My Dear People, 

The first reading today from Isaiah is an interesting one. Even after the Lord spoke to Ahaz and said for him to ask for a sign from the Lord, your God, Ahaz refused. Now this happened about 700 years before Christ was born. 

When we read all of Isaiah (7), we realize that this interaction between Isaiah and King Ahaz of Judah has a lot of history.  We remember that David united all the tribes of Israel under his kingship around 1000 BC, and this united kingdom of Israel flourished under his rule into that of his heir, Solomon, (late 900s BC). After Solomon’s death, however, the kingdom split into northern Israel (comprised of 10 tribes) and southern Judah (comprised of about two tribes). Judah continued to be ruled by the descendants of David. 

In the succeeding centuries, the northern kingdom of Israel was larger and wealthier, but politically more unstable. By the mid-700s BC, the king of Israel decided to enlist the Syrians as allies in an attempt to conquer the southern kingdom of Judah. The king of Judah at this time was a descendant of David named Ahaz—a weak-willed and spiritually lukewarm and unfaithful ruler. During Ahaz’s reign, God raised up the prophet Isaiah to urge the people of Judah to return to fidelity to the Lord God of Israel. Isaiah frequently rebuked Ahaz for dabbling in idolatry and paganism and for allowing the populace to do likewise. 

Nonetheless, Ahaz was the son of David, and God was not willing at this time to let the kingdom of David be destroyed by the Syrians or Israelites. So, God sent Isaiah to bolster Ahaz’s courage. This leads us to the incident recorded in our First Reading. Isaiah accosted Ahaz at one of the main intersections of the road leading out of Jerusalem. He urged the king to stand strong in the face of the foreign threat, and he even offered to give the king a miraculous sign to strengthen his faith, as God did for Gideon and others in ancient times. 

To this offer Ahaz responds with false piety: “I will not tempt the Lord!” quoting from the Law of Moses (Deut 6:16). This is a bit much coming from a person like Ahaz, who has never been too concerned about following God’s law before. It’s like a politician with a record of scandals and immoral legislation suddenly quoting Scripture and talking about what a devout Catholic he is. 

Neither Isaiah nor the Lord can stomach the hypocrisy of Ahaz’s response. “Oh, spare me please!” is essentially Isaiah’s reaction: “Listen O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God?” In other words, you’re not just trying my patience; you are trying God’s patience! Then, Isaiah announces that God will choose a sign to give to Ahaz: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” 

Thus the Hebrew almah is so close in meaning and semantic range with the Greek word Parthenos (think “Parthenon,” the temple to the “virgin” goddess Athena), usually translated “virgin,” that the Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek in 200s BC (The Septuagint translation or LXX) used Parthenos to render almah when they came to Isaiah 7:14. Matthew’s Gospel, or at least the Greek version of it, which the Church has preserved, quotes from this Septuagint translation in the Gospel reading for this Sunday.

So, what did Isaiah’s prophecy mean? If we read further along in Isaiah 7, beyond the parameters of the liturgical reading, we can see clearly that Isaiah was anticipating an immediate fulfillment of his prophecy. He says that before the child “Emmanuel” reached the age of reason, the Israelite and Syrian nations would be reduced to powerlessness and Judah would be free of the threat.

Yours in Christ,

 Fr. Vincent Clemente