even though many (male) scholars and theologians through the ages have tried to direct attention there. Instead, her age and possibly her marital status are of concern: in brief, she is of marriageable age, a young woman eligible for marriage. Using this definition, she could be married, though probably without children, or unmarried. Given the sexual customs and ethics of ancient Israel, unmarried women of marriageable age were likely to be virgins, but the Hebrew word does not focus on this aspect of her life. There is, in fact, a separate Hebrew word for virgin, betulah. She is a young woman; virginity is not an issue.

This young woman is pregnant and about to give birth to a son. The way the verb tense is translated is important: Isaiah was likely pointing to a nearby pregnant woman, a physical condition visible to him and his audience. He used the word Look! to signal the woman’s presence. The translation of the verb in the future tense (“will conceive”) is not probable here (the Hebrew word is an adjective or participle). The exact form of the word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament referring to women already clearly pregnant. For example, in Genesis 38:24, Tamar is obviously pregnant. In 1 Samuel 4:19, the wife of Phinehas is pregnant and about to give birth. Modern translations’ use of the future tense in Isaiah 7 highlights the lengths to which some translations, such as the New International Version, will go to adapt their wording to their theologies. But the text clearly says she is a young, pregnant woman (and therefore not a virgin); she will not become pregnant in the future.

The sign from Isaiah 7, at least at this point in the narrative, is not a virgin miraculously becoming pregnant at some point in the future, but a current, natural pregnancy by a young woman within Isaiah’s sight. We have here in Isaiah an ancient birth announcement.¹ However, how can this birth announcement be a sign? How can this child be worthy of attention? Indeed, it seems the miracle of a virginal conception would be a better sign, but this interpretation does not consider the broader literary and historical context.

Let us pause briefly over the name of the son, Immanuel. Names of children in the Old Testament often carried significance. The ancients did not choose a name only because of the way it sounded; names delivered messages; names told stories. For example, in 1 Samuel 4:21 a woman gave birth to a boy around the time of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant (and the death of her husband and father-in-law), so she named the child, Ichabod, which means “no glory” or “where is the glory?”² Patricia Tull summarizes the name situation in Isaiah 7 as follows:

When this child is named by his mother . . . she is echoing Jerusalem’s confidence, showing herself to be a daughter of Jerusalem, taking her stand in the midst of crisis, exhibiting a trust that will be confirmed by circumstances before her son reaches even a few years of age.³

God is indeed with this young woman, with the king and his kingdom, and with God’s people. In fact, scholars have argued that perhaps the young woman is the wife of King Ahaz, meaning the Immanuel child would be a continuation of the Davidic line. If this were the case, the birth announcement is a sign of hope and vitality for the struggling kingdom. The kingdom will continue after the crisis because a new ruler will soon be born.

Isaiah 7 ends with a prophecy concerning the land of the two kings. The audience is guaranteed that the rulers’ plans will not succeed and in a matter of a few years (when do children know to reject evil and choose good?), the crisis will be averted.

In sum, the passage describes an ordinary notion of ancient Israelite prophecy speaking to the current political situation with a theological slant. God assured Ahaz and all of Judah through the prophet Isaiah that God was with them and would help them as they faced the military attacks on Jerusalem. The word of comfort, in the form of prophecy, was accompanied by a sign, a child with a unique name—a message in and of itself—who would not be grown before the political threat had come to an end. The passage was not messianic at that point in history, although there is a plausible interpretation that works in the eighth-century BCE context. If one reads the remainder of Isaiah 7, verses 17–25, the whole context of the prophecy becomes clear.

Note how the prophecy and story of the woman and her child made sense within their historical context. As Christians, with other interpretations at our disposal, we can see how texts might change their emphases and depart from originating contexts in light of new situations and questions. We are not restrained by this eighth-century BCE context as if the orig...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Walter Brueggemann
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. ISAIAH THROUGH BIFOCALS
• II. ISAIAH’S “MESSIANIC” TEXTS
• III. ISAIAH’S VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
• Bibliography
• Subject and Name Index
• Scripture Index