Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

Both Genesis 24.13 and 24.43 attest to the Greek παρθενος as being a translation for Hebrew עלמה.

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

"Shall conceive" or "is with child"? I understood it to be the latter.

Originally Posted by Phlox Pyros

Agreed, but the Pentateuch portion of the Septuagint was supposedly written much earlier and most likely by different scribes. It still seems to me that the verses in Isaiah I mentioned are pretty strong testimony to the kind of textual diversity among Hebrew manuscripts that Tov mentions, making the existence of a Hebrew manuscript that read bethulah in Isaiah 7:14 plausible.

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

I suppose its technically possible, but it's still up on you to show that it is so.

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

"Shall conceive" or "is with child"? I understood it to be the latter.

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

The original Hebrew says almah ("young woman"), not bethulah. When read in context, it's blindingly obvious that Isaiah 7:14 has no Messianic connotation whatsoever, that the "young woman" is present in the story and is already pregnant and that there is nothing remotely to suggest that she was a virgin.

Originally Posted by Apikorus

Of course it was intended as a prophecy. The prophecy was that before the child Immanuel would reach the age of moral suasion, the threat to Judah posed by Pekah in Israel and Rezin in Damascus would dissolve.

Regarding the whole virgin thang, it is a tempest in a teapot. The plain sense of the Hebrew is that a young woman (Heb. almah) would give birth. It seems quite clear that almah means "young woman" because the masculine form elem also appears in the Hebrew Bible, and does not connote virginity. It is well known that Isaiah is among the poorest books of the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek in the LXX (Eissfeldt thought it was so poor that it was "of little use" for HB text criticism); it is quite plausible that parthenos is simply a mistranslation. Still, even if one insists on the LXX reading, it is hardly clear that Isa 7:14 is saying that a virgin will give birth. It could be read as saying, "behold! the woman who is now a virgin will (sometime later be naturally impregnated and) conceive and bear a son, named Immanuel." (I recall Raymond Brown proffering this reading, in Birth of the Messiah.) Again, the prophecy here is not Immanuel's birth per se, but rather the desolation of Israel and Damascus in the context of the Syro-Ephraimite war. The prophecy is paralleled by that in chapter 8, where the child of significance is Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Note the repetition of the formula ky b+rM yd( hn(r X = "for before the child knows how to X", where X = "refuse evil and choose good" (ch. 7) or "cry" (ch. 8). (There is still more in parallel between the two chapters.)

In light of the prophecy in Isa 7:15-16, I find the traditional Christian identification of Immanuel = Jesus to be a bit ironic, since Isaiah clearly implies that the child Immanuel would for some time not know right from wrong, as is the case with all children. The New Testament says famously little about Jesus' childhood, but I'd guess most Christians would be uncomfortable with the notion of a bratty sinful child Jesus. (It is presumably for this reason that the Christian commentator Matthew Henry identifies the child in Isa 7:15-16 not as Immanuel, but rather as Shear-Yashuv -- a tendentious reading which must be admired for its sheer idiocy.)

Originally Posted by Apikorus

The rabbinic recensions of the LXX due to Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, all of which are closer to the MT, have neanis instead of parthenos in this verse (though this may have been a response to Christian dogma).

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

And as Phlox Pyros said, the DSS weigh in heavily with almah. So we do know that the Hebrew read "almah" before the Christian era.

Originally Posted by Gamera

This begs the question, then, of why the author finds it amazing and calls this a "sign.". What is amazing about a young woman getting pregnant. It happens all the time. It doesn't appear to be a sign of anything. Now, it would be amazing if a virgin got pregnant. And the Hebrew word has the semantic range to include a virgin.

Later Rabbinical explanations of what it amazing about this kid (he dispells a threat to Israel before reaching the age of 7) seem tendentious and not what the author intended at all.

Originally Posted by Gamera

The author's reference to the two kings' land being laid waste "before the boy knows enough to reject right from wrong," is merely a reference to the traditional age of moral discernment, usually put at age seven. In short it is a circumlocution for "before the boy is seven." It doesn't speak to the boy's actual moral discernment, but rather is just a fancy way to reference his age.