God with us, built from three Hebrew pieces. It starts as a sign to a frightened king in the eighth century BC, and Matthew reads it again in Christ.
Ask what does Emmanuel mean and the Hebrew gives it to you in pieces. Im, meaning with. Anu, meaning us. El, meaning God. God with us, in that order.
Immanuel is the Hebrew spelling and Emmanuel came through Greek and Latin. Same name, and neither spelling is more correct. English Bibles use both depending on the verse and the translation.
The interesting part is where it first appears. Not at a manger. In a war scare, spoken to a king who had already decided what he was going to do.
Around 734 BC. Syria and the northern kingdom are pressing Judah to join their alliance against Assyria, and Isaiah 7:2 says Ahaz's heart shook like trees in the wind.
Verse 11. Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights. An unusually open invitation, and Ahaz turns it down.
Michael Chan notes it is likely “tied to his Realpolitik decision to seek protection from the Assyrian king”. He had already picked his ally.
Verse 14, then verse 16. Before the boy knows enough to reject wrong and choose right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. A timetable, not a riddle.
The name is given to somebody who has stopped trusting God and has gone shopping for a superpower instead. God with us is announced to a man who was acting as though nobody was.
You will meet this eventually, usually from somebody hoping it unsettles you. Better to meet it here.
Isaiah 7:14 says young woman, not virgin. The Hebrew is almah. Christians changed it, and the virgin birth is built on a mistranslation.
Almah does mean a young woman of marriageable age, and Hebrew has a more specific word, betulah, which Isaiah does not use here.
We are going to grant the linguistic point rather than argue around it. Almah is not the narrow word for virgin. Anybody telling you it is has overstated the case, and defending the faith with a claim that will not survive a lexicon is how people end up disillusioned later.
Here is what actually happened. Jewish translators, working on the Greek Old Testament roughly two centuries before Christ, rendered almah as parthenos, which does mean virgin. That was not a Christian decision and there was no Christian agenda available to make it. Matthew, writing in Greek for readers who used the Greek Old Testament, quotes what his Bible said.
And this is the part that matters. The virgin birth does not rest on Isaiah 7:14 at all. It rests on Luke 1:34, where Mary asks how this will happen since she has not been with a man, and on Matthew 1:18 and 25, which state it directly in Matthew's own narrative rather than in his quotation. Remove Isaiah from the argument entirely and the doctrine is untouched. We hold it, and we hold it on those texts.
What Matthew is doing with Isaiah is not producing a prediction with exactly one slot in it. He is doing what the New Testament writers do constantly, which is recognising a pattern that runs again and runs deeper. A child named God with us was a sign in the eighth century BC that God had not abandoned Judah. Matthew looks at Jesus and says this is what that name was always reaching for. That is a bigger claim than a one-off prediction, not a smaller one.
Where does the virgin birth actually rest in Scripture?
Mary's question in Luke 1:34 is explicit, and Matthew states it in his own words rather than only in his quotation. Take Isaiah out of the argument and the doctrine stands exactly where it was.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
Matthew 1:23Matthew stops the narrative to tell you what the name means. He does that for only a handful of things in the whole Gospel, which marks it as load bearing.
Matthew 28:20. I am with you always, to the very end of the age. The book opens by calling Him God with us and closes with Him saying it himself.
Matthew 18:20. Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. The theme is planted at the start, restated in the middle and sealed at the end.
Worth noticing. No character in the Gospels ever addresses Jesus as Emmanuel. It is a description of what He is, not a name people used.
So the name works like a pair of bookends. Whatever else Matthew is arguing across twenty eight chapters, the frame he built around it says one thing, and the last sentence of the book is that one thing in the first person.
God is easy enough. Us is easy. With is where every religion parts company from this one.
Exodus 25:8. Have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. The first arrangement is portable and it moves when the people move.
John 1:14. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. The verb is about pitching a tent, which is Exodus language used on purpose.
1 Corinthians 3:16. You yourselves are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in your midst. The arrangement stops needing a building.
Revelation 21:3. Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. The whole line ends where it started, and in the present tense.
Notice that not one of those is God observing from somewhere else. Every stage of it is proximity, and each stage gets closer than the last.
The detail that stays with me is who heard it first.
Ahaz was offered any sign he wanted, anywhere in creation, and said no thank you because he had already made a deal with Assyria. He did not want a sign. He wanted the arrangement he had chosen to work out.
God gave him the name anyway. Not as a reward, and not because Ahaz came around, because he never did. The rest of his reign in 2 Kings 16 goes exactly how you would expect.
So if the name means anything beyond a Christmas card, it means that God being with people has never depended on those people being impressive about it. It was announced over a king who had stopped asking, and it was announced again over a country under occupation, and both times the announcement came first.
For related ground, see when Jesus was born, the incarnation, the magi, the Shekinah glory, who Yeshua is, whether Christ is a surname and the Trinity.
Im plus anu plus El, God with us, first spoken as a sign to a king who had already refused one, quoted by Matthew from the Greek Old Testament rather than from a Christian edit, carrying a virgin birth doctrine that actually rests on Luke 1:34, and used to frame a Gospel that ends with Jesus saying it in His own voice.
Meeting it from somebody hostile is unsettling, and the answer is better than most people are told. Send it in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will work through it with you.
God with us. It is three pieces joined into one name: im, meaning with, anu, meaning us, and El, meaning God. Immanuel is the Hebrew spelling and Emmanuel is the spelling that came through Greek and Latin, which is why English Bibles use Immanuel in Isaiah and Emmanuel or Immanuel in Matthew depending on the translation. Both are the same name and neither is more correct than the other.
Isaiah 7:14, spoken to King Ahaz of Judah during a military crisis around 734 BC. Two neighbouring kings were pressing him to join their alliance against Assyria. God offers Ahaz a sign, Ahaz refuses it, and Michael Chan notes the refusal is likely tied to a Realpolitik decision to seek protection from Assyria instead. The sign is given anyway, with a timetable attached to a child's early years.
The Hebrew word is almah, which means a young woman of marriageable age. The specific Hebrew word for virgin is betulah, and Isaiah does not use it here. The Greek translation of the Old Testament made centuries before Christ rendered almah as parthenos, which does mean virgin, and Matthew quotes that Greek version. We hold the virgin birth and it does not rest on this one word, since Luke 1:34 states it directly.
As a frame for his whole Gospel. Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah and then translates the name for his readers, God with us. Then the last sentence of the book, Matthew 28:20, has Jesus saying I am with you always, to the very end of the age. The first chapter names Him God with us and the last chapter has Him say it in His own voice, which is almost certainly deliberate.
More than nearby. The claim is not that God watches from a distance or visits occasionally. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, using the language of pitching a tent. The whole thread runs from a cloud over a tabernacle to a person to a Spirit who lives in people, and Revelation 21:3 states the destination plainly: the dwelling of God is with people.