Five-minute study · Day 162 · Matthew 1
Matthew 1:23
A word worth stopping on: Emmanuel Ἐμμανουήλ Emmanouel
Matthew is writing for a Jewish audience, and he is doing something none of the other Gospel writers do at this point. He quotes Isaiah 7:14, names the child Emmanuel, and then translates the name. 'Which being interpreted is, God with us' (Matthew 1:23). He assumes his readers need the translation. The name is a transliteration of the Hebrew Immanu-El, two words fused into a proper noun: immanu (with us) and El (God). Matthew takes a prophecy given to King Ahaz during an Assyrian crisis in the eighth century BC and plants it in a carpenter's household in Nazareth.
Word study: Emmanuel
- Greek
- Ἐμμανουήλ
- Pronounced
- Emmanouel
- Strong's
- G1694
- Definition
- A transliteration of the Hebrew Immanu-El, meaning 'God with us.' A messianic title derived from Isaiah 7:14, used by Matthew to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy.
Emmanouel appears only twice in the New Testament, both in Matthew 1:23, where Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 and immediately provides the translation. The Greek is a transliteration of the Hebrew, letter by letter, passed through without alteration. Matthew does not adapt it. He preserves the sound and then explains the meaning, a move that reveals his audience: Jewish readers who recognize Hebrew names but may need the theological significance spelled out.
The Hebrew behind the name has two components. Immanu is a prepositional phrase: im (with) plus the first person plural suffix nu (us). El is the common Semitic word for God, used across Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian. The name is a sentence compressed into a word: God-with-us. The claim is audacious. Proximity to the divine, permanent, embodied, directional. God moving toward humanity.
BDAG classifies Emmanouel as a proper noun functioning as a theological title. Ulrich Luz's commentary on Matthew 1-7 argues that the name operates on two levels in Matthew's narrative. On the surface, it identifies the child born to the virgin. Beneath the surface, it states the theological program of the entire Gospel. Matthew opens with 'God with us' (1:23) and closes with 'I am with you always, even unto the end of the world' (28:20). The Gospel is framed by the promise of divine presence. Everything between those two bookends, the Sermon on the Mount, the miracles, the parables, the crucifixion, the resurrection, happens inside the bracket of God-with-us.
Isaiah's original context was political. Ahaz, king of Judah, faced a military alliance between Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel. God offered Ahaz a sign. Ahaz refused. God gave the sign anyway: a virgin (almah) would conceive and bear a son named Immanuel. Matthew reads the prophecy through the lens of fulfillment typology. The pattern established in Ahaz's day, God entering the crisis through a child, reaches its fullest expression in the birth of Jesus.
Historical context · Isaiah's oracle circa 735 BC; Matthew's Gospel circa AD 80-90
A Name That Crossed Eight Centuries
Isaiah 7:14 was spoken during the Syro-Ephraimite crisis of approximately 735 BC. Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel had formed a military coalition against Assyria and were pressuring Judah to join. When Ahaz refused, they marched south to depose him and install a puppet king. Isaiah met Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool (Isaiah 7:3), a location associated with Jerusalem's water supply, and told him to ask God for a sign. Ahaz, already planning to appeal to Assyria for help, piously refused: 'I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.' Isaiah responded with the Immanuel sign anyway.
The immediate fulfillment of the prophecy is debated among scholars. Some identify the child as Isaiah's own son (Isaiah 8:3-4 records the birth of Maher-shalal-hash-baz during the same crisis). Others see the child as Hezekiah, Ahaz's son. Still others argue the prophecy had no immediate fulfillment and pointed entirely to the future. Luz notes that Matthew does not enter this debate. He simply identifies Jesus as the fulfillment, treating Isaiah's words as a pattern that finds its deepest realization in the incarnation.
Matthew's Gospel was written for a community in transition. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70 had shattered the religious center of Judaism. Matthew's Jewish-Christian community needed to understand how their faith in Jesus connected to the Hebrew Scriptures. The formula quotations that run through Matthew ('that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet') serve this purpose. They are interpretive bridges between the old story and the new reality. The Emmanuel quotation is the first of these bridges, and it carries the heaviest theological load: the God of Israel has come to dwell with his people in a human body.
The translation Matthew provides, 'which being interpreted is, God with us,' uses the Greek methermēneuomenon, a participle meaning 'being translated' or 'being interpreted.' The word implies that the name requires unpacking. The sound alone is not enough. The audience needs to hear what the name means, because the meaning is the message. God. With. Us.
For reflection
Matthew frames his entire Gospel with presence. Chapter 1: God with us. Chapter 28: I am with you always. Everything between those two sentences, every teaching, every healing, every confrontation with religious authorities, every meal with sinners, happens inside that bracket. The name Emmanuel is a location claim. God is here. Where in your life have you been functioning as though God is elsewhere? As though the promise of presence has a geographic limit, a moral threshold, a circumstance that voids the contract? Matthew's brackets leave no gaps.
The name was given during a military crisis. Ahaz was terrified. Armies were marching toward Jerusalem. God's response was a child with a name. The presence of God arrived in the most vulnerable possible form.
Sources: BDAG; Luz, 'Matthew 1-7'