Unto Us a Child is Given, Part 1, The Sign
"Mary did you know that your baby boy would
one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would
save our sons and daughters?"
The looming Syro-Ephaimite War
The prophet Isaiah
lived in Israel approximately seven centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ.
He had a long ministry, covering the reigns of four kings of the little nation of Judah. During
the reign of the third king, Ahaz, Isaiah had a most remarkable vision of a special
child that would be born in his lifetime. That child would be a sign to Judah and its capitol Jerusalem that the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia would not totally vanquish Ahaz’s
kingdom. Nor would a confederacy of Syria and Northern Israel succeed in breaking into the city of Jerusalem,
plundering its wealth, and killing tens of thousands of citizens. But before we look at the whole
panorama of this vision leading to the great statement of Isaiah 9:6, 7, we
need to review the back story in chapters 7 and 8.
This third king
departed from the religion of his fathers, preferring instead to worship the gods of Syria
and Assyria. However, he was still the king of the House of David, and God was
not yet ready to punish all of Judah for their transgressions. Northern
Israel’s time of judgment was close. One of Isaiah’s assignments from Yahweh was to warn the northern kingdom that if
they didn't change their ways, Assyria would surely come down and take them
captive in a most brutal manner. The time for mercy for Northern Israel was
about to end forever, and that sad day came in 721 BCE (Before Christ or Before the Common Era, which is less offensive to Jews and non-Christians).
The Assyrian threat
wasn't on King Ahaz’s mind as he left the city one day (perhaps around 730-725
BC). He was worried about the threat from his immediate neighbors, Northern Israel and its neighbor Syria. Everyone in the southern kingdom trembled at the thought. The Bible tells us that King Ahaz’s
“heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are
moved in the wind,” meaning that they were all terrified. (7:2)
Isaiah writes that
he and his son Shear-Jashub met Ahaz one day as his entourage was leaving the
city. The Bible doesn't actually say whether Ahaz was alone or with a group of
people, but most kings of the day rode with a well-equipped guard of 50 brave
soldiers. The king himself would have been dressed in fine garments and would
be riding in a chariot covered in gold or perhaps on a horse fitted with the
finest saddlery. The sound of hooves, the huffing of horses, the clatter of
weapons, the cloud of dust, all would have come to an abrupt halt in the face
of the old prophet standing in the middle of the road.
The birth of Immanuel, holy child and miraculous sign
Isaiah assured Ahaz
that the Syrian-Israeli threat would dissolve before they could do harm to
Judah. By 721 BC, the Assyrians would drive south with a huge army and scrape
the northern kingdoms of Israel and Syria off their lands like a razor. The two
conspiring kings [Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria] would be captured, and the people of northern Israel would lose
their identity as tribes of Israel. The territory in the center of the region,
often referred to as Ephraim (an ancient tribal name), would never be called
that again. Ahaz was challenged to ask God for a sign that this would be so.
Ahaz undoubtedly hated Isaiah. I can imagine him thinking, “I am not going to
play this old man’s game. He never has anything good to say about me.” So he
answered, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD.” No doubt the honor guard
smirked just a little at such a wily answer.
Isaiah shot back,
“Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will
you weary God also?” Isaiah has suggested two things here. First, Ahaz is not
very popular with his people in Judah. Second, he is not very popular with God.
Isaiah then offers an astonishing sign.
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a
sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and [she] shall call
his name Immanuel."
Can you imagine Ahaz's response to that prediction? A young woman? A child? O please, move aside old man!
There are two words
in the above passage that we must examine. The first is alma, translated here as ‘virgin.’ Alma is an ambiguous word usually translated by today’s scholars as
‘young woman’ or ‘maiden.’ The unambiguous Hebrew word for virgin is bethulah. However, alma is never used in the Old Testament to refer to a married
woman, so hundreds of years later, Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew
scriptures into Greek used the specific Greek word for ‘virgin.’ Matthew quoted
the Greek version (called The Septuagint)
when he wrote his Gospel about the birth of Jesus. Since the birth of this
child was supposed to be something of a miracle, the Christian translator of
the NKJV felt he had good support to use the word ‘virgin’ for the mother of
the special child.
The other word is
Immanuel/Emmanuel, meaning ‘God With Us.’ This child will be given two names. One name
will reflect the danger of the days to come, the other will be a promise of
God’s divine protection. Isaiah went on to describe to Ahaz what the near
future will be like even after the Israeli-Syrian conspiracy collapses. The
child Immanuel will grow up eating curds and honey because even in Judah, men
will fear to go to the fields to sow and reap. Instead they will keep a cow and
a couple of sheep nearby for milk and cheese (7:21). They will gather honey
from bees that chanced to swarm in the fallow fields. Sheep and oxen will roam
freely in overgrown pastures. But, before the child is very old, “the land you dread
will be forsaken by both her kings [Pekah and Rezin, the king of Syria].”
In Chapter 8, Isaiah
describes how the LORD instructed him to take a priest and a recorder (Uriah
and Zechariah) as witnesses when he approached “the prophetess,” the chosen
mother. Scholars today insist that this woman was undoubtedly Isaiah’s wife.
Furthermore, say they, there is no doubt that the child was conceived in a
normal manner. Fine. Believe it however you will. What we need to look at in
the verse is the deliberate ambiguity. Isaiah uses a word that means “approach,
draw near to.” He does not say, “I knew my wife,” or “I went into to
prophetess.” Nor is the woman named as his wife. She is not named at all. Why
wouldn’t the name of this important woman matter when Isaiah recorded the names of the priest and the
recorder? She is the mother of a holy child! We don’t know where she lived,
what tribe she was from, or whether she was married.
You say, “Of course
she was! Don’t even suggest this was
a virgin birth.” Maybe it wasn't, but her status as a married woman is veiled
here, and so is the specific detail of how the child was conceived. The
ambiguity was is no oversight. She is supposed to be veiled in mystery, because
this whole event will repeat itself in about 700 years in the future. They will both be referred to as Immanuel, and this
little mother is but a shadow, a precursor of a young virgin who will live way
in the future.
Judah would not
totally escape Assyria’s assault. Comparing the king of Assyria to the
flooding Euphrates River, Isaiah wrote,
“The king of Assyria and all his glory;
he will go up over all his channels and go over all his banks. He will pass
through Judah, he will overflow and pass over. He will reach up to the neck
(Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, is the head); and the stretching out of his (Assyria's) wings will
fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel” (8:7, 8).
In spite of the fact
that Isaiah seems to have dedicated the land of Judah to Immanuel, we don’t
hear of that specific child again until 8:18: “Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me. We are signs and
symbols in Israel from the LORD Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion” [Jerusalem].
The eighth century BC Immanuel did not become king, prophet, judge, or general.
It was not the person of the child, but the miracle of his conception that was
the sign of God’s miraculous deliverance for Judah.
Biblical and inter-testamental accounts, as well as Assyrian records, verify that the king of
Assyria took Syria and northern Israel captive and took captive
tens of thousands of citizens from Judah, but was not able to breach the walls
of Jerusalem. To find out exactly why Immanuel’s conception and birth was so important that a
wicked king’s retinue was stopped on the highway, watch for Part 2 of this
post.
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