A field where freshly washed clothes were spread out to bleach and dry in the sun.
This was a misplaced sense of faithfulness on Ahaz’s part. It is wise not to ask God for a sign, unless He offers one as He did to Ahaz.
This prophecy of the
virgin is declared in
Matt 1:22,
23 to be fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. There has been a great deal of discussion over the Hebrew word found here for
virgin (
almah) and the word that Matthew uses (
parthenos). The latter refers unambiguously to a virgin, while the former (
almah) has been said to refer to a young woman, in contrast to the Hebrew word
bethulah, which is the equivalent of the Gr
parthenos. It has also been noted that the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew OT, has
parthenos here for
almah, and that
Matt 1:23 is taken from the Septuagint. Some have wondered why the Septuagint translators used the more specific word
parthenos. It is fair to say that this question is the result of oversimplifying the vocabulary and misinterpreting the distinctions. The Hebrew words
almah and
bethulah can actually refer to the same kind of woman;
almah is a youthful woman of marriageable age, one who has not yet had her first child, while
bethulah is one who has not been touched in an intimate way. Furthermore, in the present context it would be unthinkable to infer that the woman might have had sexual relations outside of marriage. So the well-known translation of “young woman” for
almah, while technically not incorrect, can be viewed as too ambiguous for the Hebrew word and the context.
Parthenos was an appropriate choice in the Greek. Another word,
kore (for “girl”) could have been used, but it has a wider range of meaning than the Heb
almah (Mark uses a related word,
korasion, to translate Jesus’ Aramaic word
talitha). It should also be acknowledged from a theological perspective that when Matthew cites the verse with
parthenos, he thereby authenticates it as inspired.
