APPENDIX

ON

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

HE fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter of Isaiah is

THE fourteenth passages in which the Septuagint Greek

version represents the original reading. In the Hebrew this verse reads, literally translated: "Therefore, the Lord, He giveth you a sign. The young woman is pregnant, and beareth a son, and calleth his name God with us.' Parallel passages for the words following non, "the young woman," are Genesis xvi. 11: "Behold, thou art pregnant, and bearest a son, and callest his name Ishmael," and Judges xiii. 5: "Behold, thou art pregnant, and bearest a son." For the word, as an adjective meaning, not "she shall conceive," but "pregnant," compare Genesis xxxviii. 24, 25; Exodus xxi. 22; 1 Samuel iv. 19; 2 Samuel xi. 5; Isaiah xxvi. 17; Jeremiah xxxi. 8. No other meaning can be given to this word than "pregnant," "with child"; and without some other word to denote future time it must indicate a present condition.

But it is the word, "the young woman," which constitutes the real difficulty of the passage. Professors Cheyne, G. A. Smith, and Dillmann all translate it literally as "the young woman." But what young woman? Having the article prefixed, it must be either some specific young woman, well known or previously referred to, or young women as a class distinguished from other classes. But it is manifestly neither of these; in fact, commentators have practically disregarded the article or explained it away, treating "the young woman" as being some indefinite young woman. Professor

Briggs1 points out the impossibility of this treatment of the article. He proposes to regard as the sign of the vocative, and translates: "Lo, young woman, thou art pregnant, and about to bear a son, and call his name Immanuel." But this treatment of alone, with no further indication of the vocative, is grammatically untenable (Dillmann). Furthermore, putting the grammatical question aside, the meanings obtained by Briggs, Dillmann, Smith, and Cheyne all alike seem very weak, to say the least, and the sign ill-chosen and clumsily presented. Smith 2 comments upon the passage thus: "A child," he says, "shall shortly be born, to whom his mother shall give the name Im-manu-El-God with us. By the time this child comes to years of discretion, he shall eat butter and honey. Isaiah then explains the riddle. He does not, however, explain who the mother is, having described her vaguely as a, or the young woman of marriageable age; for that is not necessary to the sign, which is to consist in the Child's own experience. To this latter he limits his explanation." throws aside as irrelevant and unimportant a part of the verse on which the prophet lays much stress, converts "the young woman" into "a young woman," and then drops her altogether as insignificant and unmeaning. That the mother is both necessary and important in this sign of the birth of Immanuel is evinced by the emphasis laid upon her in the verse, the space allotted to her, and the article attached to her name as one well known. The Septuagint reads the virgin, which is the translation of ninan. A comparison of the Septuagint with the Hebrew consonant text shows us in every other word in the verse a complete agreement, evidence of a conscientious translation, and a correct transmission. This is well brought out by the treatment in the Septuagint of the word which the Masoretes point NP, qarath, she called, apparently intending thereby the third person, singular, feminine. The Septuagint read the same consonants, but translated thou shalt call, pronouncing the word , qaratha, thou calledst.

הבתולה

1 Messianic Prophecy, p. 195, note.

The Book of Isaiah, i. p. 115.

Now, when we asked the question, Which change would have been more readily made, from the young woman to the virgin, or vice versâ? I think it must be admitted that, supposing an original the young woman, it would be very difficult to find any reason for a change to the virgin; whereas, on the other hand, the statement that a virgin should become a mother, might very well have offended some stupid literalist, even if there were nothing else involved, and led to the substitution of пphy, young woman, for nina, virgin. The presumption in favour of the Septuagint text, which is very strong, and would be regarded as sufficient evidence in a less important verse, is greatly strengthened by the testimony of the New Testament, and of the Peshitto Syriac version. The latter agrees with the Septuagint in reading the virgin. The New Testament gives independent evidence of the same reading in the received Hebrew text of the second half of the first century of our era. Neither Matthew i. 23 nor Luke i. 31 is a citation from the Septuagint; nor are they, probably, taken directly from the Hebrew. They seem, and more particularly is this true of the passage in St. Matthew's Gospel, to be translations from a secondary source, probably a traditional Aramaic rendering of the Hebrew, an oral Targum, current among the Jews at that time. They transmit to us the virgin, and not the young woman, as the current translation of the passage at the period of the composition of both the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Gospel of St. Luke, and thus

was read in the received העלמה and not הבתולה testify that

texts of that day.

But, substituting ninan for non, and translating, "Behold, the virgin is with child, and is about to bear a son, and shall call (or 'thou shalt call') his name Emmanuel," what is the reference in banan, the virgin? Who is this virgin? Micah iv. 8-10 is an excellent commentary on our passage. There we see the daughter of Zion in the pangs, as it were, of childbirth: "Writhe and twist, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail." The afflictions which befall the land, including the capture of Jerusalem itself, are the travail pangs

of the daughter of Zion, through which only can deliverance come. But not only is the daughter of Zion likened to one that is in travail; in the next chapter the figure is dropped, and she is spoken of as actually bringing forth a child. So the prophet says (v. 3), "Therefore He giveth them over until she that travaileth hath brought forth." Then follows the picture of the glorious reign of the Messiah, born of the daughter of Zion out of the travail of her affliction at the hand of the Assyrians. The whole passage is exactly parallel with our passage. Here also we have the virgin pregnant with a child, who shall be "God with us." The following verses narrate the desolation of the land, but through this "Godwith-us" child of the virgin the kingdom shall be restored more glorious than before. Chapter viii. takes up this same "God with us." When the Assyrians shall appear to have destroyed all, there shall still remain this "God with us," by which the redemption and restoration shall be brought about. This "God with us" is the child of the virgin in Isaiah vii. 14; and it is the same child, we see by comparing the passages, who shall be the child of the travailing daughter of Zion depicted in Micah v. 2. The virgin of Isaiah vii. 14 is, then, none other than the virgin daughter of Zion, and the contemporary prophets, Isaiah and Micah, are found to be making use of the same figure, influenced by the same spirit.

Our next consideration is the use of the word "virgin" in reference to a city or people, and more particularly in reference to Jerusalem and Judah. Isaiah xxxvii. 22 and Lamentations ii. 13 use the full phrase, "virgin daughter of Zion"; while Jeremiah xiv. 17 has "virgin daughter of my people," and Lamentations i. 15, "virgin daughter of Judah." Micah uses both "daughter of Zion" and "daughter of Jerusalem." Amos v. 2 and Jeremiah xxxi. 4, 21 use "virgin of Israel," which is, perhaps, the closest to our passage. We also find foreign nations personified in a similar manner, as "virgin daughter of Zidon" (Isa. xxiii. 12), "virgin daughter of Babylon" (Isa. xlvii. 1), and "virgin daughter of Egypt" (Jer. xlvi. 11).

The Targum on Isaiah agrees with the Hebrew text in writing bun, the young woman, in place of binan, the virgin, in this verse, and Jerome found the same word in the Hebrew texts of his day. The evidence seems to show that originally, and as late as the second half of the first century after Christ, the Hebrew texts read banan, the virgin. Was the change to bun, the young woman, deliberately meant to exclude the Christian interpretation of the passage, or was it a mere blunder, the adoption into the text of the emendation of a stupid literalist?