Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a
sign
Whether they would ask one or not; a sign both in heaven and
earth, namely, the promised Messiah; who being the Lord from
heaven, would take flesh of a virgin on earth; and who as man,
being buried in the heart of the earth, would be raised from
thence, and ascend up into heaven; and whose birth, though it was
to be many years after, was a sign of present deliverance to
Judah from the confederacy of the two kings of Syria and Israel;
and of future safety, since it was not possible that this kingdom
should cease to be one until the Messiah was come, who was to
spring from Judah, and be of the house of David; wherefore by how
much the longer off was his birth, by so much the longer was
their safety. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a
son;
this is not to be understood of Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, by his
wife, as some Jewish writers interpret it; which interpretation
Jarchi refutes, by observing that Hezekiah was nine years old
when his father began to reign, and this being, as he says, the
fourth year of his reign, he must be at this time thirteen years
of age; in like manner, Aben Ezra and Kimchi object to it; and
besides, his mother could not be called a "virgin": and for the
same reason it cannot be understood of any other son of his
either by his wife, as Kimchi thinks, or by some young woman;
moreover, no other son of his was ever lord of Judea, as this
Immanuel is represented to be, in ( Isaiah 8:8 ) nor can it
be interpreted of Isaiah's wife and son, as Aben Ezra and Jarchi
think; since the prophet could never call her a "virgin", who had
bore him children, one of which was now with him; nor indeed a
"young woman", but rather "the prophetess", as in ( Isaiah 8:3 ) nor was any
son of his king of Judah, as this appears to be, in the place
before cited: but the Messiah is here meant, who was to be born
of a pure virgin; as the word here used signifies in all places
where it is mentioned, as ( Genesis
24:43 ) ( Exodus 2:8 ) ( Psalms 68:25
) ( Song of
Solomon 1:3 ) ( 6:8 )
and even in ( Proverbs
30:19 ) which is the instance the Jews give of the word being
used of a woman corrupted; since it does not appear that the maid
and the adulterous woman are one and the same person; and if they
were, she might, though vitiated, be called a maid or virgin,
from her own profession of herself, or as she appeared to others
who knew her not, or as she was antecedent to her defilement;
which is no unusual thing in Scripture, see ( Deuteronomy
22:28 ) to which may be added, that not only the Evangelist
Matthew renders the word by (paryenov) , "a virgin"; but the Septuagint
interpreters, who were Jews, so rendered the word hundreds of
years before him; and best agrees with the Hebrew word, which
comes from the root (Mle)
, which signifies to "hide" or "cover"; virgins being covered and
unknown to men; and in the eastern country were usually kept
recluse, and were shut up from the public company and
conversation of men: and now this was the sign that was to be
given, and a miraculous one it was, that the Messiah should be
born of a pure and incorrupt virgin; and therefore a "behold" is
prefixed to it, as a note of admiration; and what else could be
this sign or wonder? not surely that a young married woman,
either Ahaz's or Isaiah's wife, should be with child, which is
nothing surprising, and of which there are repeated instances
every day; nor was it that the young woman was unfit for
conception at the time of the prophecy, which was the fancy of
some, as Jarchi reports, since no such intimation is given either
in the text or context; nor did it lie in this, that it was a
male child, and not a female, which was predicted, as R. Saadiah
Gaon, in Aben Ezra, would have it; for the sign or wonder does
not lie in the truth of the prophet's prediction, but in the
greatness of the thing predicted; besides, the verification of
this would not have given the prophet much credit, nor Ahaz and
the house of David much comfort, since this might have been
ascribed rather to a happy conjecture than to a spirit of
prophecy; much less can the wonder be, that this child should eat
butter and honey, as soon as it was born, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi
suggest; since nothing is more natural to, and common with young
children, than to take down any kind of liquids which are sweet
and pleasant. And shall call his name Immanuel;
which is, by interpretation, "God with us", ( Matthew 1:23
) whence it appears that the Messiah is truly God, as well as
truly man: the name is expressive of the union of the two
natures, human and divine, in him; of his office as Mediator,
who, being both God and man, is a middle person between both; of
his converse with men on earth, and of his spiritual presence
with his people. See ( John 1:14 ) ( 1 Timothy
3:16 ) .