Was Matthew Right?
Was Matthew Right?
Matthew 1:22-23
Of all the passages in the Old Testament, perhaps even in the New as well, there is none so riddled with controversy in the past two thousand years as Isaiah 7:14.
Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin
will conceive and will give birth to a son, and will call his
Immanuel.
Matthew, with his characteristic formulaic quotations (about 60) from the Old Testament, claimed that the prophet Isaiah foretold of Jesus’ virgin birth in 1:22-23. In other words, Matthew held that the virgin birth of Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s messianic prophecy. Carefully observe what he writes:
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel—which means “God with us”.
Matthew 1:22-23.
George F. Handel apparently thought Matthew got it right. I can still hear the soloist’s voice with orchestra playing in the background, in his “Messiah,” “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son…”
Was Matthew Wrong?
But was Handel wrong to use Matthew 1:22-23 as support for Jesus’ virgin birth? Did Matthew get it right? Much of the scholarly community, both evangelical and liberal, say no. Matthew misinterpreted the words of the prophet Isaiah. Observe what one evangelical scholar says about Isaiah 7:14.
Exegesis gives us no clue that Isaiah had been aware that he was speaking of the Messiah. The child’s name merely expressed the hope that accompanied God’s deliverance.[1]
In other words, Matthew bypassed (ignored) Isaiah’s original interpretive intentions in 7:14 and fabricated his own interpretation. He shoe-horned Isaiah 7:14 to fit into the story of Jesus in order to claim a virgin birth. Have a look at another scholar’s words about Matthew and his fulfillment passages:
The problem is that few if any {emphasis mine} of the fulfillment passages {in Matthew} were intended originally as messianic prophecies.[2]
Wegner states,
“It is difficult to see how Matthew could apply this verse to Jesus given its present context,”[3]
Rhodea asserts
“Matthew could also have understood (sic) the virginal conception of Jesus as ‘making full’ the sign of Emmanuel in ways other than a direct fulfillment of a predictive prophecy.”[4]
He also asserts that Isa 7:14…
“did not demand a miraculous conception in its original setting”[5] i.e., context.
But how can such scholars hold to inerrancy on the one hand, but on the other, claim that Matthew ignored Isaiah’s original context and invented his own meaning?[6]
Redeeming Matthew
Well, Matthew is “redeemed” from his interpretive mistake by scholars who claim that he used a “sensus plenior,” a second, or a “fuller meaning” of Isaiah 7:14. In other words, the author of Isaiah never really meant to foretell Israel’s Messiah as born of a virgin. He was not making a messianic prediction. He was referring to events in the days of Ahaz the king.[7]
Douglas and Stuart deal with this question by stating that “What Paul did we are not authorized to do,” because by divine inspiration the NT writers could “bypass the usual considerations of context, intent, style, and wording and identify that set of words or that passage as having a second meaning.”[8]
So, we are told that Matthew departed from Isaiah’s actual intentions and fabricated his own interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy. But since he was writing under inspiration, his unorthodox methodology is apparently acceptable. First century Matthew is redeemed by the creativity of 20th and 21st-century scholars. Modern scholars across the board assert that Matthew has ignored the “context.”
Yet in striking contrast, prominent early church interpreters of Matthew 1:22-23, such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome, all defended Matthew.
But can we truly believe Matthew’s account of Jesus with full confidence knowing that he took Isaiah 7:14 out of context? Taking verses out of context is the cardinal sin in biblical studies. But, apparently, it’s not a sin for Matthew to do so. He can do it, but we’d better not. Sounds consistent to me!
If Jesus’ apostles derived a message from the Hebrew Bible through a method not consistent with the prophets’ intent and original purpose, then the apostles were wrong. Reason and logic are defied when scholars claiming inerrancy attempt to accept the apostolic interpretation but reject their means to arrive at that message. This is standard interpretive mumbo-jumbo in evangelical seminaries and colleges.
Did Matthew really ignore the original context of Isaiah 7? Let’s back up a step or two and think about the pivotal role of context in Bible interpretation. Context is crucial.
Context is Crucial
When I was in graduate-school, I majored in New Testament Greek. And because I enjoyed the languages and exegesis of the biblical texts, I took many Hebrew classes as well. So, when I wanted to understand what a word in the text meant, I was taught to look it up in a lexicon (a dictionary). So, for example, if I wanted to know what the phrase “garments of skin” (in Genesis 3:21) meant, I chased the phrase down in the Hebrew lexicon (known as BDB). The citation read, “tunics.” So, apparently God clothed Adam and Eve with tunics. End of story, right?
Not so fast. When I did post-graduate work under the late John Sailhamer, an Old Testament scholar, my exegetical world was rocked. He showed me that the context for Genesis 3:21 in fact was Genesis through Deuteronomy, the Torah, otherwise known as the Pentateuch. Or, as Joshua (1:8) termed it, “the Book of the Law.” Observe, not the books of the Law, but “the Book of the Law,” one book with five parts.
So, if I wanted to know what “garments of skin” meant, I could chase down the same Hebrew phrase throughout the Pentateuch. I discovered that the same Hebrew term used for “tunics” in Genesis 3:21 is used only of the garments that the Aaronic priests wore while serving inside the tabernacle--in the presence of God--in order to cover their nakedness (Exod 28:42-43). So, by examining the entire context, I came to realize that God clothed Adam and Eve for the same reason—to cover their nakedness in the Garden (in his presence). Both Adam and Eve were, in fact, priests unto God (there are many other clues in Genesis 2 that indicate that Adam and Eve were priests, but the English translations hide those clues). Examining the full context made all the difference in interpreting “garments of skin” in Genesis 3:21.[9] The LORD God clothed Adam and Eve as priests after they sinned in the Garden, the first Temple, for the same reason he required the Aaronic priests, also sinners, to cover their nakedness inside the Tabernacle.
Context was essential to understand why God clothed Adam and Eve with “tunics” after they sinned.
Now, let’s get back to Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew’s use of the passage to support Jesus’ virgin birth. It can be illustrated through linguistic, compositional, and canonical evidence that Matthew’s hermeneutic was not flawed, but that he has correctly read Isaiah 7:14 in its original meaning and according to its full context—Isaiah 2-12.
The Context of Isaiah 7:14
What is the context for Isaiah 7:14? The definitive context of the verse is Isaiah chapters 2-12. The entire context reveals a unified and coherent message throughout, of which chapter 7 is but one component.[10] In addition, there are various examples of phonological resonance[11] in the immediate context of verse 14 that highlight the meaning of הָעַלְמָ֗ה (alma, virgin) a key term[12] in the debate. So, there is in fact no need at all to “redeem” mistaken Matthew by using terms such as “sensus plenior,” “fuller meaning,” or other terms to explain his interpretation. Textual evidence from the full literary context of Isa 7:14 fully supports this example of Matthew’s exegesis.
Matthew was Right
Matthew was right. He correctly interpreted Isaiah’s original intention of using Isaiah 7:14 as prophetic support for the virgin birth of the Messiah, Jesus. Isaiah 7:14 was written as a Messianic prophecy. Matthew interpreted it the exact same way.
Long before Jesus was born, Isaiah the prophet foretold that Israel’s Messiah would be born of a virgin. Matthew, many years later, confirmed Isaiah’s prophecy in the birth of Jesus Christ to a young Jewish woman, a virgin named Mary.
Thank you for reading.
Merry Christmas.
Tim Cole
[1] J.H. Walton, “Isa 7:14: What’s in a Name? JETS 30 (1987), p. 300.
[2] Grant R. Osborne, “The Old Testament in the New Testament,” in The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006), p. 333.
[3] Wegner, Paul, “How Many Virgin Births are in the Bible? (Isaiah 7:14): A Prophetic Pattern Approach.” JETS 54.3, Sept. 2011, 467-84, 467.
[4] Rhodea, Greg, “Did Matthew conceive a Virgin? Isaiah 7:14 and the Birth of Jesus.” JETS 56.1, Mar. 2013, 63-77.
[5] Ibid., 68.
[6] Both articles by Wegner and Rhodea overlook the immediate literary context of Isa 7:14 (vv. 10-25) and the wider one beginning in Isa 2. Rhodea also notes that Matthew reaches “so far that he even produces some unusual ideas of fulfillment to our ears (Matt 2:15),” (pp. 63-64).
[7]Football coaches often use misdirection plays on offense to confuse defenses. While defenders look for the ball in one direction, the ball carrier actually runs in the opposite direction. In biblical studies, misdirection is also used by scholars to confuse the issue. Example: we are asked to think about what was going on in the mind of King Ahaz at the time the words were uttered. But what Ahaz thought at the time is irrelevant in view of the author's intention. We should be asking, what is the meaning for this verse in the mind of the inspired writer of Isaiah? Watch the ball. Watch Isaiah.
[8] Fee, Gordon D, and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth,” 3rd edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003, 202-203.
[9] Genesis 3:21 is just one of multiple examples where what we see in our English translations of Genesis 1-3 is misleading. For example, the first word in Genesis 1:1, bereshit, normally translated as “In the beginning,” is never used in the OT for a point in time. It rarely refers to time at all. The vast majority of the use of bereshit in the Pentateuch refers to “firstborn” or “first-fruit”. See Genesis 49:3 where it refers to Reuben the firstborn. The apostle Paul read bereshit this way in Colossians 1:15-16 when referring to Christ as the Firstborn and Creator of the universe. See also the role of Jesus as creator in Hebrews 1:1-4 and John 1:1-3.
[10] Isaiah 2-12 is a compositional unity as proven by the superscriptions setting them apart (2.1 and 13.1) as well as the assurance of the ultimate exaltation of the Lord opening and closing.
[11] Phonology and Consonance are common features of the Hebrew writers. Hebrew writers point to their intended meaning by using consonance and phonology. Consonance is the repetition of consonants across words in a given phrase. For example, bereshit bara demonstrates an example of triple consonantal alliteration. The first three consonants in the first word of Genesis1:1 (bereshit) are repeated again in the second word of Genesis 1:1 (bara). The Genesis author signals to us that the act of creating (bara) is linked in a special manner to the one doing the creating (bereshit). See Glück, “Paranomasia in Biblical Literature,” Semitics 1 (1970), pp. 50-78.
[12] In every use of the word “almah” in the Hebrew Bible, it refers either to a virgin or has a neutral sense. cf., Gen 24:43; Ex 2:8; Ps 46:1; 68:25;1 Chron 15:20; Song of Sol 1:3; 6:8; Prov 30:19. Almah refers to a virgin who has just arrived at puberty.