Advent 4, Year A | Isaiah 7:10-16 | Matthew 1:18-25
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 18, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” – Isaiah 7:14[1]
Our Hebrew Bible reading drops us into the middle of one of the many messes in Israel’s history. The country had divided into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms long ago. Animosity between the two had been constant for generations. Now with the threat of the Assyrian Empire moving down into the region, the complexities of their relationship had only increased. Damascus and Samaria, capitols of Aram[2] and Northern Israel, respectively, had already promised fealty to Assyria in exchange for the benefit of being allowed to keep existing, but after making a few tax payments, neither was too confident in their bargain anymore. Together they hatched a plan to void their contract, but they would need some help to make it work. So they invited Jerusalem to join their scheme. Together they planned to amass an army powerful enough to push out their new, unwelcome overlords.
Ahaz, king in Jerusalem, wasn’t too sure about the whole thing. God had kept Assyria at bay so far, and drawing the empire’s attention might be a bad idea. When he finally declined to join his northern neighbors, they announced their intent to attack him instead. Once Ahaz was dead, they could install a new king who would lead Judah to join their cause. Two larger countries invading a smaller one was concerning at best, and Ahaz was considering sending his own message of loyalty to the emperor in hopes the Assyrians might shut down Jerusalem’s more pressing threat.
In the midst of this national panic, God sends Isaiah to encourage Ahaz. The prophet tells him not to worry about the other two kings, that their plans will fail. And that’s where our reading picked up this morning.
Jumping ahead about 700 or 800 years, today’s Gospel passage hinges around Matthew’s understanding of what Isaiah says next: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel...”[3] If you flip back and forth in your bulletin, you might notice slight differences from the way that particular sentence is rendered in the Hebrew Bible. I’ve heard people make a big deal out of Isaiah’s “young woman” versus Matthew’s “virgin,” with some saying that the difference reveals inaccuracies in the Bible while others declare it shows modern translations are untrustworthy and simply demonic tools designed to sow doubt among Christians.
Neither of those are the case. Matthew’s simply quoting the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible popular in Jesus’ day. The Greek word translators chose a few hundred years earlier meant either “virgin” or “maiden,” so it’s a close equivalent to Isaiah’s term, which is “maiden” or “unmarried woman.” Without access to reliable contraceptives, Hebrew culture—like most of the world until the past 60 years or so—frowned on sex outside of marriage, so their basic expectation is likely to have been that an unmarried woman was a virgin. You can read what you want into the text, but there’s no reason to think the difference is substantial enough to either disprove the Bible or offer meaningful evidence of some weird conspiracy.
The more significant issue with Matthew’s quote isn’t the terminology; it’s the way he uses Isaiah’s statement.
Both Christian and popular culture have some unspoken expectations regarding prophecy, the most basic of which is that prophecy refers to a one-time event. If that’s the case, we have a much more serious problem than translators’ word choices, because that means either Isaiah or Matthew has to be wrong. If a Hebrew prophet’s words weren’t found to be true, the prophet was considered to be false and not sent by God. Due to the amount of his writings Jewish tradition maintained, Isaiah was obviously recognized as a reliable prophet. And the complete prophecy, with its mention of invading kings, leaves no doubt he’s referring to something Ahaz either knows about or will soon experience.
With the one-prophecy::one-fulfilment standard, that makes Matthew’s appropriation of Isaiah’s words extremely problematic. It essentially leaves our evangelist proof-texting: ripping a line from its Biblical context and applying it elsewhere simply to support one’s own viewpoint. Proof-texting tricks people into thinking the Bible[4] says all kinds of things it doesn’t. It’s basically a violation of the 3rd Commandment—putting God’s name on your cause—and is even one of the tools Satan uses in tempting Jesus just a few chapters from now.
The real problem, however, doesn’t have anything to do with which of the interpretations of the prophecy is the right one. The issue is how we understand prophecy to function. From fairytales to movies to Bible studies, we put a certain mystical weight on prophecy, expecting dim predictions to mysteriously—even magically—fulfill themselves in future events. But that isn’t how prophecy actually works. Prophecy doesn’t necessarily involve prognostication or predicting the future. It doesn’t require trances or crystal balls. It doesn’t need to appear in cryptic poetic lines. Prophecy is, more or less, the recognition and recording of patterns. Certain human behaviors continue to occur throughout history, making for somewhat “predictable” results. The prophet is usually just someone who’s been able to express those archetypes in a memorable way. So despite our assumptions, a prophecy doesn’t demand fulfilment in a single event.
That’s why people continue to recognize their own experiences in the Book of Revelation and other Biblical texts from the day they were written until now—the author’s contemporaries, others living through the fall of Rome hundreds of years later, theologians and preachers of the Reformation a thousand years after that, even our own modern applications another 500 years since. We can read all those eras and experiences onto the texts—not inaccurately—without the pressure to determine one true and ultimate fulfilment, which may or may not ever occur because the patterns continue to cycle again and again. Even when a prophet has a specific situation in mind, prophecies don’t generally have a fulfilment as much as they have fulfilments—plural.
That gives us both the opportunity for hope and some encouragement to still keep our own eyes open as we move through the world. Isaiah was speaking directly to Ahaz about the failure of a threatened invasion. Matthew sees aspects of the same prophecy arising anew through Jesus. So if we look carefully, we might just discover that the prophet is speaking directly to us this final week of Advent. Where is hope gestating in the darkness? What unexpected—or even disregarded or disparaged—neighbor might be bringing new life to the world? If the threats to God’s people are to burn themselves away, where might we find strength and encouragement in remaining faithful to Jesus? If Emmanuel—“God with us”[5]—is the prophecy, then where can we find God active among us today?
“‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”[6]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Modern Syria
[3] Matthew 1:23
[4] or any other text, for that matter
[5] The Greek lacks any verb.
[6] Matthew 1:23