I got into a conversation this past week about Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7.14. The author of this blog post said that the Jewish community saw Isaiah 7.14 as a messianic prophecy. I disagreed for two reasons: first, they didn’t. The only reference to Isaiah 7.14 in Jewish literature that can even be close to a “messianic” interpretation is that Hillel saw this prophecy as referring to the birth of Hezekiah, who was a messiah, i.e. God’s annointed king. To say that Hillel, writing centuries after the death of Hezekiah, saw Hezekiah as being the eschatological messiah is on par with saying that Eddie Whisenant was correct in predicting the rapture in 1988…even though it didn’t happen. Secondly, if you read Isaiah on its own terms, it is not messianic.
I’ve been wanting to talk about this because for the past few weeks I have been carefully reading Matthew for my devotions. At several points when Matthew “quotes” the Old Testament I have gone back and read what he quoted and thought, “Did all tax collectors smoke weed in the first century, or was it just Matthew?” I say that tongue-in-cheek, but Matthew presents an interesting issue for Christians who claim to take the Bible seriously, namely: how is Matthew interpreting the Old Testament? (In seminary language: what is Matthews hermeneutical method?)
In reference to Isaiah 7.14, Matthew is not reading it grammatically-historically or redemptive-historically. The reason I say this is because if you read Isaiah 7 within its own context you will realize a two very important things:
1) The child who is spoken about is a sign to King Ahaz, which means that the child will be born within King Ahaz’s lifetime and not in some eschatological future. If you read on in Isaiah 7 this will be clear because the point of the prophecy is not the birth of the child, but the time frame until the child can know right from wrong (Isaiah 7.16).
2) At this key point in the prophecy the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7.14 literally reads, “behold, the young woman pregnant” (hinne ha‘alma hara). The verb “shall conceive” which is found in most English versions (such as the ESV) is not a translation, but an interpretation. The NRSV translates this more literally and in a way that better follows Hebrew grammar by rendering the phrase as “Look, the young woman is with child.” This means that Isaiah is referring to a young woman who is already pregnant, not an eschatological virgin who will miraculously conceive.
So until Matthew writes his Gospel and applies this prophecy to the birth of Christ, it was not seen as a messianic prophecy about an eschatological “virgin,” but a “real time” prophecy that was to be fulfilled during the reign of King Ahaz.
So what was Matthew doing with this “prophecy”? I have heard the “dual fulfillment” theory, but I honestly do not believe that it holds any water. I have my own theory, but I’d like to hear what you think about it first.
13 October 2007 at 1.54 pm
I don’t know what I think about it, but I’ve definitely puzzled over this one before. I found your points almost verbatim on a Jewish website that was protesting Christians and specifically Jews for Jesus and going through each “messianic” text in careful detail. I took it to my pastor, who essentially told me I shouldn’t put any stock in the anti-messianic-passages reasonings, because they clearly were not Christian and thus not enlightened. That gave a mixed feeling of timidity at wandering too far off-base, and irritation at not having the illogicalities directly addressed.
Or at least, that general Christianity would acknowledge that they aren’t quoting according to our standards.
Frankly, in my more skeptical moments, I’m perfectly happy to accuse Paul and Matthew both of being rather doped when they start quoting the OT. Of course, there’s probably a very sensible explanation, like the acceptable hermeneutics of the 2nd-Temple period, and anachronistic interpretive guidelines being imposed on the poor NT writers. But still, I wish they would have written according to my expectations a little more.
Blog on, brother.
15 October 2007 at 2.16 pm
Jen: “there’s probably a very sensible explanation, like the acceptable hermeneutics of the 2nd-Temple period, and anachronistic interpretive guidelines being imposed on the poor NT writers.”
This is the direction that I would go in. I think that Gundry’s commentary on Matthew, where he develops the idea of Matthew and Midrash, is far too quickly written off because people are more worried about maintaining the ‘historicity’ of Matthew’s account than worried about correctly understanding how Matthew conveys that historicity.
I would go so far as to say that this quotation of Isaiah by Matthew fits every characteristic of Midrash, as summarized by Rene Bloch in the article “Midrash” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, ed. W.S. Green, 1978.
1) It’s Point of Departure is Scripture—it is a reflection, a meditation on the sacred texts, a “searching” of Scripture.
2) It is Homiletical—it is not an academic pursuit, but a pastoral pursuit.
3) It is a Study Which is Attentive to the Text—experience is clarified by close readings of Scripture and Scripture is clarified by close readings of Scripture.
4) Adaption to the Present—the text cited is “actualized” to the present, i.e. stripped of its original context, invested with new meaning practical to the present, and applied. Bloch writes, “Nothing is more characteristic in this regard than the use of the OT in the NT: it always involves midrashic actualization” (33).
This would lead me to believe that Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 7.14 is a midrash aggadah, which is an acceptable hermeneutical method in first century Palestinian Judaism.
26 October 2007 at 3.58 pm
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