Isaiah 7:14

ISAIAH 7:14

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and will call his name Immanuel.” (ASV)

Isaiah 7:14, written more than seven centuries before Jesus, promises that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (‘God-with-us’).” Its twin markers—a miraculous conception to a woman who had not yet known a man and a child whose very identity embodies God’s presence—are so specific and humanly implausible that the odds of anyone fulfilling them by chance are vanishingly small. When statisticians have tried to quantify messianic prophecies, they assign probabilities to discrete factors (e.g., one chance in 10^3 – 10^4 that any given birth would involve an unmarried virgin, and similar odds that the child would historically be acclaimed “God-with-us”). Combine Isaiah 7:14 with other clear predictions like Micah 5:2, and the composite probability plunges toward the famous 1-in-10^17 range calculated by mathematician Peter Stoner for just eight messianic prophecies. In conversation, the verse therefore functions like a spotlight on Jesus’ nativity: it invites listeners to weigh whether such a precise, unlikely promise could converge on one historical figure apart from God’s deliberate fulfillment in Christ.

Sharing Jesus: This scripture is one of the many prophesies that describe details about the coming Savior, and is very specific about the manner in which He would be born. The importance of Him being born to a virgin is worth the study. Understanding this helps us recognize how sin entered the world through Adam (described in the book of Genesis;) how that sin separated us from God; how the penalty of sin is death; and how God would ultimately provide an "unblemished lamb" whose sacrifice would become the final payment for our sins. The entire Bible is the story of God's passionate pursuit of prodigal people. Learning why the virgin birth is important will ultimately lead you to a much deeper understanding God's Word (the Bible) and a much better understanding of how it all ties together from Genesis through Revelation!

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