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LXX Isaiah

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 7

1 And it happened in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, there came up Rezin king of Aram, and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, against Jerusalem to war against it, but they could not take it. 2 And a message was brought to the house of David, saying, Aram has conspired with Ephraim. And his soul was amazed, and the soul of his people, as in a wood a tree is moved by the wind. 3 And the Lord said to Isaiah, Go forth to meet Ahaz, you, and your son Jashub who is left, to the pool of the upper way of the fuller's field. 4 And you shall say to him, Take care to be quiet, and do not fear, neither let your soul be disheartened because of these two smoking firebrands: for when my fierce anger is over, I will heal again. 5 And as for the son of Aram, and the son of Remaliah, since they have devised an evil counsel concerning you, saying, 6 We will go up against Judea, and having conferred with them we will turn them away to our side, and we will make the son of Tabeel king of it; 7 thus says the Lord of hosts, This counsel shall not stand, nor come to pass. 8 But the head of Aram is Damascus; and yet within sixty and five years the kingdom of Ephraim shall cease from being a people. 9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria the son of Remaliah: but if you do not believe, neither will you at all understand. 10 And the Lord again spoke to Ahaz, saying, 11 Ask for yourself a sign of the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height. 12 And Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I test the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear now, house of David; is it a little thing for you to contend with men? and how do you contend against the Lord? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; look, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son,⁠ and you shall call his name Immanuel.⁠ 15 Butter and honey he will eat; before he knows or prefers evil, he shall choose the good.⁠ 16 For before the child shall know good or evil,⁠ he refuses evil, to choose the good; and the land shall be forsaken which you are afraid of because of the two kings. 17 But God shall bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon the house of your father, days which have never come, from the day that Ephraim took away from Judah the king of the Assyrians. 18 And it will happen in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the flies, which insect shall rule over a part of the river of Egypt, and for the bee which is in the land of the Assyrians. 19 And they all shall enter into the clefts of the land, and into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves, and into every ravine, and into every tree. 20 In that day the Lord shall shave with the great and drunken razor which is beyond the river, of the king of Assyria, the head, and the hairs of the feet, and will remove the beard. 21 And it will happen in that day, that a man shall rear a heifer, and two sheep. 22 And it will happen from their yielding an abundance of milk, that every one that is left on the land shall eat butter and honey. 23 And it will happen in that day, for every place where there shall be a thousand vines at a thousand shekels, they shall become barren land and thorns. 24 Men shall enter there with arrow and bow; for all the land shall be barren ground and thorns. 25 And every mountain shall be certainly plowed: no fear shall come there: for there shall be from among the barren ground and thorns that on which cattle shall feed and oxen shall tread.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

Matthew quotes the Greek Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7 and its language of a virgin conceiving. Matthew relies on the Greek version rather than the Hebrew, which is ambiguous about the woman being a virgin and the timing of the child’s birth.

Passages

LXX Isaiah 7:14

Septuagint
12 And Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I test the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear now, house of David; is it a little thing for you to contend with men? and how do you contend against the Lord? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; look, the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel. 15 Butter and honey he will eat; before he knows or prefers evil, he shall choose the good. 16 For before the child shall know good or evil, he refuses evil, to choose the good; and the land shall be forsaken which you are afraid of because of the two kings.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

Matthew 1:23

New Testament
21 She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 This all happened so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: 23 “Look! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He took his wife, 25 but did not have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son, whom he named Jesus.
70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Matthew

References

"... By quoting the text, the narrator "forces" the reader to "listen" to the Jesus-story in light of the promised "Emmanuel". We have here a clear form of reader guidance. By giving an explicit text (Isaiah 7:14), the narrator unfolds a dynamic reading that is difficult to control. The "intrusion" of the old text into a new literary context may induce the reader to reflect and meditate on possible interconnections. Some ambiguities of the Hebrew version are absent in the Greek text. A vague messianic understanding can be glimpsed in the way the child is introduced. Unlike the Hebrew text, the Greek highlights the distinctive character of the child in a very specific way: he has the ability to distinguish good from evil before he knows either (LXX Isaiah 7:15-16). As Martin Rosel has pointed out, the Septuagint version implies an understanding of the child as a heavenly gifted figure. Although other textual elements from the Isaiah context may enrich the interpretation of the Matthean narrative, the narrator makes sure that no reader misses the main point: the narrative makes Scripture "complete" ..."
Moisés Mayordomo, "Matthew 1-2 and the Problem of Intertextuality" in Claire Clivaz, et al. (eds.), Infancy Gospels. Stories and Identities (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 272–273.
"... Matthew’s rendering of the LXX’s Parthenos from Isaiah 7:14 ('A virgin will conceive and bear a son' [Matthew 1:23]) remains a site of popular piety and scholarly debate. The Hebrew word translated by parthenos in the LXX is ’almah, which is used in the Tanakh in Isaiah 7:14 and six other times (Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:26; Proverbs 30:19; and Song of Solomon 1:3; 6:8) in the sense of “a young woman” but does not necessarily suggest “virgin.” The Greek Parthenos does not, for the LXX, necessarily connote “virgin,” although that is the predominant translation. It appears in Genesis 34:3 in reference to Dinah, who had just had intercourse with Shechem. The Hebrew term betulah, used more than fifty times, including several times in Isaiah, usually (but not always) carries the technical sense of “virgin.” Thus, for the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14, and perhaps even the Greek text, the prophet is saying, “The young woman is pregnant” There is no reason to presume her pregnancy was miraculous ..."
Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Comments

  • Pues no cuadran se contra dicen
    Uno dice.. Dios con nosotros
    El otro dice... por qué el salvará a su pueblo de sus pecados.

    Moshe Hernández, October 25, 2026

LXX Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23

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