Matthew 1:23

Matthew 1:23 is the 23rd verse of the first chapter in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. Joseph has just been informed of the nature of Jesus by an angel and in this verse the author of Matthew relates this to a quote from the Old Testament.

Content

Matthews quotation is from Isaiah 7:14, in which the prophet is warning King Ahaz against joining the kings of Israel and Syria in their coalition against the Assyrians. In Isaiah 7:1-10 contains Isaiah's prophesy, and Isaiah 7:11-16 sets out the prophet's "sign":
According to Marvin A. Sweeney, a sign, in this context, means a special event which confirms the prophet's words. Ahaz's sign is to be the birth of a son to an almah, who will name him Immanuel, "God is with us", but the significance of the sign is not the identity of the child or his mother but the meaning of his name and the role it plays in identifying the length of time before God will destroy the Ephraimite-Syrian coalition.
In the King James Version of the Bible the text of Isaiah 7:14 reads:
The World English Bible translates the passage as:
For a collection of other versions see

Analysis

Matthew's use of the Greek word parthenos, meaning "virgin" to render the Hebrew word almah, meaning a young woman of childbearing age who has not yet born a child, springs from his use of the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah rather than the Hebrew version. His personal alteration to the passage is to change the phrase "they shall name" to "you shall name", so that Immanuel becomes a name given by Joseph rather than title proclaimed by the people.