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Matthew 1.23
Idou hē parthenos en gastri hexei kai texetai huion kai kalesousin to onoma
Ἰδοὺ , ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει , καὶ τέξεται υἱόν , καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα
Behold the virgin in womb will hold and will bear a son and they will call the name of
autou Emmanouēl ho estin methermēneuomenon Meth’ hēmōn ho Theos
αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ , ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον , Μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ Θεός .
him Immanuel which is translated With us -
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).
Here we see the first of a number of examples in which Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. There are, however, two possible ways of translating his words in this verse, as the following two versions show:
All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ -
(similarly: AV Amp CCB ESV Goodspeed Knox LTB NASB NKJV NLT Phillips RSV)
All this happened in order to fulfil what the Lord declared through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel’, a name which means ‘God is with us’. (NEB)
(similarly: CEV GNB HCSB JNT Lattimore LB Message Moffatt NAB NCV NJB NRSV NWT REB)
Which of these two readings comes closest to what Matthew is trying to say in this passage? At first sight the two versions might not seem to present a significant discrepancy. But if the child’s name ‘Immanuel’ (from Isaiah 7.14) means ‘God with us’ (as in the NIV translation quoted above), then Matthew might be suggesting that Jesus is actually God incarnate, whereas if the title simply means ‘God is with us’ (as in the second translation from the NEB), he could be making a much more general statement about God’s providential care for his people through Christ.
On the face of it, the version ‘God is with us’ has a great deal to be said in its favour. It is how in Isaiah 8.10 the Hebrew words immanu el are translated, and it makes the most natural sense of Matthew's word order in the Greek. In addition, it also ties in well with the story of the annunciation in Luke’s Gospel, if we compare Luke’s report of the angel’s greeting to Mary (‘the Lord is with you’, Luke 1.28), and the general tone of the Magnificat (Luke 1.46–55) which speaks of God’s intervention on behalf of his chosen people.
But this is to miss the basic point of Matthew’s account. The immediate context of the verse is the miraculous conception and extraordinary nature of the child to be born. He is not trying to demonstrate, as Luke does to a certain extent, that God is on our side, but rather that God is present in our midst through Jesus, a theme that occurs at significant points later in his Gospel (Matt. 18.20 and 28.20), providing a bridge between the thought-
We therefore need to take both these verses into account when we consider Matthew’s use of the expression ‘Immanuel’, given that his own use of Isaiah’s prophecy also occurs in the context of the naming of the child. Here Matthew tells us specifically that he will be called Jesus (Yahweh is salvation) ‘because he will save his people from their sins’ (Matt. 1.21). In the Old Testament, salvation from sin was the sole prerogative of Yahweh (Is 45.21). Geerhardus Vos points out:
When after the appointment of a name meaning “Jehovah is salvation” there is immediately added the explanatory statement, “For it is he that shall save his people from their sins,” no other interpretation remains possible than that Jesus will function as Jehovah, and that this truth is conveyed by His name.<2>
The early church fathers also seem to have agreed with this understanding of Jesus as ‘God with us’;<3> Tertullian, for example writes that
If Emmanuel means God with us, the God who is with us is Christ, who is also in us.<4>
In conclusion, while ‘God is with us’ is a perfectly correct translation of ‘Immanuel,’ the interpretation uppermost in Matthew’s mind may perhaps have been closer to that expressed later in Revelation 21.3:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
The coming of Christ, therefore, opens an entirely new chapter in God’s dealings with humanity, in that he is now present in person as the centrepiece of his own creation. Taken together, these two passages, standing at the beginning and end of the New Testament respectively, provide two balancing pillars of truth upholding God’s central purpose in our salvation.