Compound Name
Immanuel
'Immanu 'El
עִמָּנוּ אֵל
- Meaning
- 'God with us' — literally 'with-us God'.
- Occurrences
- 3 times (Isaiah 7:14, 8:8; Matthew 1:23)
- First occurrence
- Isaiah 7:14
- Languages
- Biblical HebrewKoine Greek
Pronunciation
ih-MAN-yoo-el
Origin
A sign-name given to Ahaz in the Syro-Ephraimite crisis, quoted by Matthew as fulfilled in Jesus' birth.
Usage & scribal practice
One of the most textually contested verses in the Bible, because of a single Hebrew word.
Cross-references
Isaiah 7:14
'the almah shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.'
Isaiah 8:8
'…the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.'
Matthew 1:23
Quoting the LXX's parthenos, 'virgin'.
How translations render it
Theories, myths & conspiracy claims
Each claim is stated as its proponents state it, then assessed against the manuscript and linguistic evidence.
Almah vs. betulah
The claim: Hebrew almah means 'young woman'; betulah is the more specific word for 'virgin'.
Assessment: Accurate as far as it goes — almah denotes a young woman of marriageable age, with virginity implied by cultural default rather than by the word. The Septuagint's choice of parthenos, made by Jewish translators before Christianity, shows the reading was available early.
Christians altered Isaiah 7:14
The claim: The 'virgin' reading was inserted to support the nativity story.
Assessment: The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ, c. 125 BCE) reads almah, exactly as the Masoretic Text does — no Christian alteration occurred. The dispute is over how to translate a word, not over what the Hebrew says.