Transcription
You, but tonight we want to focus on Matthew's use of Isaiah 7. Isaiah 7, more broadly, the whole virgin birth question. This is one of those topics that, I'll just telegraph this upfront, the critics, you know, we would call them theological liberals, the critics of the virgin birth idea have some legitimate points to make. But really, only because the way we talk about the virgin birth is very easy for them to pick up.
I file this topic in my folder that is titled "Affirming the Obvious, but then Extrapolating to the Unnecessary." And that is what, that is what liberal, theologically liberal critics do with a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight. I'm going to show you where their thinking comes from, and in, in many respects, their thinking is rooted in the text. But like I said, it's affirming the obvious, what's there, and then extrapolating to the unnecessary because of their presuppositions.
So, here's Isaiah 7. I want to take a little time for you to read through it. I'm going to read through, you can follow along. I'm going to try to do this for the sake of the audio. And I have certain things highlighted that I will come back to, that, that I want you to pay special attention to or fix in your mind.
"In the days of Ahaz" – that's the first thing, first line, did you need to fix in your mind – "the son of Joash, the son of Isaiah, king of Judah, rose the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, 'Syria is in league with Ephraim,' the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind."
"And the Lord said to Isaiah, 'Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field.'"
So, here we are. We're in a specific point of time, the reign of King Ahaz in Judah, which is the 8th century BC, 700s for round numbers. And he's under threat. The narrative continues and says to him, Isaiah says to Ahaz, "Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands." It's very pejorative against the enemy. You know, don't worry about these two smoldering stumps, the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. "Because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah has devised evil against you, saying, 'Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeal as king in the midst of it.'" That was their threat.
And God says, "Don't worry about that," says the Lord God. "It shall not stand; it shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within sixty-five years, Ephraim will be shattered from being a people." Yeah, I'm gonna have to worry about him anymore. Ephraim, of course, is the Northern Kingdom, also in the Old Testament known as Israel. This is after the kingdom has split into two. The monarchy is divided. Ten tribes in the north, two tribes in the south. The ten northern tribes, Northern Kingdom, are referred to as Israel, or Ephraim, or Samaria in your Old Testament. So when you hear, when you see those terms in books of the Old Testament after the death of Solomon, that's what it's talking about. That Northern Kingdom, sixty-five years from now, Northern Kingdom's gonna be history.
"And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all."
"Again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz, 'Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.'"
So, Ahaz is threatened. God says, "Isaiah, come here. Got a message for you to deliver to King Ahaz. Tell him not to worry. It's not gonna happen. He's gonna be okay." And if he's a little dubious of that, little nervous, tell him to ask for a sign. You know, and it can be anything. Sheol, the lowest, it's up to the highest heavens. "Don't ask for a sign." But Ahaz said, "I'm not gonna do that. I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test."
Now, whether he was being really pious here or not, you know, we don't really know. This might be out of piety that he's saying, "I'm not going to do that." And he said, God said, then through Isaiah, "Hear then, O house of David!" – it's a reference to the dynasty of which Ahaz is a part here – "O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the *alma* translated here in the ESV as virgin, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good." By the time this child is old enough to eat solid food and know the difference between right and wrong, again, it's within that 65-year range from before. "The boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. The land whose two kings you dread will be deserted." They're going to be deserted. And again, in 65 years, they're both going to be toast, as we read before. "The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria."
Now, here are the questions to start with. We read through the bulk of the chapter, the important part. If the prophecy was for Ahaz, that's what the text says, "In the days of Ahaz, speak unto Ahaz, say, Ahaz, do that." Okay. If the prophecy was for Ahaz, why would he assume the woman was a virgin? The only reason to do that. Do we need a virgin for the prophecy? In other words, if the prophecy was for Ahaz, number two, would he have expected the child was deity? In other words, is there any reason to expect that the child who is the sign would be incarnate deity? Now, we have the name Immanuel given here, so we need to talk about that. Regardless of what Immanuel means or can mean, the question is still there: Is there any reason Ahaz would expect incarnate deity to be the fulfillment of this prophecy? Third, does the word translated virgin, *alma*, mean virgin? What does it mean? Something else? Like the RSV has "young maiden." Very common translation. Fourth, if the prophecy was fulfilled in Isaiah's and, of course, Ahaz's own day, if it was fulfilled in their lifetimes, how could Matthew quote it as referring to Jesus?
Okay, those are the four fundamental questions. I think you can already see that if someone wanted to be antagonistic toward this tenet of Christianity, of the Christian faith and doctrine, critical of the virgin birth, it's pretty easy to do that. Because all you've got to do is go back to Isaiah 7 and read it and ask these questions and say, "No, you tell me when the prophecy was supposed to be fulfilled, who it was for." And it's a very, it's very easy to sow the seeds of doubt about what Matthew's doing. You know, it's easy for us, on the other hand, to say, "Well, you know, God just told him, you know, hey, that prophecy over there, you know, that you need to apply that to Jesus." And in the context of inspiration, there's nothing, I think, wrong with that. But it doesn't actually answer the other questions, is the point.
So, we get websites like this: "A Religious Santa Claus Tale" from Beliefnet. I know you're probably thinking, "We ought to call that Unbeliefnet," but it is Beliefnet. Beliefnet is a, it's not a Christian site. It's a pretty much a kind of a hodgepodge of spiritual anything. And in this particular article for the Christmas season, "The Birth Narrative of Jesus Shouldn't Be Taken Literally." And it's going to go into all these questions. And the writer of this particular article quotes a lot from a fellow named Bishop John Shelby Spong. I don't know if any of you have heard of Bishop Spong before. He gets quoted practically every season in *Time* and *Newsweek* and, you know, major news periodicals because they always have to truck out some sort of article about the Christmas season, you know, to sort of make fun of it, or cast the seeds of doubt about it. And Spong, who is Episcopalian, I believe, is sort of a chief proponent of the idea that the virgin birth account is just nonsense. And so he gets quoted a lot. He's very widely published and read.
In this article, we have this paragraph, and here's sort of the crux of the matter: "This text, Isaiah, and of course Matthew, Isaiah 7, Matthew 2, has two problems. First, Matthew did not apparently read Hebrew." Which is really a dumb thing to say. I'm gonna try not to, when I try to get through this paragraph without poking fun of other things, I'll just stick to it. Tonight, first, "Matthew apparently did not read Hebrew, so he quoted his text, or this text, from a Greek translation. If he had gone to the Hebrew original, he would have discovered that the word 'virgin' is not in the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah used the Hebrew word *alma*, which means simply 'a young woman.' He did not use the word *bethulah*, which means virgin. Isaiah's text announces that the woman is with child, which hardly qualifies her to be a virgin." Of course, that, you know, the presuppositions that are very transparent.
"When Isaiah was translated into Greek, the translators rendered *alma* with the Greek word *parthenos*. Only in that Greek word does the hint of virginity enter the text." And that is the key sentence: "Only in that Greek word does the hint of virginity enter the text." So basically, they're saying Matthew got this idea from a mistranslation of the Old Testament. "There is no virgin birth doctrine." Of course, he's referring to the Septuagint. You know, you've got to do is just go back to the Septuagint. Yeah, it's *parthenos*. And, you know, it would be very easy to say that's what Matthew's quoting. That dismisses the Jewishness of Matthew, which is very, very clear in other regards. But, you know, let's just say that he quoted from the Septuagint.
Let's talk about *alma*. Other than Isaiah chapter 7, the word *alma* in the feminine, *alma* is the feminine noun. There is a, a masculine *elem* which refers to a young boy. As *alma* refers to a young girl. But let's stick with the feminine. It occurs six other times. Now, I want you to see a few things here. This search, rather than you just taking my word for it. Here we have *alma*. It's *elem* there because that is the base form. And we'll see where this occurs. I want you to just take a quick note of where the feminine occurs. We have Genesis 24:43. May that is *alma*. Exodus 2:8. This is the story of, you know, the little girl following the basket. Miriam. So that's the feminine. First Samuel 17. There is the masculine reference. For Samuel 20. That's David and Jonathan. That's the masculine reference. First Chronicles 15. Is the term used in a proper name of a place. Same thing with 46:1. Psalm 68:25. Proverbs 30:19. He's our *alma*. Song of Solomon 1:3. Song of Solomon 6:8. *Alma*. There's Isaiah 7:14. And Ezekiel 22:26. Is sort of a verbal use of the term. So you don't have very many occurrences of *alma*.
Here's the question, and we're going to go back to the verse. Is there any indication in all the occurrences of sexual status? In other words, is there anything in the context of any of these that tells you the sexual status of the person in question? Now, you can write them down, you can look through them as I go through the presentation here. The answer to that question is no, with one exception. The exception is Song of Solomon 6:8. "There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number." It, on the surface, doesn't look like a sexual reference. What I mean by this, the point I'm angling for here, is the word itself doesn't telegraph, doesn't point to virginity. The word in and of itself. It also doesn't telegraph non-virginity. It's just, you need the context. You need some sort of context for what's going on.
Now, in Song of Solomon 6:8, we have the plural *almah* – sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number. And I'm going to go to Exodus to see if I can just click there because there's this very similar idea. Let me enlarge this a little bit to that breakdown here. And I want you to be able to follow my thought here, my thinking. We can make it even bigger. This is Esther. You know, trial and trial period. And the same kind of grouping, queens, concubines, virgins, is going to show up in this passage in a significant way. "After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. Then the king's young men who attended him said, 'Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king.'"
Now, if we go to the reverse interlinear, it's good. Esther 2. Again, I'm doing this because I don't want anybody who's watching the video later to just take my word for it. I'm going to show you the Hebrew underneath. "The king's young men who attended him said, 'Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king.'" Here, for the word "virgins" is *bethulah*. Now, that is the word. If you remember the quote from Beliefnet, where the writer said, you know, "Isaiah didn't use *bethulah*, he used *alma*." The two *tulah*, the word for virgins. The *tulah* is a more precise word for virgin. Even in some contexts for *bethulah*, it's not clear what the status is. But there are certain instances of the *tulah*. For instance, some of the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy where it's very clear that the *bethulah* has not known a man. Okay, the kind of familiar reference, the familiar euphemism for sexual intercourse. So that is, there's a point to be made there. And we have *na'arah* and *bethulah*. Young virgins, beautiful young virgins.
"In verse two, we read on, 'Let the king appoint, let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins.'" There we have it again. "*Bethulah* or to the harem in Susa, the capital, under the custody of Hegai, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the women. Let their cosmetics be given to them. Let the young woman," singular, "*na'arah*, who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti." You're probably familiar with the Esther story. This plays the king, and he did so.
"Now there was a Jew in Susa, the Citadel, whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjamite, who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with Jeconiah, king of Judah." So on and so forth. "He was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman," *na'arah*, "had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at." So he's noble, tries her out.
"So when the king's order and his edict were proclaimed, when many young women," *na'arah*, "were gathered in Susa, the Citadel, and custody of Hegai, Esther goes into the custody of Hegai. Esther was also taken to the king's palace, put into the custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women. And the young woman pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with her cosmetics, her portion of food, all the stuff she needed. Esther had not no had had not made known her people or kindred, for I had commanded her not to make it known. Every day Mordecai walked in the front of the court of the harem to see what was going on, how everything's going."
"Now when the turn came for each young woman," *na'arah*, "to go in to King Ahasuerus after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying—six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and all this formula—these were not ugly women. They didn't need six months for this. What was the twelve-month trial period for? See if they're pregnant. Okay, easy test. We'll just keep you here for twelve months. Can't fake your way out of that."
"All right, when the young woman went into the king in this way, she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace. In the evening she would go in, and in the morning she would return to the second harem. She doesn't go back to the same group in custody of Shoshgazi, different custodian, the king's eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. Esther is now no longer a virgin. She is a concubine. She started out as a *bethulah*, *na'arah*, all over the place. Okay, that, you guys, just means young woman. She starts out with the virgins. She's there twelve months, goes, has her night with the king, the tryout, as it were, because this is what kings did. You didn't make the rules if you were the woman. Next morning, she goes to a different location under a different guard because now she belongs with the concubines. She would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name. Go in unto the king." Okay, again, it's the language of euphemism for sexual activity.
Now, let's take a look here. We've got virgins, concubines, and we're trying to find a queen. So we have the same idea that when it comes to the harem, remember Song of Solomon 6:8, we're talking about Solomon, King. Okay, he's talking about the members of the harem, how his beloved is like better than any of them, better than any of the queens and the concubines, any of the *almah*. Third category. Now, conceptually, the *almah* there would be a virgin. *Alma* would be virgin in that context, with that again, the cultural mirror image going on here. That's why Song of Solomon 6:8 sort of gives you a sexual status context. You look at it, what's going on in Esther, you sort of get the cultural flavor for it. But it's not really airtight, okay? We have to be honest there. It looks like *alma* there is a virgin.
But let's go back here and take a look at some of the other terms here, and particularly I want to show you *bethulah*. So let's click on that. Search for where *bethulah* occurs. Now, little quiz, see who's paying attention. There's one hit in this list that's really, really important because you've seen it before. Which one is it? 24:16. Genesis 24. Remember Genesis 24 back here with *alma*? Genesis 24. This is the description of Rebekah. And lo and behold, Rebekah in Genesis 24 is called *bethulah*, *alma*, and *na'arah*, all three words are used of the same person. Now, that is textual proof that *alma* does indeed overlap with a very clear term for virgin. And in fact, if you go back to Genesis 24, the narrative is very, very painful in, in detail, that she, Rebekah, had not known a man. It's very clear. You, if you're looking for it, you can't miss it.
Now, I would suggest that maybe Bishop Spong didn't look very hard either. That or he's just really sloppy. So you're either incompetent or you have an agenda. Take your pick, Mr. Spong. *Alma*, the point is that *alma*, when a Hebrew Israelite, when an Israelite, someone familiar with the Hebrew Bible, when they saw the word *alma*, heard it or read it, they certainly had the category, possibility of virgin for that word. Now, they know their own language well enough to know that it might not be virgin, but it is absolutely incorrect to say that it cannot be that. That meaning cannot be part of that word. And that is exactly what was on Beliefnet and what Spong's books and anybody else who picks them up. It is simply textually fraudulent to say that.
Now, you know, let's do a little, little practical thinking here. Scholars are not necessarily known for their logic all the time. I made, I once made the comment in a graduate seminar class that I thought a course in logic should be required for every graduate student in biblical studies. I didn't make many friends that day, but I believe it. Let's do a little thinking. Okay, I have four children. I have three daughters and one boy. My daughters are 17, 15, and the youngest is a daughter, she's eight. Now, in a patriarchal culture, and the Semitic culture, as Dax pointed out, came over here a week ago, a woman was of marriageable age when she hit puberty, because now you can start having babies. Okay? And that's 12, 13, 14, you know, somewhere in the early teens. I have two *almah*s. They're young women of marriageable age, and they just happen to be virgins because I'm a ruthless patriarch. You know.
Now, I say that because if, in today's culture, unless we're going to conclude that every girl after the age of 12 is not a virgin, that's what you'd have to say to force Spong to be right. That kind of absurdity. Unless you're going to say that, which would be totally obvious, you've got to conclude that, hey, a lot of *almah*s, a lot of women of young marriageable age, they're still virgins. Yeah, they are. And in a patriarchal culture like in the Old Testament, where they really did exercise a very tight control over their daughters, that number would probably even be higher. Okay? So again, just, just simple logic tells you that when a Semite thought of *alma*, he didn't think, "Yeah, a woman that can get married." Now, if she's not a virgin, either, it's just stupid, okay? It's just not, it doesn't conform to the reality of the culture, and it doesn't conform to the reality of the text either.
Now, in the New Testament, you can, you could throw all that away because in the New Testament, see if I put in the correct link here. The text is really clear again about the birth of Jesus. In Matthew, you have the whole series of wonderfully exciting "begats." If you're reading the King James, the New King James, so itself, we've got "so-and-so begat sons, and so-and-so begat so-and-so," and you have a whole string, there's over 30 of them. And then when you get down to Mary, it says, "Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born." The wording changes because for those of you who've had a little Greek, if you can actually see that morphological reference, we have a relative pronoun, genitive singular feminine. In other words, the writer of the text wants it to be clear that Jesus came from only the woman. It's a feminine pronoun. It's not the male "begat so-and-so" like it is the other thirty. Sometimes when you get here, the whole thing switches. "Of whom," of her, "Jesus was born." Okay? You just really can't get, I mean, honestly, if I wanted to make the point that Jesus only came from Mary, I really don't know any other way to make it that explicit. I mean, right down to the little particle that you're using in Greek, so that you can't miss it. There's no ambiguity. Yeah, that's how detailed the writer's being.
So the *alma* thing is a red herring. It certainly can be virgin. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that Ahaz would have thought of that, or that the original prophecy was about a virgin. We still haven't, you know, we're gonna get there. But the word itself can mean virgin.
Immanuel is actually three parts. The preposition *im* with, *nu* is the suffix pronoun "us," and *El* is God. Either small "g" God or big "G" God. Choose is a common noun and a proper noun. So together they form a sentence without a verb. There is no verb. "God." The words are literally "with us God." So you can translate that "God with us," "God is with us," or "A God is with us." All three of those are completely just legitimate because that's all you have. Now, "God with us" is probably the most familiar. "God is with us" would probably be the most grammatical. Grammatically correct. "God is with us," though, doesn't necessarily mean deity incarnate. Because I can say, "Hey, God's with us. He has God is with us," meaning God's on our side. Doesn't have to mean that, like God is going to be present, that, that this child is going to be God when he's born. That's God. That doesn't mean that at all. You know, we look at that, at that because of what happens in the New Testament as being sort of where our mind goes. But to Ahaz, it has doesn't have any of that. It's a sign for him that God is going to take care of the problem. And by the way, sometimes I think we miss, you know, Isaiah 7, the point of the sign is not the woman. Gained a lot of ink spilled about in the over virgin birth and all that. The point of the sign is not the woman, it's the child. And we're trying to get that little messed up.
Here's also from Beliefnet: "The second problem in their article with this text is that when Isaiah wrote it, the city of Jerusalem was under siege from the combined armies of the Northern Kingdom and Syria. As they have suggested that the birth of this child would be a sign to the king of Judah that his nation would not fall to these enemies whom Isaiah described as 'the tails of two smoking firebrands.' A reference to a child born 800 years later would hardly have been relevant to that crisis." Well, I would agree with that. You know, if you're Ahaz and you're basically trembling in your boots, and Isaiah comes up to you, "I got great news! I got great news! Don't panic. Eight hundred years from now..." What? Come on. Well, thanks, I feel so much better. It's just not gonna work.
All right, there's an original context for what he's saying. It's really interesting. There are some things going on even in the original prophecy that Ahaz could have latched on to and fought. That's my wording here. And fought a little bit beyond his own time. One of those possibilities is that there is a cognate term, a related term, in a different language. The language is Ugaritic for *alma*. Now, in Hebrew, it's *alma*. The letter is pronounced in the back of the throat. And it's that's why it gets translated sometimes with a "g" in certain books, like *Lamorra*, Gomorrah. It's actually begins with the same letter that *alma* begins with. But it sounds like, like a "g." This word actually is very, very rare, and it refers to the sacred bride, and as it's restricted to royal women and goddesses in that culture. Now, that was a pagan culture, but the city of Ugarit is right next door to Israel. There's a Ugaritic crossover within the Hebrew Bible to other, other words. That's kind of interesting because it might mean that when Isaiah comes to Ahaz and says, "Behold, the *alma* will conceive and bear a son," that he could have been talking about Ahaz's wife. And if you're Ahaz, what would be the first thing that crossed your mind? "How do you know that?" Because there's something I should know about if there is told me now. "How do you know that my wife?" And it actually could be that she is pregnant or is going to conceive. We don't know who the woman was. That's one possibility.
If it is Ahaz's wife, that means when, and then Isaiah says, "And when she has the child, you're gonna name it, 'God is with us.'" Why is that important, Ahaz? If that turns out to be, you know, we don't really know. Because it tells Ahaz, what? Whose family does Ahaz belong to? David. Okay? It means that Ahaz, sitting there thinking, "We're gonna get wiped out. Note the Northern Kingdom," he said, "you know, is gonna be gone, you know, in a few decades. What about us? Because I'm the line of David, and God gave David this promise that like, we're always going to be here, and there's this everlasting dynastic commitment and fulfillment." And Isaiah is saying, "Yeah, I know. I know God is with you." If it is his wife, it's a sign that the Davidic covenant will not die. Okay? You are, it's not going to go away. It's not going to end. Okay? God will remain loyal to it.
Now, again, let's just play with it. If that's the case, if there was loyalty involved with the woman, why is that important for what Matthew does? Mary is a member of what line? So there's these boring genealogies again. I know, and I know they're boring. Okay? And I don't spend my time with genealogies. Please don't think that of me. But there is a point that that Mary is also in the line of David. So is Joseph. I mean, this is, this is something that Matthew, if this is what he was tracking on, it would have been a link back to Isaiah 7. Because, I mean, think of what, of what Matthew is doing here. Here's the quotation. And I have two questions here. This is where Matthew quotes Isaiah 7. Put yourself in Matthew's shoes. Is it reasonable to believe that Matthew and Mary never met? I mean, good grief, they lived with Jesus for three and a half years. Do you think he might have met his mother? Is it reasonable to believe that the disciples never heard Mary tell the story about how Jesus was born? I mean, I can tell you, if I was one of the Twelve and we were like sitting around dinner at Jesus' house some day, and he like wasn't in the room, I'd say, "Was there anything unusual about him when he was little?" Because there's some really unusual things going on right now. "Can you tell me about that? I mean, anything at all? Anything like, did he do something really weird?" Because you, you're beginning to see this man do incredible things. I think there would be a very natural conversation. It would be very natural for Matthew to have heard about the circumstances of Jesus' birth.
What I'm getting to is this: Why is it so fantastic for Matthew, who knew his Old Testament really, to hear the story of Jesus' birth and Mary's going, "Oh yeah, yeah, the angel came to me and said, you know, baby, you're gonna..." I mean, Joseph and I weren't even, weren't we were betrothed, we had never, you know, what I mean? We were loyal to each other, we were faithful to each other, and all of a sudden I'm pregnant. And, you know, gives up all the stories. And then she gets the part where they had to take the child down to Egypt to protect him from Herod. And Matthew then, the lights are going on. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Why? Because Matthew knows Hosea 11:1. And because Matthew quotes it: "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Remember the first week we talked about how "my son" was the nation and the servant and the individual who would do these things? And Isaiah, and he starts thinking about Isaiah. It's like, "Wow, Davidic dynasty, out of Egypt, really? You know, virgin, virgin birth, holy cow, a virgin birth that's just like *alma*." I mean, it's not quite the same, but it's like, there's an analogy there. Look what God was up to.
I'm gonna put this down. Okay. There is such a thing as fulfillment of prophecy by analogy. You know, too often we have been trained to think the prophecy works one way. Old Testament guy says A, describes it in a few sentences with specific nouns and verbs, and then the New Testament, well, A has to happen exactly the way A is described. There is no fulfillment. You know, so why have you got to look for all these literalisms and all the, every word has to... Hey, if you spend any time in prophecy, it just doesn't happen that often. Most of the time, there are analogous situations, or one is a type. The Old Testament is a prefigurement, either in terms of an event, or an institution, or a person. And that, that Old Testament thing or person mirrors or telegraphs, or as an analogy, analogy to something that goes on in the life of Jesus, something he says or does or quotes, or whatever. Think back to the first week. All these analogies. This is, this is absolutely deliberate on the part of the New Testament writer to make Jesus' life analogous to the corporate servant, the corporate son, the individual son. Okay? That's, that's deliberate. It's not accidental. It happens dozens of times. We just took an overview the first week. This is one of them.
So for people to say, "Oh, Matthew just misunderstood Isaiah. Just, there's an interpreter that he just wasn't very scholarly." Come on, you need to wake up. You take a good look at your New Testament. And more than that, you need to think about what's going on in Jewish literature of the same period because they look at prophecy the same way as the New Testament writers do. Matthew, his methods would have been completely familiar to any scribe, any Pharisee, any priest, anyone literate in terms of biblical material of his day. He's not doing anything new. They get it. And again, I'm back to either the critics don't get it, they don't want to get it. And I let them pick, because that's really what it comes down to. Matthew is not watching the New Testament. He's not goofing his way through the book. He is seeing analogies. And if you walked up to him and said, "Hey, Matthew, I get that analogy with Isaiah 7, but you know, some of the words, you know, some of the meanings of the word back here wouldn't really be true of Jesus and vice versa." He'd go, "Well, like, duh. I know. Where did you go to school? I mean, I'm a tax collector, and I know better than that. I mean, come on. This is nothing new to the culture. This is how they do it, okay? This is how they look at their own."