The Virgin Shall Conceive: The Vocabulary of Virginity

Isaiah 7:14 reads: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look! the virgin (almah) is with child and she is about to give birth to a son, and she shall call his name ‘God with us.’ ”

Biblical Hebrew primarily uses two words to speak of a woman’s sexual virginity: betulah and almah. Betulah occurs 50 times in the Old Testament, almah occurs only rarely. Of the two, betulah most clearly conveys the idea that a woman has never been sexually active, while almah is more ambiguous. This becomes an interpretive issue for Christian theology since it is the latter that is used in Isaiah 7:14, the passage referenced in Matthew 1:23 to describe the virgin birth of Jesus. Those critical of the virgin birth use the ambiguity of almah to argue that Matthew misunderstood Isaiah 7:14 and Jesus was not actually born of a virgin. A closer look at the use of both words shows that the evidence does not support these criticisms.

Betulah

The following examples illustrates that betulah clearly denotes a woman who has never had sexual relations:

Leviticus 21:3: “… his sister, a virgin (betulah), who is closest to him, who has not had a husband …”

Judges 21:12: “And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins (betulah) who had not had sex with a man …”

Genesis 24:16 (speaking of Rebekah): “Now the girl was very pleasing in appearance. She was a virgin (betulah); no man had known her.”

To “know” a woman is a common biblical Hebrew euphemism for “have sexual relations” (e.g., Gen 4:1, 17, 25; 1 Kgs 1:4). It is obvious that men intellectually knew Rebekah (e.g., her brother and Abraham’s servant in the passage). The text is making the explicit claim that she had never had sexual relations with a man.

Almah

By way of comparison, the instances of almah do not provide clear clues regarding the sexual connotations associated with the term.

Genesis 24:43: “Behold, I am standing by the spring of water. Let it be that the young woman (almah) who comes out to draw water and to whom I shall say, ‘Please give me a little water to drink from your jar’ …”

Exodus 2:8 “And the daughter of Pharaoh said to her, ‘Go.’ And the girl (almah) went, and she called the mother of the boy.”

Proverbs 30:18–19: “Three of these are too wonderful for me, and four, I do not understand them: the way of the eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship in the heart of the sea, and the way of a man with a young woman (almah).”

Song of Solomon 1:3: “… your perfumes are delightful; your name is poured out perfume; therefore young women (alamot—the plural of almah) love you.”

Song of Solomon 6:8 “Sixty queens there are, eighty concubines, and maidens (alamot—the plural of almah) beyond number.”

None of these occurrences bears the sort of qualification (e.g., “who had not known a man”) that betulah does. The argument often made is that Isaiah would have used betulah had he wanted to convey that the woman in Isaiah 7:14 was never sexually active, and that since Matthew should have known the difference, he must have wanted to import this theology into his Gospel.

Matthew and the Virgin Mary

However, the argument against Matthew using Isaiah 7:14 to speak of a virgin fails to consider that Isaiah may not have originally intended to speak of a woman who had never been sexually active. The point of the prophecy was not the woman—it was the child. The prophecy was originally given to King Ahaz and was fulfilled in his own lifetime, as Isaiah 6–8 makes clear (see Isa 7:16). Matthew saw an analogy with the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14—a supernatural birth, and used it to tell the story of Jesus.

But does this mean that Matthew misused almah? Is the virgin birth mistaken? The answer is “no” on both counts. Matthew explicitly affirms the virginity of Mary before he cites Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23. Seven verses earlier in Jesus’ genealogy, after saying someone “was the father of” someone else over 50 times, Matthew changes the wording when he gets to Jesus: “Joseph, the husband of Mary by whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matt 1:16). The Greek pronoun behind the English phrase “by whom” is grammatically feminine, making clear that Jesus was born only of Mary—not a human father.

But how could Matthew then quote Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23, knowing that almah was less precise than betulah? That betulah is more precise than almah does not mean almah cannot mean virgin. To show why almah does speak to sexual virginity, we need to revisit its occurrences.

Almah in Context

While it is true that betulah provides more contextual clues regarding sexual inactivity, it does not make sense to argue that almah cannot refer to a woman who had never been sexually active. In this regard, we return to Song of Solomon 6:8—“Sixty queens there are, eighty concubines, and maidens (alamot—the plural of almah) beyond number.”

The distinction between queens, concubines, and alamot is important. A queen was a royal wife, which obviously entails a sexual relationship with the king. A concubine was a sexual partner who held certain privileges, but not to the level of a wife. This would suggest that the third category, the alamot, had no sexual relationship with the king. An almah in this context was a candidate for becoming either a concubine or a wife.

This is precisely what we see in the book of Esther. In Esther 2:3 and Esther 2:8, we read that Esther was held in waiting for 12 months with “young women, virgins” (naarah betulah) under the supervision of Hegai while the king sought a new queen. Esther 2:8 puts Esther in a group of sexual virgins that had not had a sexual encounter with the king.

Esther was eventually taken from the harem under Hegai to the king for an evening liaison. Afterward, she was assigned to a “second harem” supervised by Shaashgaz, who “was in charge of the concubines” (Esth 2:14), indicating Esther was no longer a virgin. That Esther and the king had a sexual relationship during the night is clear from Esther 2:14: “She [Esther] would not go back to the king unless the king delighted in her and she was called by name.” To “go in” to a man or woman is a frequent Old Testament euphemism for sexual intercourse (e.g., Gen 16:14; 19:33; 38:9).

The ancient cultural context shows us that every attempt was made to have a supply of sexual virgins for the king. Consequently, the alamot of Song of Solomon 6:8 should be understood as sexual virgins.

However, there is still the issue that the women in the first harem in Esther’s story are not called alamot as in Song of Solomon 6:8—but instead are referred to as naarah betulah (“young women, virgins”). Genesis provides the examples needed to solidify the argument that almah can identify a sexual virgin. In Genesis 24, Rebekah is actually referred to with both terms that identify Esther: na’ar(ah) in Genesis 24:14 and betulah in Genesis 24:16, and then Rebekah is referred to with the term almah in Genesis 24:43. This indicates that these terms do overlap and, therefore, an almah could be identified as a sexual virgin.

Further, in an ancient patriarchal culture, a “woman of marriageable age” was a female who had at least reached her teen years. Young women in such a culture were under close supervision and restraint of their parents, especially their fathers. Thus, it was probably normal for a young woman (almah) to be a sexual virgin during biblical times.

Michael S. Heiser