ISAIAH - Week 2
I told you Isaiah was going to be good, didn’t I?! Only two weeks in and already we’ve had some great passages and some very significant topics coming up.
What I want to look at in this post is the idea of ‘dual fulfilment’, which speaks of both the immediate and messianic fulfilment of certain prophecies, and what the verses themselves are saying and what they might not be.
Ian did a brilliant job on Sunday (catch up here) of signposting us through the story of Isaiah to the gospel message, picking up on some of the early imagery of ‘Immanuel’. As he put it 'The words of Isaiah are directed to a particular people, time and place, but they can still resonate with us today’. We’ve considered the resonance with us, but what was there for the people first receiving these stories? How can we understand the immediate interpretation of some of Isaiah’s most well known prophecies?
There are two passages from our reading plan this week that particularly transcend Isaiah’s context and find popular use in modern Christianity – Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 9:6.
Let’s look at each of those, plus an intriguing passage in Isaiah 8
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Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.15 He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. 17 The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria.” – Isaiah 7:14-17 (NRSV)
A few things to note here. First, the Hebrew word used in Isaiah is almah ( עַלְמָה ) which translates to ‘young woman’. Though this has connotations of virginity, it doesn’t specify that. The concept of using ‘virgin’ with this verse comes in the 3rd/2nd century Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, called the Septuagint. These translators chose to use the Greek word parthenos (παρθένος), which does specifically mean a virgin. The writer of Matthew, along with other New Testament writers, relied on the Septuagint, as it had become widely used in Jewish communities, especially outside of Israel.
Furthermore, Isaiah says ‘is with child’, whereas Matthew quotes ‘will be with child’. If Isaiah says this young woman is ‘with child’, she is not a virgin. The original and immediate context of this is not suggesting a miraculous conception, but is explaining the sign that this child will bring.
Why would Matthew’s writer change that or get it wrong?
Well, we’ll revisit the New Testament use of Isaiah later in our journey, but one way of thinking about it is that Matthew’s author is reinterpreting the prophecy in light of the story of Jesus. This could be a deliberate choice to make certain points of emphasis in a familiar text.
Something that doesn’t change is the name to be given to the child, Immanuel. Thanks to the longstanding use of this passage at Christmas, many of us already know that ‘Immanu-el’ means God with us. In the context of a messianic prophecy, this makes a suggestion that the child is God being with us. In Isaiah’s time, however, names were commonly framed as sentence-like descriptions. Ezekiel, for instance, means ‘God will strengthen’. Ishmael, in Genesis 16, is named after Hagar’s encounter with God, and is given the name meaning ‘God hears’. ‘God-with-us, then would have made sense as an example of this type of naming tradition. This is a child bringing a sign from God.
If there was an expectation of this child being a sign from God, and they aren’t necessarily expecting the messiah, who could they be talking about?
Some scholars argue that this prophecy could refer to Isaiah's own son, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, whose birth is mentioned in Isaiah 8:1-4. His name, meaning "quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil," symbolises the imminent destruction of Judah's enemies. Isaiah 8:3-4 suggests a timeline that aligns with the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel and Syria, which reinforces the idea that Isaiah’s child might be the immediate fulfillment of the prophecy. The start of chapter 8 seems quite stark following on from this prophetic passage in chapter 7, so it could make sense to see this as the response to verses like 7:14.
But, as ever, it is not specified, and no one goes on to tell us ‘this is the one they were talking about!’ Not, of course, until the gospel writers repurpose these passages.
Adding confusion to the mix, 8:8 says,
“…it will sweep on into Judah as a flood and, pouring over, will reach up to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel”
Where, in chapter 7, Immanuel, God with us, earlier signified God’s protection of Judah, the name now symbolises the Lord’s punishment of the land. God is still with them, but Their presence will be known in the context of the carrying out of this judgement on the people. In this reading, Immanuel is not an allusion to Jesus.
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“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Great will be his authority, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” – Isaiah 9:6-7
This is the other biggy! Perhaps even more messianic in it’s language, through our New Testament influenced, 21st century lens. What else could this be talking about besides Jesus?
Well, let’s note again the tense of the writing. A child has been born, given to us. Authority already rests upon his shoulders. All present tense. This appears to be describing someone alive in Isaiah’s time. But who could warrant such emphatic praise?
The natural suggestion, given the description, would be a king, and it would have to be a pretty good one! In this time, there was a king who was one of only a few who end up with a good track record. Most of those we see in the Old Testament end up in with a pretty bad reputation.
King Hezekiah was king of Judah during the life of Isaiah. He was around when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and he was leader of Judah during the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701. Not only was he leader, but he had stood up to the Assyrians by refusing to pay tribute to them and successfully defended Jerusalem against Assyrian attack. This great threat which dominates the early parts of Isaiah was the lived reality of Hezekiah, and he ruled over the people as this threat was prevented.
For this and other reasons, Hezekiah seems a good nomination for the immediate fulfilment of this prophecy. What, then, of those titles? They appear to be directly speaking of God – is that to say that the people thought of Hezekiah as a god?
Actually, a proposed answer is simpler than that. There was a tradition in this era of ‘throne names’, which were titles, often quite elaborate ones, given to a king. These were symbolic titles highlighting the role of a king as God’s representative on Earth. So, in using descriptions like we find in Isaiah 9:6, these emphasise God’s nature and celebrate a ruler who ought to be doing the work of God.
Now, there are two points of counter argument to this suggestion. I’ll leave it up to you to reflect on what you make of them.
The more common of these is that some scholars reject the notion of these being throne names. Whilst there is an acceptance that there was a tradition of using titles similar to these, those who reject this feel that these are a little too divine sounding, too emphatically God-like in their description. From where we read it now, with those layers of messianic application that we’ve grown accustomed to, this feels like a fair response. The difficulty with approaching biblical scholarship like this is that people on both sides make very well made and equally educated claims.
The challenge that remains if we don’t adopt the throne names understanding is that of the tense of the text itself. It is unavoidably present tense.
The response to this, which is far less prevalent than the rebuttal to the throne names claim, is that this passage uses something called the ‘prophetic perfect’ tense. In essence, this term is used to describe prophecies which use the past or present tense because what they speak of is so certain to happen that it is as if it has already happened.
For me, whilst the first counter argument feels fair, this feels like the type of argument that is made to defend a position that is already established, rather than letting the text speak for itself. If, for instance, one was especially invested in the need for this prophecy to foretell Christ, then you would need to find a way to justify that reading.
And this is the perennial challenge with dual fulfilment. Some want to read the text only in it’s immediate context, others only in it’s messianic fulfilment.
Those who wish only to recognise the initial fulfilment neglect the creative and spiritual freedom of later writers to reuse and repurpose prophetic claims to find an ultimate fulfilment in another time and space from when these prophecies were made.
Those who just see Jesus in these words miss out on the rich history of the Biblical authors and stories, and some of the work that God was doing across this history in delivering on Their promises.
The positive way to think about dual fulfilment is this:
God is so good, that They can deliver on the same promise twice!