Prophecy of Jesus' Birth

"The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel--'God is with us'. By the time this child is old enough to eat curds and honey, he will know enough to choose what is right and reject what is wrong." - Isaiah 7:14

For some people this is a controversial prophesy about the birth of Jesus. Muslims in particular like to misuse it to attempt to show that not all the prophecies the New Testament claims were about Jesus, were really about Jesus. The dispute arises over the Hebrew word translated here as "virgin."

When translating languages there is usually not a word-for-word translation. In many cases you can not take a word in one language and say that it always has the same meaning as a word in another language. This is particularly true of Hebrew, which requires a more thought-for-thought translation. So how do we know the right translation? We need to look at the context.

Here's an example using the English word "day":

A company says, "We'll ship your order in one day." - this means your order will ship within 24 hours.

A truck driver says, "I drove all day." - this means he drove throughout the daylight portion of the day.

My grandfather says, "In my day we could hike all day." - the first use of "day" means a long time ago. The second use of the word "day" means the daylight portion of the day.

The word day has different meanings. We know the intended meaning from its context.

In Isaiah 7:14 the Hebrew word translated as "virgin" can also mean a "young woman". So which is the correct meaning?

God is telling King Ahaz that he will send a sign that proves the enemies of the Jews will be crushed. God says he will give a sign that will be difficult so that it is obviously something only God can do. If God is saying that a "young woman" will have a baby, what kind of sign is that? There are young women having babies every day. That's not a useful sign from God.

If God wants to prove something is true, just as He says he does in Isaiah 7:11, then the sign he gives would have to be a sign that was unusual and that can readily be recognized as a sign from God. Thus in the context, the correct translation here is "virgin."