Most non-scholars might not be aware that the people who wrote the New Testament appear to actually have read the Old Testament in a Greek translation, rather than the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts. This makes sense since all the NT books were written in Greek, and it’s natural for a writer to quote from the language he’s writing in.

Relying on translations

This use of different versions can create some problems when we consider how often the NT writers quoted scripture, and that their use of a Greek translation means they weren’t reading and quoting the exact same text as we do: all major modern translations use the original Hebrew Bible as the primary basis for our English Bibles.

The most common Greek translation in antiquity is called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), but multiple Greek translations existed in antiquity, and none of them was anywhere near perfect. There is no such thing as a truly literal translation even under the best of circumstances: a Hebrew word could have multiple nuances that no one Greek word could ever capture, and Hebrew grammar uses constructs that Greek can’t really translate. A good translation can capture the sense of the text it translates, but it can never communicate exactly what the text was saying. This is one reason many people today read multiple English translations of the Bible, to try to get the multiple possibilities for the sense of the Greek and Hebrew originals.

Mis-translating Scripture?

But the problem goes deeper than merely the nature of Hebrew and Greek as languages. Modern English translations such the NRSV and NIV will sometimes include footnotes admitting that a passage can be translated more than one way, or that the translators really aren’t sure what a passage means in the original Hebrew of the OT, and the same was true with the old Greek translations –– only worse. A lot of the Septuagint, for example, gives a pretty faithful translation of the Hebrew text of the OT. However, the translation wasn’t all done by the same people or even in the same place or time period, and some parts get pretty messy. In Isaiah, the Septuagint translator sometimes seems to have badly misunderstood what the Hebrew said.

So for example, Isaiah 25:7 in the Hebrew says,

And on this mountain he will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples.

An important point to realize is that the Hebrew original uses very rare words in this verse for the “shroud” being “cast” over all peoples. Modern scholars debate what exactly the passage means, but all are confident that it does not mean what the Septuagint translates it as:

And on this mountain he will hand over all these things to the people.

It seems pretty clear that the Septuagint translator in this case just has no idea what the Hebrew text meant. In fact, “all these things” is so general that I actually laughed the first time I saw it as a translation of the Hebrew. Isaiah can be difficult to read in Hebrew, and on this verse, the translator just gave up and punted.

The Isaiah 25 passage is pretty obscure, but in some places the use of the LXX makes a substantial difference. One of the most famous is the meaning of Isaiah’s oracle to Ahaz in 7:14, which the LXX translates,

On account of this the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat butter and honey; before he knows or selects evil, he shall choose the good. Therefore before the child knows good or evil, he shall disobey wickedness in order to choose the good, and the land whose two kings you fear shall be made desolate.

It is easy to see why early Christians read this as a prophecy of Jesus. A child will be born of a virgin, and will choose good before ever knowing of good and evil––a description clearly compatible with Jesus as the sinless savior of the world. The difficulty is, this isn’t what the original Hebrew text actually says. Rather, the Hebrew reads:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and she shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat butter and honey by the time he (starts) to reject what is bad and choose what is good. For before the child knows how to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land whose two kings you dread shall be made desolate.

The key point is that in the original Hebrew, it is a young woman, not necessarily a virgin, who has the child. The “sign” appears to be not a miraculous birth, but rather that fact that by the time the child knows good from bad (that is, by the time he’s old enough to make decisions for himself), the kingdom that threatens Ahaz will have been destroyed. Butter and honey (or milk and honey) appear to be signs of abundance, and the name of the child is an oracle of encouragement: “God is with us.” In other words, God will be on Ahaz’s side in the coming conflict, and the sign that will confirm the oracle will be when Ahaz sees this new baby grow into a child as Ahaz’s kingdom prospers.

This may seem a strange “sign” since there’s nothing directly miraculous about it, but in fact it’s the same kind of sign God gives Moses in Ex 3:12. In that passage, Moses’ “sign” that God is sending him to rescue the children of Israel is that after the exodus, he and Israel will worship God on mount Sinai.  In other words, the “sign” just means: wait, and you’ll see that God has delivered you. Similarly, in Luke 2:12, the “sign” for the shepherds that they have found Jesus will be that he is wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. Again, the sign isn’t a miracle in itself; rather, it’s simply a fact that the person can notice and realize that God’s word has come true. This is what Isaiah seems to have meant in the Hebrew of 7:14.

Mis-quoting Scripture?

This passage from Isaiah is of course quoted in the New Testament. Matthew 1:23 says Isaiah was fulfilled in Jesus.  What’s interesting (and perhaps troubling) is that a virgin bearing a child reflects the LXX (which is what Matthew quotes here), while the original Hebrew text just has a young woman bearing a child.  The word is similar to our use of the English word “maiden,” in that it generally refers to a virgin (under the assumption that most young women have not had sex), but is not a technical designation.

This leads to the difficult question: Why would God have let NT writers sometimes quote Greek translations that differed from the original Hebrew? For this I don’t have a completely satisfactory answer, but I think it points us to a better understanding of what it means for the OT to be fulfilled in Christ. Some people assume that passages in the OT that refer to Christ must have been prophecies about Christ in the exclusive sense, meaning they were written down in order to refer to Christ.  This seems to be the case in some passages, but other prophecies seem to have more than one meaning at the same time. I think that when Matthew quotes Isaiah 7, Christians should understand him as claiming that the OT passage was fulfilled in a new way, not necessarily that Isaiah was originally prophesying about Jesus in Isaiah 7.

An important point to compare is Matt 2:15, where Matthew says the scripture is fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”  When we actually look at the passage from Hosea 11:1, we find that Matthew is using a Greek translation that follows the Hebrew quite literally. However, in Hosea the quoted verse is clearly referring to the nation Israel as God’s son, rather than to a future messianic individual. In this case there’s no way it could refer to Jesus––because Hos 11:2 says he’s worshipping idols!

It is actually quite common in the NT for passages like this to use LXX readings that don’t match the original Hebrew. This should not cause undue problems in our understanding of Scripture if we recognize that God isn’t just using the OT as a collection of straightforward predictions, but rather is showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire OT. As Randy Harris says, we should read these fulfillments in light of what Paul says in 2 Cor 1:20: “In [Christ], every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”

These kinds of inexact fulfillments can actually say something more interesting than a direct fulfillment of a literal prophecy. As Matthew’s narrative continues, Satan tempts Jesus as the “son of God” in Matthew 4, and it seems we’re supposed to recognize that Jesus was a faithful son, even though Israel (as in Hosea 11:1) had been an unfaithful son. And just as God had been “with Israel” (Immanuel) when they were led by a wicked king in Isaiah 7, so in Jesus, God comes to be with Israel as the good, long-promised king from the line of David.

I’m not quite sure how a completely literal interpretation of Scripture would deal with these texts, though I’m sure some would insist that the Hebrew word can simply mean virgin. In my opinion, however, that still does not account for the flow of Isaiah 7:1-16, which clearly anticipates a sign that will be fulfilled in Ahaz’s lifetime, and clearly provides him with such a sign––once we observe how “sign” can refer to the outcome of events rather than a specific supernatural miracle.

Difficulties like this call for us to understand Scripture with greater nuance, and they make it far more difficult to prove our faith on objective grounds of miraculous prophecy followed by specific fulfillment. From what we actually have in Scripture, it appears we should conclude that God does not intend for us to be able to do this.

For some parts of my reading of Isaiah 7, I made reference to John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (2004), 311-314.