 I just actually, for the first time in my life, was thinking this morning about the possible significance of this phrase, white Christmas. I know that it was a song written by a Jewish composer, I think Irving Berlin in 1940, but everyone speaks about having a white Christmas and I was thinking maybe part of the significance is that white is a symbol of purity, they speak about the virginal snow. So it could be that there's some connection between the idea of a white Christmas and the idea of the virgin birth. I was wondering about the timing when last week it was widely reported in the newspapers and internet obviously across the world that in a study that was done by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, one in 200 American women reported to have had virgin births, meaning that this was widely reported, believe it or not, last week that of 200 American women, one of them would claim to have had a child even though they had never had sex. So go figure in terms of the timing for today's program. Of course the significance from a Christian point of view for the virgin birth is partially, not completely, partially due to their narrative which tries to develop the idea that Jesus was not just a regular Jew living 2,000 years ago, but that his virgin birth is often connected to the Christian claim for his divinity. And as Ira mentioned last night, this claim is basically at the heart of the major Jewish issue, problem, objection to Christianity. I mean that in Judaism, just about the major focus is our focus on God and the worship of God alone. In the Torah we're told that the only thing that God really can't tolerate and despises and hates is idolatry. Idolatry is always defined as the worship of anyone or anything that was not responsible for creating every molecule of existence. So the worship of any created being is idolatry. And so for Jews, the focus of our problem with the Christian narrative is this idea of Jesus's divinity, the claim that he was divine. It's interesting that in Jewish circles, Christmas Eve is often referred to as nitel. Last night it was called nitelnacht. And you could translate in Yiddish, nitel is nitel, not God. And it's interesting also that going back hundreds of years, another term that's been used for Christmas is noel. Noels relate to the birth date, but again I would say noel is not God. So for our point of view the name works out just perfectly fine. The basic assertion of missionary Christianity is that all of their beliefs and doctrines were anticipated in and predicted by the Jewish scriptures. Really we wouldn't be having a session like this today if they would just have invented their own religion and not try to involve our Bible in it. One of the doctrines of Christianity has always been that the Messiah had to have been born of a virgin. And again they claim that this teaching is rooted in the Jewish scriptures. Now I rementioned last night that a text without context is pretext. And so before we launch into a study of the virgin birth, I think it's important for us to have a general biblical context as we begin today for the concept of the Messiah. When we speak about the Messiah as Jews basing it upon our Bible, where does the idea come from? So I rementioned last night that there are actually many messiahs in the Jewish Bible. The word Messiah simply means anointed one and there were many people who were anointed. There were prophets that were anointed, the kings were anointed, the high priests were anointed. So for us as Jews there are many messiahs, it's not a unique term. It's not the last name of someone. But the scriptures do speak repeatedly about a special anointed person, a special messiah that would serve as the king of the Jewish people in the future utopia. Now there are approximately ten of these passages. And I want to focus in with you on them, three of them at least at the moment. In the prophet Yecheskel, Ezekiel chapter 37, he writes, My servant David will be king over them and he will be one shepherd for them. They will follow my ordinances and keep my decrees. So the prophet tells us that at this time all the Jewish people will be observant of the Torah. They will dwell on the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, within which your fathers dwell. So the Jewish people are going to dwell back in their homeland. They and their children and children's children will dwell upon it forever. So there will be a time when the Jewish people all will return to our homeland and be there forever. That's going to be it. I will seal a covenant of peace with them. And God says at that time, not only are we going to all be back in our land, not only will all Jews be keeping the Torah, but we're going to be living in a time of peace. It will be an eternal covenant with them. So not just a temporary peace, it's going to be a peace that will last forever. And I will replace them and increase them and I will place my sanctuary among them forever. So not only will we come back to our land and come back to God and come back to the Torah and live there in peace, but God says that we will have our temple back and it will be there forever. My dwelling place will be among them. I will be a God to them and they will be a people to me. Then God says, meaning after all this has been accomplished, this unparalleled development in the history of the world, it'll be so clear as to who this Messiah is. God says here, then the nations will know that I am Hashem. I am God who sanctifies Israel. When? My sanctuary will be among them forevermore. When we see that third temple rebuilt in Jerusalem, among all the other things that the Bible describes will happen, it'll be quite clear to the entire world that the Messiah has finally come. Now this theme is developed as I mentioned in about 10 passages that describe this descendant of David who will be the king of the Jewish people during this Utopian future. Isaiah chapter 11, I'll just paraphrase it for you, speaks about a descendant of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David. We're told that he'll be wise, have understanding, he'll fear God. It's one of the reasons we know by the way this Messiah will not be God because the Bible tells us he'll be someone who fears God. We're told he will judge with righteousness. And then the prophet describes in the second paragraph a world of peace where even the animals will dwell together. And then we're told in the last verse, they will neither hurt nor destroy in all of my holy mountain. There'll be no more violence or killing in the world, God says. For the earth will be as filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the seas. Why will it be that we'll finally have world peace? Because God says because in the future every human being is going to come to know God. And as every person understands we are a child of God, every person in the world understands we're all brothers and sisters. We all are brothers and sisters, we're all children of God. There'll be world peace when we have universal knowledge of God. Again, two incredibly powerful themes, universal knowledge of God, universal peace. The prophet Yermiyahu in the 33rd chapter says, Behold, days are coming, says the God, the word of Hashem. When I will fulfill the favorable matter that I spoke concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah, in those days at that time I will cause a sprout of righteousness to sprout forth from David. There will be this righteous descendant of King David. And he will administer justice and righteousness in the land. He'll be a just and righteous ruler. In those days Judah will be safe and Jerusalem will dwell in security. We will live at peace in our land. And this is what people will call Jerusalem, how Hashem is our righteous one. For thus says Hashem, David will never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel. There will always be in every generation a descendant of David who can assume this role right as we speak today. David has a descendant who is able to fit these shoes. The prophet Jeremiah by the way in the 23rd chapter basically echoes the same passage we read in the 33rd chapter. But there he explicitly speaks about this descendant of David ruling and prospering as the king of the Jewish people. Now what's critical for us to all understand is that what I've just shared with you is developed clearly and consistently in the Jewish Bible. Again at least 10 passages that speak about a wise and righteous descendant of King David. And he will rule the Jewish people at a time when there is a universal utopia. What's important to remember is that this general theme is reinforced by hundreds of passages in the Bible. Hundreds that again speak about what the world will look like when the Messiah is here. What we need to remember as Jews is that the focus of our Bible, the focus is not on the person of the Messiah. The focus is on what the world will look like when he is here. Hundreds of passages telling us about the Jewish people all reuniting, returning to our homeland, returning to God, returning to the Torah, living at peace, and then spreading the knowledge of God to the entire world. And when that knowledge of God spreads to the world, universal disarmament, universal peace. But among those hundreds of passages that describe a distinctly different kind of world that we will have in the future. Again about 10 passages that zero in on this special anointed one, this special Messiah who will be the descendant of David, wise and righteous and who rules the King, that is the person that we refer to as the Messiah. Because Christians agree with us, they cannot help but agree, it's so clear. Because they agree that these passages are messianic prophecies. They are forced by Jesus' failure to fulfill them, to invent the doctrine of the Second Coming, and insist that when Jesus comes back, he will fulfill all of these prophecies. However, Christians insist that even before he comes back, meaning 2,000 years ago, he still did fulfill numerous prophecies from the Bible. And what they try to do is to again prove from the Jewish Bible that indeed that's what Jesus did. He fulfilled scriptures in the Jewish Bible. Let me just share with you two examples which will set the stage for today's program. In the Gospel of John chapter 19, you don't have this in front of you, I'll fill it in the background. Nineteenth chapter of John recounts the crucifixion of Jesus. And it tells us that the Romans, because they were such nice and sweet people, they would, I'm being sarcastic, they wouldn't want God forbid to have a Jewish person hanging up on a cross over Shabbos. So what the Romans would do is they would make sure that people that were crucified before Shabbos, that they would die more quickly. Now when a person was crucified, the cause of death was not that they bled out. The cause of death was asphyxiation and shock. A person that was hanging on a cross, it was a brutal form of torture because the weight of their body would ultimately cave in, they would put pressure on their diaphragm, they would not be able to breathe. And what the person, you can imagine, was beaten, was hanging up in the sun, it was hot in the Middle East, and they had obviously usually their wrists and their ankles might have been pierced to hang them up. They were in tremendous pain. But in order to be able to breathe as their chest was compressing your diaphragm, they would be a crossbar where their feet were resting, and they would push themselves up by their feet to expand their chest and be able to breathe. But then they would get tired again and exhausted, they'd begin to collapse, and this process could go on for three or four days sometimes. It was a horrible, horrible torture. So if people were crucified on a Friday, for example, which when Jesus was allegedly crucified on a Friday, it was often not enough time for them to go through this excruciating process and die. So the Gospel of John tells us that what the Romans would do is they would come around with a big mallet, and when they would break the bones of the people, the legs, they would break their legs, so they would not be able to prop themselves up, and then they would more quickly expire. So John says that Jesus was crucified between two other people, and that the Romans actually came and they broke the legs of these other two people, but when they came to Jesus, he was already dead, and the Romans didn't have to break his legs. They didn't have to break his legs. That's where we are at now at this point. So John says in verse 36, for these things came to pass that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Not a bone of him shall be broken. So what John is alleging here is that in the Jewish Bible, we have a prophecy that none of the Messiah's bones will be broken, and he says that's exactly what happened, because when they came to Jesus, it was strange, he shouldn't have been dead at that point. He was dead. They didn't have to break his bones, and that was the fulfillment of this prophecy from the Jewish Bible. Now, does the Jewish Bible ever prophesy that none of the Messiah's bones will be broken? It would be a very strange prophecy. Imagine that someone grows up and they become the Messiah. They're 30, 40 years old. So you mean if they were six and they fell down and broke their arm when they were a kid that disqualifies them? It's an absurd kind of prophecy, but the prophecy was never a prophecy about the Messiah. Actually, it was never even a prophecy. In the book of Exodus, chapter 12, verse 46, we're told as part of the Passover service, the paschal lamb, we're told it is to be eaten in a single house. You are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. I mean that we can't break any of the bones of the Corbin Pesach, the paschal lamb. Now we see here two things that are important for us to remember today. Number one, that John has ripped this passage entirely out of its context. This is a passage that's giving you the laws of the Passover, and John transforms it into a prophecy about the Messiah that none of his legs shall be broken. But you'll also notice a little bit of a subtle mistranslation. The Hebrew doesn't say about the Corbin Pesach so much that none of his bones will be broken. It describes the sacrifice as none of its bones shall be broken. And John obviously transforms the it into a he. So again, remember these two principles that what often happens in Christian proof texting is to rip passages out of context and sometimes base it upon a mistranslation. Second example here is from the prophet Zechariah, one of our prophets. And one of the passages in Zechariah that many Christians get excited about is the sixth verse of his 13th chapter. I have an underline for you here where the prophet writes and one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in your hands? And he will answer those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Now again, many Christian Bibles have a little star next to this verse to indicate this was a messianic prophecy fulfilled by the crucifixion of Jesus. However, if you study the context of this passage, go back to the beginning of chapter 13. It's a passage that's not describing the Messiah himself. It is, by the way, chapter 13, a messianic prophecy and then it's describing something that will take place when the Messiah is here. What will that be? It'll be essentially the destruction of false prophets and false religions, meaning one of the things our Bible tells us is when that veil is lifted, the Messiah comes, everyone in the world will now see clearly who was a true prophet, who was a false prophet. And this passage describes the death of the false prophets. So this person who's speaking about the wounds in his hands is not the Messiah, it's a false prophet. And yet Christians who don't read this passage in context very proudly hold it up in the air and they say, you see Jesus fulfilled Zachariah 13.6. Not only is this passage ripped out of context, but it's also based again upon a mistranslation. I gave you here the King James Version. But if you look in other translations, for example, the Tanach of the art scroll English Tanach, says that it's not really one of those wounds in your hands, it's bein' yadecha between your arms. One of those scars between your arms. This is even reflected in many Christian translations. For example, the New American Standard Version says, and one will say to them, what are those wounds between your arms? It's not wounds in someone's hands. Basically, they were wounds on someone's back. They were between their arms on their back. They probably were whipped. In any event, these are two examples I want you to be comfortable and familiar with them of passages that are not discussing the Messiah. They're not about the Messiah. But because they sound like Jesus, at least on some level, Christians will rip them out of their context and say, ah, these are Messianic prophecies. Now let's go to the passage that we're here for today. On page three, this is the passage in the book of Matthew, chapter one, about the birth of Jesus. Now the birth of Jesus Christ came, took place in this way. Again, I rementioned last night Christ was on his last name, like Jesus Feldman, Jesus Schwartz. Christ is the Greek form, Christ means Messiah. It really should have said the birth of Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. In any event, now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Now, it's important to understand contextually that 2,000 years ago, Jewish marriages were not conducted the way they are today. We take the two parts of a Jewish wedding, we put them together on the same day. But 2,000 years ago, they separated the two parts of a Jewish wedding by about a year. The first part of the Jewish wedding was actually a marriage where the couple became contracted as husband and wife. And then for a year, the husband was setting up the house they were going to live in. So they lived apart for a year. However, they were legally married. So if they wanted to end that relationship, they had to just get a divorce. It wasn't like today people get engaged and they break up. This was a legal marriage and a divorce was required to end it. And also, if this woman had relations with someone else, she wasn't cheating on her boyfriend. It was adultery against her husband. So this story takes place during that year. Again, it's after Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, but before they came to live together. Okay? And during this time, she became pregnant. It says here, through the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, obviously he comes home one day and he sees that Mary is what the New Testament calls great with child. He sees that she's a little bit showing and she may be expecting one of these days. He knows that he didn't touch her. And he figures, Praise the Lord! She must be the mother of the Messiah. He doesn't have that reaction. He assumes that she was cheating. So he was a just man, we're told. He was a nice guy and unwilling to put her to shame. Really theoretically, he could have sent her to court and she could have been executed for adultery. He didn't want to do that. So he resolved to divorce her quietly. Basically, he was going to tell her, You know what, Mary? Pack your bags. Go to San Francisco. Start your life over again. Have a nice life. That was basically his plan. Get out of town. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Meaning that God himself impregnated her. She will bear her son and you will call his name Jesus. Jesus in Hebrew, some form of it would be Yeshua, which means salvation. And therefore, why does he call Jesus? Because he will be a savior. He will save his people from their sins. Significant, by the way, that in the Hebrew Bible, the word salvation doesn't deal with being saved from your sins. Salvation in the Jewish Bible speaks about being rescued from political or physical danger. Our Bible never speaks about needing to be saved from your sins. You take care of your own sins through repentance. But they say he was going to be called Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Now watch carefully what Matthew says. I put it in bold. Matthew makes the claim that this is not just a Christian story. He says all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Now in Matthew's writing, the only prophets he would be referring to were the Jewish prophets. And here he's referring to our prophet Isaiah which we'll be studying today. So he says that Isaiah predicted this and he quotes now, allegedly from Isaiah, behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name will be called Emmanuel. Which means, by the way, Matthew assumed that his readers couldn't understand Hebrew. So Matthew translates Emmanuel as which means God with us. Now actually the correct translation would be God is with us. But Christians often remove the is because they want to give the impression that this name indicates that this child will be God himself. God with us. This child is going to be God who lives among us. God who takes upon human form because they take this Hebrew name Emmanuel and because it has God's name in it, they make the assumption that child himself must be God. Obviously this is based upon a very sad misunderstanding of how Jewish biblical names work. Very large majority of Jewish biblical names from Yehuda to Daniel to Yisra'ahu have God's name as part of the name. It doesn't mean this person is God. It means this person's name speaks about God. And obviously not every person named Emmanuel is God. I remember the late and respected Rabbi Emmanuel Shochet Sechertzal Levrach here from Toronto once said in a lecture that maybe he's God. His name is Emmanuel. So that's the passage in Matthew. And we're going to come back to it in a few minutes. But again, the starting point for our program today is that Matthew speaks about this birth of Jesus that it didn't take place through the agency of a man that Mary is impregnated. He says by the Holy Spirit of God and that this was predicted, anticipated in the Jewish Scriptures through the prophet Isaiah. Now I want to just share with you a little bit of the version which shows you how focused Christians are on this idea of the virgin birth. And if you go all the way back to the beginning of our Bible to Genesis chapter 3, there's a passage that most Christians focus fiercely on. Here after the debacle in the Garden of Eden, God is now giving each of the parties their just deserts, their curses so in verse 14, so the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. God says to the snake, now on your belly you shall go. Presumably the snake didn't crawl on its belly originally, may have had feet. And you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And God says in verse 15, I will put enmity, hatred between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now most people reading this passage understand it to be speaking about this, we call difficult relationship that human beings have with snakes. To this day people freak out. I think there's a movie recently, right? About snakes on the plane or something. People freak out when they see a snake. They want to run, they want to scream. So God says here that he's going to put this enmity, hatred between you, the snake and the woman. Between your seed, not just you, this particular snake, but between all snakes who will live in the future. And her seed, meaning all the children of Eve, all the human beings who will live into the future. It seems like a pretty simple narrative. That God here is describing this hostile relationship that will exist between humans and snakes. And God describes how the encounter will usually take place. That he will bruise your head, meaning because this snake is slithering on the ground, meaning usually do away with it. You take your heel and you smash it on the head. You step on the snake. But because the snake is lying low to the ground, it's not going to bite people on the neck so often. It's going to bruise people in the heel. It's going to bite you on the lower extremities of your leg. However, what Christians sees on is the fact here that it speaks about the seed of this woman. And they say, what do you mean between your seed, it's speaking to Eve, your seed? They say, women don't have seed. It's the men that have seed. So they say here, believe it or not, this is advanced very, very with all sincerity, they say, this is really referring to a specific woman. And I'll put enmity between you, the snake, which they say is not just a snake, it's Satan. And the woman, Mary, referring to Mary. And between your seed, now I don't know who the seed of Satan is, but in any event between Satan and her seed, meaning God is saying here, I'm going to put a special hostile relation between you, Mary, and specifically your seed. Now why is it called Mary's seed here? Because again they say there was no human father for this child. There was no male seed. So it's referred to specifically as Mary's seed. And what it says here is that ultimately this serpent, this satanic being, will bruise the head. I'm sorry, that you will bruise the head of this Satan, meaning that you will ultimately wound Satan, but he will bruise his heel. He will wound this seed of Mary. Again the point that the Christians get very, very riled up about is that there's a reference here to the seed of a woman. And they ask the question where do you see that there's a woman who gives birth through her own seed, but not through the seed of a man. And they're assuming that somehow this expression that your seed, meaning referring to Eve's seed, is unusual in the Bible that the Bible never refers to the seed of a woman. The truth of the matter is that it's a very common expression. It simply means descendants. So for example in Genesis 1610 when the Bible speaks about Sarah the angel of the Lord said to her, Sarah, I will multiply your seed exceedingly. You see it speaks about her not at seed, it's speaking about her descendants. And the same thing we're told about Rebecca when her family says to her in Genesis 24, they said to her, thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions and let thy seed possess the gate of those who hate them. So the Bible simply uses this term seed here as a term meaning descendants. There's nothing unusual here. And so in Genesis 3 it's simply referring to the children who will come out of Adam and Eve. Here it's speaking to Eve specifically. Now another example of where Christians totally get lost on this idea of seed, and I hope I'm not confusing you, but they get very lost here. In Galatians 3 if you look at the bottom of the page they make a big deal about the fact that God promised something to Abraham's seed. The author of Galatians Paul says now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made. Now watch what Paul says. God didn't say to Abraham seeds in the plural as though many, but only to one and to your seed. Now who is that one special descendant of Abraham that God is referring to? Paul says it's Christ, Jesus. So Paul is assuming here that again the word seed in the Bible is only referring to a single individual descendant. He doesn't realize it in the Bible when it speaks about someone's seed it means specifically their descendants in the plural. Where do you see that? Look for example where God says in Genesis 22 to Abraham, in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sandwiches upon the sea shore. And your seed will possess the gates of his enemies. And in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. Here it's speaking about all the descendants of Abraham. So we see that there's a tremendous amount of misunderstanding that Christians will bring to their reading of the Jewish scriptures. Now let's take a breath and try to approach the passage in Isaiah that Matthew was quoting. So we go back to page 3. The bold part Matthew says that all this story took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Now he's quoting again from our Jewish Bible. Behold a virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name will be called Emmanuel. Now that's chapter 7 of Isaiah verse 14. Now it's quite clear that in order to understand chapter 7 verse 14 it would be important to know the context of that verse. I had so many Christians ask me over my years, rabbi have you ever read Isaiah 7 14? And I usually say, well I have but did you ever read Isaiah 7 verse 1? Did you ever read 7 1 or 2 or 3 or 4? It's a whole chapter that comes before verse 14. You can't parachute down into the middle of a chapter and you think you're going to understand it. You'll probably misunderstand it. So let's start now on page 4 with a little bit of background to chapter 7. Let me give you a lot of background. The first Jewish king after Saul, Shaul was David. And David and his son Solomon ruled you don't have this on your chart this would be really should be the top of the chart. David and Solomon ruled a united kingdom. All the 12 tribes were together and we had a wonderful kingdom through David and Solomon around 1000 BCE. But after the death of Solomon his son Rehavam took over, ruling but then there was this breakaway. We have so many synagogues that have a breakaway minion, well we had a breakaway kingdom. And Yeruvam Ben-Navat who was one of the most evil Jews that ever lived. Yeruvam Ben-Navat broke away and started the Northern Kingdom that was called the Kingdom of Israel. Now there were these two kingdoms the two major tribes in the south were the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. However, among those people from Judah and Benjamin were many Levites and priests Kohanim. The tribe of Levi did not have their own section of land so they lived among all the people. So down in the south of the Kingdom of Judah you had the tribes of Benjamin and Judah plus many Levites and priests plus assorted people from the 10 Northern tribes who might have been down living in the south either through marriage or for business purposes or maybe they had to go away for some other reason but they had a sprinkling of other people. But in the north you had the 10 Northern tribes. If you look on the left hand side of the page you'll see a list of the kings of the Kingdom of Judah. Starting with Rechavim going down you had many righteous kings including Yehoshaphat Yosem who was the father of Achaz but our story focuses on this king named Achaz who lived between 736 and 716 BCE we reigned during those years and he was the first truly, truly wicked king in the Kingdom of Judah. Some of his predecessors may not have been perfect they did commit some sins but Achaz was really about as low as they go and he introduced idolatry and the worship of Baal into the Kingdom of Judah it had not been there in any serious way before. The kings of Israel on the other side Kingdom of Israel they were basically wicked kings all the way through. Again it might sound confusing to you if you're not used to the fact that there were these two kingdoms among the Jewish people again the southern kingdom of Judah the northern kingdom called Israel. Sometimes by the way also called Ephraim why was it called Ephraim because Yeravim Ben-Navot their first king was from the tribe of Ephraim so sometimes the ten northern tribes the Kingdom of Israel is also called Ephraim that you can turn the page. On page 5 you'll see a map that describes these two kingdoms you'll see on the south it says Judah you'll see on the northern part of the kingdom of Judah is their capital in Jerusalem and then you have the kingdom of Israel on top and their capital was Samaria you'll see it about three quarters of an inch up from the borderline there. Now we have the kingdom of Judah in the south the northern kingdom of Israel now we'll begin chapter 7 of Isaiah it came to pass in the days of Achaz we saw who he was he was this first really wicked king of the kingdom of Judah so it came to pass in the days of Achaz who was the son of Yosem son of Uzziah who was the king of Judah that's the first character you have to have clear in your head that we're talking about a story that takes place during the reign of Achaz who was the king of Judah that what happened that Ritzin who was the king of Aram now Aram was basically Damascus Syria if you look in the upper right hand part of this map you'll see Aram Damascus which was basically the kingdom of Syria so another character is brought into this story now Ritzin who was the king of Aram and Pekah who was the son of Ramalia who was the king of Israel they marched on Jerusalem to wage war against it so what you have here the very first verse is the context that we need to know you have here an alliance between the 10 northern tribes and Syria Damascus Aram these two big powers entered into an alliance a confederacy and they're going together to attack the southern kingdom of Judah that should be clear to everyone now but even though they went to wage war against it they could not win and it was told to the house of David this is the house of David meaning the southern tribe of Judah saying Aram has allied itself with Ephraim is the 10 northern tribes of Israel Aram has allied itself with Ephraim this is a bad news if you're living down in the south and so his heart and the heart of his people trembled as the trees of the forest trembled because of the wind they were shaking like trees in the wind because they were so terrified of this imminent invasion and the Lord said to Isaiah so God now says to the prophet Isaiah go now toward Ahaz go towards Ahaz the king of Judah you and Shaiyashu of your son to the edge of the conduit of the upper pool to the road of the washers field they were very protective by the way of the water supply around Jerusalem and it's quite possible that Ahaz was right there at the point in time trying to protect the water supply against these invading armies so Isaiah and his son Shaiyashu go to meet Ahaz there and God says you shall say to him feel secure and calm yourself meaning that even though you're about to be wiped off the map God says to Isaiah to tell Ahaz that you should be secure and calm do not fear and let your heart not be faint because of these two smoking stubs of firebrands because of the raging anger of its scene in Aram and the son of Ramalia don't be afraid of them Isaiah tells Ahaz don't be afraid of the fact in verse 5 that Aram is planning to harm you Ephraim and the son of Ramalia saying what are they saying they're saying in verse 6 let us go up against Judah and provoke it and annex it for us we're going to take it over and let us crown a king in its midst one who is good for us so said the Lord God no, neither shall it succeed nor will it come to pass for the head of Aram meaning the capital of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Ritzin Ritzin is the king of the Damascus empire and in another 65 years Ephraim shall be broken no longer to be a people and the head of Ephraim is Samaria meaning the capital of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is this son of Ramalia named Pekach if you do not believe it is because you cannot be believed you yourself are not really someone who is capable of believing and the Lord continued to speak to Ahaz saying meaning that God spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying, ask for yourself a sign from the Lord meaning don't just take my word for it that everything is going to be okay and you'll be safe God says ask for a sign from the Lord your God ask it either in the depths or in the heights above and Ahaz said very very feigning righteousness Ahaz says, I will not ask for a sign I will not test the Lord I'm not going to need to ask God for a sign and in verse 13 the prophet says listen now oh house of David is it little for you to weary men that you weary my God as well therefore the Lord on his own will give you a sign behold the young woman is with child and she will bear a son and she will call his name Emmanuel Emmanuel again meaning God is with us cream and honey he will eat when he knows to reject bad and choose good for when this child does not yet know to reject bad and choose good the land whose two kings you dread will be abandoned what's happening this passage is quite simple there is a political crisis because the southern kingdom of Judah is about to be annihilated by this alliance of the ten northern tribes of Israel and around Damascus so God tells them I'm going to give you a sign that everything is going to be okay the sign is quite simple number one there is a woman now who is pregnant there's a woman who is with child she's a pregnant woman right now she's about to give birth and before this little baby knows good from evil now it's not clear if it means good food from bad food which could be within a few months or to know morally good from morally evil which could be five or six years but basically the prophet saying within a very short period of time these two people these two nations that are attacking you they will be no longer a threat what the prophet is telling here is basically salvation is around the corner don't be afraid and here's the sign number one is going to be a sign through the name of this child you feel abandoned you feel frightened you're breaking like the trees in the forest that's how afraid they were and God says I am with you I will be with you that's the first sign there's a child whose name is symbolic of the fact that God is with you and then God gives them a timeline and says before this little kid knows good from evil these two nations will be kaput that's the story of Isaiah chapter 7 it's very clear that if this were referring to Jesus who lived about 700 years later it wouldn't be very reassuring to Achaz that God would be saying to him don't worry Achaz don't worry there's a baby going to be born in 700 years and everything's going to be fine no worries it's very clear that the context of this chapter is not speaking about the Messiah who's going to come in the future it's quite clear that this chapter is speaking about a specific threat to the kingdom of Judah and the reassurance that everything will be okay if you go to page 6 you'll see the very next chapter of Isaiah this name Immanuel is used again as a sign of the assurance that God is with the Jewish people at the end of verse 8 Immanuel possibly the child at this point is evoked and then at the end of verse 10 Immanuel means God is with us again this phrase comes up at the end of verse 10 for God is with us, don't worry so much God is with us and then we see at the very end of the page the prophet Isaiah says that his children were given names and his children should be signs for the Jewish people now it's not very clear who this child is is it the child of Isaiah the prophet meaning maybe Isaiah's wife in this story is the one that's pregnant and about to give birth or is it possibly King Achaz's wife it's not totally clear the commentaries have a lot of work to do here dealing with this but it's either the wife of the prophet or the wife of the king how do we know because the prophet tells him the young woman it's not a young woman living somewhere in Saskatchewan the prophet says to Achaz her alma the hey, letter hey is the hey hayidia it's the hey pointing to that which is known meaning it's referring to a woman that's pregnant that Achaz knows so it's either going to be his own wife or the prophet's wife or someone else that he knows also by the way I don't know if you're paying attention to this but most people have noticed that Jesus was never named Emmanuel in the Christian Bible it would have been better had one of the gospel writers said and the baby was born and they called him Emmanuel just as Isaiah predicted we're saying Yiddish is nizh-du it's not there if you go to page 7 you'll see that the Bible tells us specifically that these prophecies were fulfilled meaning that the Bible lets us know that's exactly what the prophet told King Achaz took place so in 2 Kings chapter 15 we're told that in the 52nd year of King Azaria of Judah Pekach who was the son of Ramalia he was this wicked king who began to reign over Israel in Samaria he reigned for 20 years as a ruler of the 10 northern tribes in our story and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord he was really bad he did not depart from the sins of Yerevan Ben-Navat who was the first king of Israel which caused Israel to sin so in the days of King Pekach of Israel there was an invasion by a big superpower called Assyria Assyria came down and began to lead people from the 10 northern tribes away but then Hosea son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekach son of Ramalia attacked him and killed him this is a few years after Isaiah chapter 7 so when Isaiah says these two leaders will be destroyed we see that Pekach is killed in 2 Kings 15 and the next chapter 2 Kings 16 if you look on the bottom of the page they marched up against Damascus took over carrying its people captive to Kyr and then he killed Ritzin so again the two people in Isaiah chapter 7 are Pekach and Ritzin and we see that they are shortly thereafter killed so on page 8 what I wanted to share with you was the fact that this reading of the Bible is not based upon any particular wisdom that Jewish people have it's just based upon trying to read the Bible in terms of what it says so the Harper's Bible dictionary which is not printed in Borough Park it's a Christian book writes it is clear however that Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 did not speak about the miraculous birth of Jesus centuries later the annual offered by the prophet to Achaz had to do with the imminent birth of a child the imminent birth of a child of a mother known to Achaz and Isaiah and signifying God's presence with his people now this was written in 1985 lest you think that Christians never understood that beforehand going all the way back to the 12th century there was a Christian scholar named Andrew of Saint Victor he was the first abbot of Victoria Monastery in Wigmore England and when he commented on Isaiah chapter 7 he wrote that this was a prophecy about a child who was born as a sign to King Achaz and the Kingdom of Judah to reassure them against the threat they were facing from annihilation by the alliance of Syria and the 10 northern tribes of Israel he said it had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus 700 years later this is a Christian abbot who was writing this a long long time ago you should know that he came in under tremendous criticism he was called a Judaizer there were people who wrote horrible attacks although you should know that Andrew of Saint Victor was no Judaizer as a matter of fact in his commentary to Isaiah chapter 7 he calls the Jewish people enemies of the truth he was no fan of the Jews but he was someone you should know that had been studying with the students of Rashi he had come to understand the Jewish approach to Pshat to Pshuto Shomikra reading a passage in the Bible for what it plainly and clearly says without an agenda without preconceived ideas without putting Jesus glasses on and Andrew of Saint Victor had to admit that chapter 7 of Isaiah was not a messianic prophecy about Jesus the New Interpreter's Bible wrote that in its again a Christian publication in its original context Isaiah 7 to 14 refers to the promise that Judah would be delivered from the Syriot Ephraimitic war before the child of a young woman who was already pregnant would reach the age of moral discernment and in chapter 8 of Isaiah verse 8 Immanuel the child is addressed as already present meaning this Immanuel is not someone born 800 years 700 years later thus clear from the context that the Isaiah passage did not predict an event in the long range future but was directed to Isaiah's own time now as a chess player I would say checkmate game over however you should probably not be surprised when I tell you that many Christian missionaries don't roll over and die when you show this to them they don't say game up so quickly and in the same way they came up with a second coming for Jesus in the wake of his failure to fulfill any of the real biblical messianic prophecies they came up with a second coming for the whole idea of what a prophecy is in the first place and so what many missionaries claim is that Isaiah chapter 7 has it's really a dual prophecy they say of course you're right Rabbi Scobac it really speaks about this political crisis it took place 700 BCE and it's immediate application was the birth of this child who was known to both Achaz and to Isaiah that they say is clear you've made it abundantly clear but if you're able to read the scriptures extensively and with an open eye to the truth you'll realize that it's also referring to the birth of another special child who will be God with us 700 years later they say you have to appreciate this prophecy has a dual application it's immediate application and another application many many many years later now we would require several hours to actually puncture every element of this claim so let me very briefly share the following number one when you study Isaiah chapter 7 especially what I would say is this especially if you were to be someone reading it before the invention of Christianity meaning now Christianity it's easy for Christians to claim well there's a dual prophecy here I suspect that anyone on the planet who would have read Isaiah chapter 7 before Christianity would never have read that chapter we just studied and they would have said oh it's clear to me that this is not only speaking about the birth of a child in the days of Achaz it must also be referring to a child who will be born many years later meaning that there's nothing in the text of Isaiah chapter 7 nothing in the text itself that broadcasts that it's to be fulfilled twice another problem is how do they know that it's only going to be broadcast that it's only going to be happening twice meaning once you posit a dual prophecy why not say there will be three times it's fulfilled or four times meaning that what about that passage is going to happen twice once you're allowing for a multiple expansion of this child so maybe it'll be three or four times it happens another problem is that even if they insist it's going to happen in the future how do they know it happened 700 years later meaning maybe it's going to be happening in 1500 years or 1000 years another problem a little bit of an awkward one if they insist that the passage in Isaiah is also referring to the birth of Jesus are they admitting are they admitting that in the days of Achas there was also a virgin birth are they admitting that 700 years before Jesus that a virgin gave birth to a child is that what they're saying if there's a dual application here finally the biggest problem clearly the biggest problem is that when you read Isaiah chapter 7 it contains so much information that we simply cannot apply to the time of Jesus for example at the time of Jesus what were the two great superpowers that were threatening the kingdom of Judah that were soon to be destroyed and abolished meaning that none of the details in Isaiah chapter 7 one of them you're able to somehow apply to the time of Jesus the Christian is forced to only zero in on the birth of this child and the rest of the chapter becomes unimportant because it's only this child that they want to have an appearance again 700 years later