Immanuel - Matthew 1:22-23

Matthew 1:22-23

The Gospel of Matthew quotes the Immanuel prophesy from Isaiah, although it uses a Greek translation rather than the original Hebrew. It begins with a genealogy from Abraham through David to Joseph, establishing Joseph as the "son of David", the rightful heir to Judah. But verse 1:16 makes clear that Jesus is not Joseph's son, and Matthew is careful never to refer to Joseph as Jesus's father. Verses 1:18-25 turn to Mary, the future mother of Jesus, betrothed (engaged) to Joseph, but "found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit" before she and Joseph have "come together". Joseph is about to break the engagement, but an angel appears to him in a dream and tells him of the child's divine origins, and Matthew 1:22-23 explains how this is the fulfillment of Scripture: "All this happened to fulfill what had been declared by the Lord through the prophet, who said, 'Look, the virgin will become pregnant and will give birth to a son, and they will give him the name Immanuel' - which is translated, 'God with us'".

It was common in Jewish writing of the time to reinterpret the scriptures in order to signify a new meaning. This is what Matthew has done with Isaiah 7:14: the Hebrew has the child being given the name Immanuel by "she" (presumably its mother), while the commonly-used Greek translation of the time (the Septuagint) has "you" (presumably king Ahaz, to whom the prophecy was addressed). The change from "she" or "you" to "they" allows Matthew to have Joseph give the name "Jesus" to the child, thus signalling the God-born Messiah's formal adoption into the House of David, while at the same time he is "Immanuel", God with us, the Son of God.

The gospel of Matthew was probably written in the last two decades of the 1st century, not by Matthew the companion of Jesus but by a highly educated Jew who believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah, "God with us". At first, titles such as "Messiah" and "son of God" had described Jesus's future nature at the "parousia", the Second Coming; but very soon he came to be recognised as having become the Son of God at the resurrection; then, in Mark, he becomes Son of God at his baptism; and finally Matthew and Luke add infancy narratives in which Jesus is the Son of God from the very beginning, conceived of a virgin mother without a human father.