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The Evangelist dwells, as is well known, on the fulfilment of
prophecy; but in regard to the particular prophecy of Isaiah,
"Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call
His name Immanuel,"* it cannot with any probability be said that
the prophecy suggested the event; for it does not seem at all
likely that there was any Jewish expectation that the Christ
should be born of a Virgin. We can understand the prophecy being
adduced in order to attest a story already current (this would be
wholly after St. Matthew's method); but the prophecy itself, with
one's eye on the Hebrew text of Isaiah,+ could scarcely have led
to the fabrication of this particular story about the Messiah's
birth. Probably the notion of a Virgin-born Messiah would have
been alien to ordinary Jewish ideas.# In any case, the Jews did not
so interpret the passage, and in fact, to quote Professor Stanton,
"It is an instance in which the principle would hold that it is
more easy to suppose the meaning of prophetic language to have
been strained to fit facts, than that facts should have been
invented to correspond with prophetic language."^ That is to say,
it is wholly reasonable and entirely in keeping with the method of
the first Evangelist, that when once he had come to know that the
Messiah had been born in Bethlehem of a Virgin-Mother, he should
have recognized in that wondrous birth the fulfilment of the ancient
prophecy of Isaiah. He would then see that whatever primary and
lesser fulfilment the words of Isaiah might have, they were only
completely fulfilled in Him who is the end of all prophecy, who was
conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary.|
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* Isa. vii. 14.