Prophecies and Types Prefiguring the Virgin Mary in the Prophets

The Theotokos' virginal conception, perpetual virginity, and painless birth

Most Christians understand the set of Scriptural books designated as Prophets¹ to contain prophecies about the promised Messiah. But few realized that there are, hidden in these books, references to the woman through whom He would come – and these reveal certain attributes by which His coming, and the woman herself, would be known. What the Prophets say about this woman, in particular, will be the subject of this study. We will begin by examining three major passages that reveal three distinct qualities: 1. This women will be a virgin, 2. she will remain a virgin forever, and 3. her birth-giving will be painless. Because the interpretation of these passages has, over time, been called into question – first by Jews and later by Protestants – we will explore arguments on both sides in order to ascertain if they stand up under scrutiny. Finally, we will briefly mention a litany of passages in the Prophets that reference this woman typologically (that is, passages in which she is represented by some figure or sign).

Isaiah 7:14, 8:1: Virgin or Young Woman?

The primary mark that would distinguish the woman through whom the Messiah would come, according to the Prophet Isaiah, is her virginal conception and birth-giving; in the middle of the 8th century before Christ, he prophesied: “​the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel.​”² But the mainstream Christian interpretation of this passage³ has been scrutinized by modern Jewish scholars who argue that “virgin” is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word almah (הָעַלְמָה​), which would be more appropriately translated as “young woman.”

According to this view, the Hebrew word betulah (בּתּוָּלהְ​) would have been a better word if the writer originally meant virgin (see Deut 22:14; Judges 21:12), because Almah (הַעְלמָהָ) can be used to mean virgin or young woman. This argument stems from a comparison of the masculine version of this הָעֶלםָ, meaning young man (see 1 Samuel 17:56; 20:22). Ultimately, they argue that this passage does not refer to the Messiah at all or the woman through whom He would come.

Interestingly, the late, atheist philosopher Christopher Hitchens also rehashed this argument against Christianity in an article for Vanity Fair, entitled, ​When the King Saved God​ (April 1, 2011, Web: VanityFair.com).⁴

The word used in both the Masoretic Text (Aleppo Codex) and the Great Scroll of Isaiah (d. 200 B.C.) found in 1947 is​ הָעַלְמָה (almah).⁵ However, there is a glaring discrepancy between how it is interpreted before and after the advent of Christ. T​he original translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was “[made by] the ​Jews​ themselves, much before the period of our Lord's advent”⁶ – and the Greek word they used to translate הָעַלְמָה was παρθένος (parthenos​), which, without question, demonstrates that these pre-Christian Jews believed that this woman would be a virgin.⁷ But after the Jewish people rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah, according to Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, they made every effort to obscure, by mistranslation and sophistries, any passage that appeared to correspond to Him.⁸