by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)
It is important to observe that this passage in Isaiah opens with a reference to the Messiah as Israel’s extraordinarily bright celestial “light” that rises in a context of darkness:
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of Yahweh has risen upon you.
. . . Yahweh will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you.
And nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Lift up your eyes all around, and see;
they all gather together, they come to you. . . .
Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and exult,
because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall bring good news, the praises of Yahweh. (Isa. 60:1, 2b–4a, 5–6)
Note the mention of gold and frankincense in verse 6. As for the Magi’s gift of myrrh, as we suggested earlier, it probably reflects the influence of Isaiah 53, the mysterious Suffering Servant being regarded as the Messiah.
As important as these texts probably were for the Magi, the passage that contained the key for their interpretation of what the comet did with respect to Virgo in the eastern sky is almost certainly Isaiah 7–12. From these chapters they were able to deduce not only that the newborn was the Messiah but also that he was divine in nature and would be born of a virgin, and that his birth to a virgin mother would be attended by a celestial sign, a great light shining in the darkness.
Isaiah 7:10–14
In Isaiah 7:1–25 the prophet was challenging the covenantally faithless king of Judah, Ahaz, to trust in Yahweh through the crisis precipitated by the Syro-Ephraimite invasion of Judah in 734/733 BC rather than turning for help to the regional superpower of his day, Assyria.28 To encourage Ahaz to have faith in the God of David, God offered him an authenticating sign:
Again Yahweh spoke to Ahaz, “Ask a sign of Yahweh your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put Yahweh to the test.” And [Isaiah] said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin [almah] shall be with child and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isa. 7:10–14)
The Context of Isaiah 7:14
It is necessary to reflect on the historical and theological context and on the meaning of Isaiah’s important oracle.29
Isaiah’s prophecy was delivered in the winter of 734/733 BC in Jerusalem, capital of the southern kingdom of Judah.30 The eighth-century BC King Ahaz of Judah was terrified by the prospect of an imminent attack on Jerusalem by his enemies Syria and Israel. These northern kingdoms hated the resident regional superpower Assyria and loathed Ahaz, because he would not wholeheartedly join their anti-Assyrian alliance. Ahaz was frightened of Syria and Israel, because their kings Rezin and Pekah were relatively powerful and were dead set on ousting him from the kingship of Judah and replacing him with a puppet king more sympathetic to their anti-Assyrian agenda. Moreover, the Syrians and Israelites, along with their allies, the Edomites and Philistines, had in the immediate run-up to this crisis brought great destruction on Judah and killed many tens of thousands of Judahite men and taken captive countless women and children (2 Kings 16; 2 Chronicles 28). Ahaz felt that without foreign military assistance he stood no chance in the face of his enemies’ determined advance to Jerusalem to oust him.
From the prophet Isaiah’s perspective, what Ahaz was not sufficiently taking into account was that the Davidic dynasty and David’s covenant with Yahweh were at stake. The future of Ahaz, Jerusalem, and Judah was determined by Yahweh, not Pekah and Rezin. In Isaiah’s analysis, whether King Ahaz and the Davidic dynasty would remain in power in Judah would be determined in heaven and not on the earth. And God would make his decision regarding the future of Ahaz and the house of David on the basis of whether or not the king kept covenant with him, and on the basis of his own mercy and love. Consequently, as the prophet saw it, the crisis facing the king of Judah served to shine the spotlight on Ahaz’s spiritual state and covenant performance and on the future of the Davidic covenant and dynasty. The spotlight exposed Ahaz’s unbelief, for he was unprepared to trust his God to protect him. He was evidently determined to appeal to Assyria rather than Yahweh for help. In his heart, the Judahite king was not an admirer of Yahweh or of the religion of his fathers. He loved the gods of the nations and worshiped idols and celestial entities, and had even offered up his sons as sacrifices to a pagan deity (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chron. 28:3).
The prophet Isaiah, representing Yahweh, went to meet Ahaz when the king was extremely worried about the vulnerability of Jerusalem’s water supply, which was the city’s Achilles’ heel in times of siege. Isaiah sought to reassure Ahaz that the Syro-Ephraimite intervention in Judah would not succeed in its main objective of toppling the Davidic dynasty, because God had decreed that it would not. Moreover, the prophet challenged the king to put his faith in Yahweh.
According to Isaiah, although Ahaz would not be overthrown by Rezin and Pekah, his future and that of his dynasty were still very much at stake. This was so because Yahweh had decreed (Isa. 7:9) that, if at this moment of crisis Ahaz turned his back on his divine covenant partner, he would bring disaster upon himself: he would “not be firm at all” (v. 9b). Clearly, in the prophet’s judgment, this was a momentous hour in the history of the House of David in Judah.
Probably at that time (or at least very shortly thereafter), Isaiah once again reached out to Ahaz (vv. 10–14), instructing him to request a sign from God to confirm his commitment to keeping his covenant with the Davidic dynasty in Judah and to preserving Ahaz through the Syro-Ephraimite invasion. The sign could be “deep as Sheol” (v. 11b, ESV) or “in the height above” (v. 11c, cf. KJV, ASV). “Deep as Sheol” presumably referred to some kind of seismic activity or resurrection from the dead. “In the height above” plainly referred to a celestial wonder such as an eclipse or some phenomenon against the backdrop of the stars and constellations. In effect, Ahaz was to tailor his very own special sign within the set parameters. The implicit deal was that, when Yahweh did the sign in Sheol or in the heavens, Ahaz would turn his heart back to Yahweh and trust him through the present crisis.
Ahaz, however, declined to choose a sign for Yahweh to do, obviously because he was privately resolute that he was not going to trust or obey the God of Israel. He had the audacity to try to cover up his lack of trust in Yahweh with a cloak of pseudo-piety: “I will not ask, and I will not put Yahweh to the test” (v. 12). His words are drawn from Deuteronomy 6:16: “You shall not put Yahweh your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Ironically, Ahaz, by his refusal to specify a sign, was in fact “putting Yahweh to the test.” At Massah in the wilderness the Israelites were confronted with a trial—they lacked water to quench their thirst—and they refused to trust God to meet their need and rebelled against him and his servant Moses (Ex. 17:1–7). Ahaz was in his Massah, so to speak, and he was intent on rebelling against the word of Yahweh as represented by Isaiah. To Isaiah, the king’s failure to request a sign was nothing short of covenant treachery.
By his refusal to stand firm in faith, Ahaz brought upon himself the fate decreed by Yahweh in verse 9: he ceased to “be firm at all.” The House of David in Judah had been tested and found wanting. As it happened, subsequent history powerfully vindicated Isaiah. In the story of the Davidic dynasty and of Judah, this incident proved to be a decisive turning point. Ahaz needlessly sold Judah’s independence to Assyria, and the southern kingdom quickly became a pathetic vassal state that struggled to bear the heavy financial burdens
that the short-tempered superpower put on it (see Isa. 7:17–25; 2 Chron. 28:16–21; 2 Kings 16:17–18). Essentially, from this moment onward Judah was on a downhill slope to termination in 586 BC at the hands of the Babylonians.
In response to the hard-heartedness and rebellion of King Ahaz, Isaiah then declared to Ahaz (Isa. 7:13–14): “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Ahaz had refused to specify which sign he wanted from Yahweh (v. 12)—whether a sign “deep as Sheol or in the height above” (v. 11)—and so Yahweh now chose “a sign” for him (v. 14). Disturbingly, Isaiah speaks of Yahweh as “my God,” implying that he was no longer Ahaz’s God.
The Immanuel Oracle: The Virgin and Her Child
One scholar has called Isaiah 7:14 “the most controversial passage in the Bible.”31 Debate has particularly focused on the identity of the prophesied child. Was it someone born in Isaiah’s day? If so, was it a son of Isaiah,32 or a son of Ahaz, either Hezekiah33 or an anonymous younger sibling of Hezekiah?34 Or was it someone born in the future, namely the Messiah.35 Inextricably linked to this debate is the question of the identity of “the virgin” who gives birth to the child. Was she Isaiah’s wife? Was she a member of Ahaz’s royal harem? Or was she simply a woman who happened to be passing by when Isaiah was meeting with Ahaz? Or, was she the mother of the Messiah?
We must first ask a simple question: Does the oracle speak of the near future or of the distant future or of both? It is clear from 7:15–8:8 that it does speak to the near future.36 At the same time, 8:8–10 and 9:2–7, as well as 11:1–16, reveal that the prophet is looking beyond the near future into the distant future. So it is best to conclude that Isaiah’s oracle has a relevance to both the near future and the distant future. As we shall see below, this dual perspective comes to the surface in 9:1, where Isaiah speaks of “the former time,” which brings distress and darkness, and “the latter time,” which brings joy and light.
As to the identity of the newborn of 7:14 in Isaiah’s near future, in light of what the prophet reports in 8:3–4, it is difficult to deny that “Immanuel” was Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Isaiah’s second son: “And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then Yahweh said to me, ‘Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz, for before the boy knows how to cry ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.” Here not only do we have a clear allusion back to Isaiah 7:14’s conception, childbirth, and naming, but we also have the birth being regarded as the beginning of a countdown to the fulfillment of Yahweh’s promise to punish Syria and Israel, just as in 7:15–16 (where Immanuel’s birth marks the start of a countdown to the desertion of Syria and Israel). A further indication that “Immanuel” in Isaiah’s day was the prophet’s second son is found in 8:18, where we read that Isaiah and his sons are “signs and portents in Israel from Yahweh of hosts.” We recall that 7:14 spoke of the birth of Immanuel as a “sign.” Of course, if Maher-shalal-hash-baz was “Immanuel,” then the “virgin” (almah) of 7:14 was Isaiah’s wife, the prophetess.
Compared to this view, other proposed identifications of the newborn baby boy in the late 730s BC come up short. In particular, the identification of Immanuel as Hezekiah fails on the grounds of chronology. Whichever chronology of the kings of Judah one adopts, Hezekiah was certainly born well before the Syro-Ephraimite crisis.
Moreover, it is hard to see why the naming of a young, non-succeeding son of Ahaz by a concubine in the royal household might constitute a sign signaling divine judgment on the king.
The idea that “the virgin” was simply a passerby can be safely rejected, since it is ridiculous to imagine Ahaz, who did not want the sign and had no intention of heeding it, proceeding to track an anonymous woman to her home and getting updates about her pregnancy, delivery, and naming of her child.
Although we judge that the “virgin” in Isaiah’s day was his prophetess wife and the newborn was his second son, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, this interpretation is not without apparent difficulties. The main perceived problem centers on the particular word used to describe the woman: almah. Isaiah’s wife, if she is the same woman who previously bore him Shear-jashub, does not seem a ready fit for the role of almah. That is because the word is not a natural one to use of a married woman37 and certainly not one who has already had a child.38 Indeed, although the term does not refer to virginity as such, generally speaking an almah is sexually inexperienced.39 It has been suggested that Isaiah’s first wife, the mother of Shear-jashub, had died and that Isaiah had recently married a second wife, the prophetess, so that he is referring to a woman who at the point that he was speaking was a bona fide almah, in the sense that she had not previously borne a child.40 That possibility should not be quickly dismissed, although it is probably unnecessary to resort to this.
With respect to the distant future, there can be no question but that the birth of the Messiah was in view.
The royal birth announcement in Isaiah 9:6–7 makes this abundantly clear: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.” The child would be the ultimate son of David who fulfilled the Davidic covenant and was divine in nature.
That Isaiah 7:14 had in view the birth of the Messiah is also strongly supported by 11:1–3a, 4b–10. There, in the climax of chapters 7–12, Isaiah again referred to the arrival of the Messiah on the earthly scene and his ultimate destiny:
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch41 from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh.
And his delight shall be in the fear of Yahweh. . . .
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the sea.
In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.
In this passage Isaiah makes it explicit that the birth that was uppermost in his mind during the Syro-Ephraimite Crisis was, strikingly, that of the Messiah.
Accordingly, in the near future the almah in Isaiah 7:14 was Isaiah’s wife, the prophetess, and in the distant future she was the Messiah’s mother.
Whatever ambiguity there was concerning the word almah, the simple fact is that if the offspring was divine, as the name Immanuel (“God with us”) implied (cf. 9:6), the only natural conclusion to reach was that the almah was a virgin, with the father of Immanuel being divine and the m
eans of reproduction being nonsexual.
It is doubtful if Ahaz grasped the full meaning and significance of the sign. To him, the oracle may have sounded like an adaptation of a pagan myth concerning the birth of a child to a virgin mother goddess, like the ancient Egyptian myth of the “virgin” goddess Isis and her son Horus. The pagan king of Judah may well have assumed that the prophesied myth-like sign would be enacted in some kind of drama. Indeed drama was a common prophetic tool. Isaiah 20 records that Isaiah walked around “naked and barefoot” for three years “as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush” (v. 3a), prophetically playing the role of an Egyptian or Cushite taken captive by the Assyrians (vv. 3b–4).
Isaiah 7:14 was indeed disclosing a drama, an extraordinary one. The dramatization of the virgin and Immanuel would be spread over ten months and involve a real pregnancy and birth. When Ahaz saw Isaiah’s wife, the prophetess, pregnant, and then learned that she had given birth to Maher-shalal-hash-baz and (as Isaiah 7–8 implies) named him “Immanuel,” he would have understood that the woman and her son were playing the parts of the virgin and her divine child.
For Isaiah, however, his wife was not playing the part of a virgin mother goddess in a mythical scene, but rather the part of the Messiah’s mother as she became pregnant with and gave birth to the divine Son of God. It was the Messiah’s mother who would be “the virgin.” She alone could with full justification use the name “God with us” to describe her son.
