# H1330 - bethulah **Strong's:** [H1330](https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h1330/) · BLB lookup **Pronunciation:** beth-oo-law' **Part of speech:** feminine noun **Frequency:** ~50 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, concentrated in Deuteronomy, Judges, Esther, Lamentations, Joel, Amos, the Servant Songs of Isaiah, and figurative uses ("virgin daughter of Zion / Jerusalem / Israel"). **LXX equivalent:** παρθένος (*parthenos*, virgin). See [G3933 - parthenos](/codex/g3933-parthenos/). **Companion / contrast term:** [H5959 - almah](/codex/h5959-almah/) (*almah*, young woman of marriageable age, virginity strongly implied by cultural context). ## Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs / HALOT) 1. **Virgin (technical-legal sense)**, the primary lexical sense; specifies a sexually inexperienced young woman, typically of marriageable age but not yet married. 2. **Young woman / maiden**, broader cultural-positional sense; some occurrences (esp. figurative) appear to use *bethulah* as functionally equivalent to "young woman" without strict virginity-emphasis (the contested cases below). 3. **Figurative, "virgin daughter of [place]"**, symbolic usage: "the virgin daughter of Zion / Jerusalem / Israel / Egypt / Babylon / Sidon", personification of a city or nation as a young (often-violated, often-mourning) maiden. ## Theological force, the technical virginity term and its limits *Bethulah* is the *Hebrew Bible's most technical virginity-term*, the word that appears in legal contexts requiring or specifying virgin status: - [Deuteronomy 22:13-21](/codex/deuteronomy-22-13-21/), virginity-of-the-bride disputes ("the *bethulim* of my daughter", the tokens of virginity) - [Deuteronomy 22:23-29](/codex/deuteronomy-22-23-29/), sexual-violation laws applying to a *bethulah* betrothed - [Leviticus 21:13-14](/codex/leviticus-21-13-14/), the high priest must marry a *bethulah* - [Exodus 22:16-17](/codex/exodus-22-16-17/), the *bethulah* who is seduced; bride-price obligation - [Ezekiel 44:22](/codex/ezekiel-44-22/), the post-exilic priest must marry a *bethulah* In these legal contexts, *bethulah* unambiguously specifies sexual inexperience. It is the word the law reaches for when virginity is the *legal point* at issue. **The complication.** *Bethulah* is *not always* used with strict-virginity implication in narrative or figurative contexts. Two passages cause complications: - **[Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/)**, "wail like a *bethulah* girded with sackcloth for the *baʿal* of her youth", the *baʿal* (husband) implies a married woman; the *bethulah* here mourns a *deceased husband*. This appears to use *bethulah* of someone *not* a virgin in the strict-modern sense, suggesting *bethulah* could carry the broader "young-woman" sense in mourning-poetry. - **[Genesis 24:16](/codex/genesis-24-16/)**, Rebekah described as "a *naʿarah* very beautiful, a *bethulah*, and no man had had relations with her", the explanatory "no man had had relations with her" *appears* to clarify *bethulah* (suggesting *bethulah* alone might not fully specify virginity for the writer's audience). Some scholars read the clarifying clause as *redundant* (Skinner, ICC); others as *defining* (Hamilton, NICOT). **The [Isaiah 7:14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/) question.** Why didn't Isaiah use *bethulah* (the technical-virginity term) instead of *almah* (the young-woman-with-implied-virginity term) if the Christian / LXX virgin-conception reading is correct? The standard Christian-conservative answer: **Isaiah's word-choice is deliberate and theologically significant.** 1. *Bethulah* in legal contexts had become *the* legal-technical term, but its cultural / poetic / mourning-context uses (esp. [Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/)) introduced ambiguity. 2. *Almah*, by contrast, is the term for a *young unmarried woman of marriageable age*, culturally always presumed a virgin, never (in the 9 OT occurrences) clearly used of a non-virgin. 3. Isaiah's choice of *almah* over *bethulah* selects the term whose semantic range *guarantees* youth-and-availability while *implying* virginity through the cultural shape of "unmarried young woman of marriageable age." The LXX translators (3rd-2nd c. BC) recognized this and rendered with *parthenos*. The *bethulah*-could-also-mean-young-woman complication, paradoxically, **strengthens** rather than weakens the Christian reading: had Isaiah used *bethulah*, the [Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/) / [Gen 24:16](/codex/genesis-24-16/) cases would have given Jewish polemicists more lexical room to argue the term was non-virgin-specific. Isaiah's *almah* is the cleaner term for the unambiguous "unmarried virgin-presumed" sense. ## Notable verses ### Legal / technical-virginity contexts - **[Deuteronomy 22:13-21](/codex/deuteronomy-22-13-21/)**, virginity-of-the-bride disputes; "the *bethulim* of my daughter" - **[Deuteronomy 22:23-29](/codex/deuteronomy-22-23-29/)**, sexual-violation laws - **[Leviticus 21:13-14](/codex/leviticus-21-13-14/)**, high priest marrying a *bethulah* - **[Exodus 22:16-17](/codex/exodus-22-16-17/)**, seduced *bethulah*; bride-price - **[Ezekiel 44:22](/codex/ezekiel-44-22/)**, post-exilic priestly marriage requirements ### Narrative / non-legal contexts - **[Genesis 24:16](/codex/genesis-24-16/)**, Rebekah ("a *bethulah*, and no man had had relations with her") - **[Judges 11:37-38](/codex/judges-11-37-38/)**, Jephthah's daughter mourning her *bethulim* (her virginal state) before her vow-fulfillment - **[Judges 19:24](/codex/judges-19-24/); 21:12**, narrative virginity-references - **[2 Samuel 13:2](/codex/2-samuel-13-2/), [18](/codex/2-samuel-13-18/)**, Tamar; the royal *bethulah* tradition - **[1 Kings 1:2](/codex/1-kings-1-2/)**, David's bedside attendant (Abishag, a *bethulah*) - **[Esther 2:2-3](/codex/esther-2-2-3/), [17](/codex/esther-2-17/), [19](/codex/esther-2-19/)**, the harem assembly; *bethulot* ### The complication passage - **[Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/)**, "wail like a *bethulah* girded with sackcloth for the *baʿal* of her youth", the most-discussed counter-example to strict-virginity reading ### Figurative, "virgin daughter of..." - **[Isaiah 23:12](/codex/isaiah-23-12/); 37:22; 47:1**, *bethulat-bat-Tzidon / bat-Tziyyon / bat-Bavel* - **[Jeremiah 14:17](/codex/jeremiah-14-17/); 18:13; 31:4, 21; 46:11**, *bethulat bat-ami / Yisrael / Mitzraim* - **[Lamentations 1:15](/codex/lamentations-1-15/); 2:13**, *bethulat bat-Yehudah / bat-Tziyyon* - **[Amos 5:2](/codex/amos-5-2/)**, "fallen, no more to rise, is the *bethulat Yisrael*" ### NT / LXX - **[2 Corinthians 11:2](/codex/2-corinthians-11-2/)**, "I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure *parthenos*", the figurative "virgin daughter" tradition activated for the church ## Patristic / scholarly note The *bethulah*-vs-*almah* debate has been the central exegetical battleground for the [Isaiah 7:14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/) / [Matthew 1:23](/codex/matthew-1-23/) prophecy-fulfillment for two millennia. **[Justin Martyr](/codex/justin-martyr/)** (*Dialogue with Trypho* 71-72), Trypho objects that Isaiah used *almah*, not *bethulah*; Justin replies that the LXX (a Jewish pre-Christian translation) renders *almah* with *parthenos*, ratifying the virginity-implication. **Origen** (*Contra Celsum* I.34), defends the *parthenos* reading on lexical and contextual grounds. **Jerome** (*Commentary on Isaiah* III), extensive Hebrew lexical engagement. **Edward J. Young** (*The Book of Isaiah* NICOT, 1965), defends Isaiah's choice of *almah* over *bethulah* as theologically deliberate: the term whose semantic range *guarantees* unmarried-young-woman without the legal-technical ambiguity of *bethulah*. **J.A. Motyer** (*The Prophecy of Isaiah*, 1993), the cleanest contemporary defense of the virginity-implication. **The Cyrus Gordon proposal**, that *almah* in [Isaiah 7:14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/) is borrowed from a Ugaritic cognate (*ǵalmatu*) used in goddess-bride-mythology contexts (the "young goddess gives birth to..." formula); thus [Isaiah 7:14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/) deliberately echoes a virgin-deity-conceiving template. This is not mainstream but provides ANE comparative-linguistic support for the virginity-implied reading. ## Verses in this codex _See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here._ Anchors: [Genesis 24:16](/codex/genesis-24-16/) (Rebekah, with explanatory clause); [Deuteronomy 22:13-21](/codex/deuteronomy-22-13-21/) (legal-virginity); [Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/) (the complication); the figurative "virgin daughter of" tradition. ## See also - [H5959 - almah](/codex/h5959-almah/), *almah* (young woman), the companion term used in [Isaiah 7:14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/) - [G3933 - parthenos](/codex/g3933-parthenos/), *parthenos* (virgin), the LXX / NT correspondent for both *almah* and *bethulah* - [Mary Sinless](/codex/mary-sinless/), adjacent Marian-doctrine territory - [Argument from Prophecy Fulfillment](/codex/argument-from-prophecy-fulfillment/), the apologetic frame - Passages: [Isaiah 7.14](/codex/isaiah-7-14/), [Matthew 1.23](/codex/matthew-1-23/), [Genesis 24:16](/codex/genesis-24-16/), [Joel 1:8](/codex/joel-1-8/)