Lexicon

H5959 - almah

Strong's: H5959 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: al-maw' Part of speech: feminine noun (corresponding to masculine ʿelem, H5958, "young man") Frequency: 9 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Psalm 68:25; Proverbs 30:19; Song of Songs 1:3, 6:8; Isaiah 7:14; 1 Chronicles 15:20; (debated) Psalm 46 superscription. LXX equivalent at Isaiah 7:14: παρθένος (parthenos, "virgin"). See G3933 - parthenos.

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs / HALOT)

Young woman of marriageable age, the primary lexical sense; describes a sexually mature young woman, typically unmarried, of childbearing potential.
Maiden / virgin, the strongly-implied secondary sense in cultural context: in the Hebrew honor-shame matrix, an unmarried almah would culturally be expected to be a virgin; the term carries the social-presumption of virginity even if not lexically requiring it.
Distinct from H1330 bethulah, which is the more technical legal-biblical term for virgin (see H1330 - bethulah, the term used in covenantal-legal contexts: virgin-bride pricing, ritual-purity requirements, etc.). The lexical-technical relationship: every almah is presumed a bethulah in cultural context, but bethulah is the term that legally specifies virginity.

Theological force, the Isaiah 7:14 controversy

The most theologically loaded use of almah in the entire Hebrew Bible is Isaiah 7:14, "behold, the almah shall conceive and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel." This single occurrence has driven 2,000+ years of Jewish-Christian interpretive controversy.

The Christian apologetic position:

Lexical: Every other use of almah in the Hebrew Bible refers to a young unmarried woman who would in cultural context be presumed a virgin. There are no clear counter-examples.
LXX precedent (pre-Christian Jewish translation): The Septuagint rendered almah in Isaiah 7:14 as parthenos (παρθένος, "virgin") in the 3rd-2nd c. BC, centuries before Christianity emerged. This was a Jewish translation choice. Matthew 1:23's quotation of "parthenos" tracks the pre-Christian LXX, not a Christian-imposed alteration. The Jewish translators of the LXX understood almah in Isaiah 7:14 to imply virginity strongly enough to translate it parthenos.
Sign-context: Isaiah 7:14 announces a sign (ʾôt) of unusual character. A young woman conceiving and bearing a son is not a sign; it happens routinely. A virgin conceiving, that is a sign. The contextual demand for the unusual reinforces the virginity-implied reading.
The dual-fulfillment reading: Many Christian commentators (Calvin, Motyer, Oswalt) read Isaiah 7:14 with dual fulfillment, a near-fulfillment in Isaiah's own day (a young woman of the royal house would conceive a son; Maher-shalal-hash-baz of Isa 8 is a candidate; the Davidic-line-survives sign for Ahaz) and a far-fulfillment in Christ (the virgin-conception as the consummating fulfillment Matthew identifies). The dual reading preserves both the immediate-context relevance and the canonical messianic application.

The Jewish counter-reading (Rashi, ibn Ezra, and most modern Jewish commentators) holds that almah should be translated "young woman" without a virginity-implication, often identifying the almah with Isaiah's own wife (cf. Isa 8:3) or Hezekiah's mother. Reply: this interpretation must (a) override the LXX's pre-Christian parthenos rendering, (b) reduce the "sign" to non-miraculous proportions, and (c) treat almah as functionally interchangeable with naʿarah (young woman) without justification from usage.

Notable verses

All 9 occurrences of almah

Genesis 24:43, Rebekah at the well: "behold, I am standing by the spring, and may it be that the almah who comes out to draw water..." Rebekah is described as both naʿarah (24:14) and bethulah (24:16: "very beautiful, bethulah; no man had had relations with her") in the same passage. Almah in 24:43 is interchangeable with the explicit-virgin description in 24:16. Strong evidence for almah carrying the virginity-implication.
Exodus 2:8, Miriam, sister of Moses, called almah. She is unmarried, young, and (implicitly) a virgin.
Psalms 68:25, almahot (plural) playing tambourines in procession; young women.
Proverbs 30:19, "the way of a man with an almah", the parallel-listed mysteries (eagle in air, serpent on rock, ship at sea, man with almah) suggests an almah whose virginity is presumed (the wonder is sexual initiation, plausibly first-encounter).
Song of Songs 1:3, 6:8, almahot in the bride-and-bridegroom poetry; presumed-virgins in the harem-context of 6:8.
Isaiah 7:14, the controversy verse; "the almah shall conceive."
1 Chronicles 15:20, musical superscription (ʿal-ʿalamot); ambiguous (possibly soprano-range or "for the maidens").

Matthew's NT activation

Matthew 1.23, "behold, the virgin (parthenos) shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel", directly quotes Isaiah 7:14 LXX

Patristic / scholarly note

The almah-vs-bethulah debate is one of the oldest text-critical / translation disputes between Jews and Christians. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 71-72) records that Trypho objects to the parthenos rendering, claiming it's a Christian alteration; Justin replies that the LXX (a pre-Christian Jewish translation) already had parthenos, and that the Jewish revisions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus rendering almah as neanis (young woman) are post-Christian polemical responses. The historical record supports Justin: the LXX's parthenos is centuries pre-Christian.

Origen (Contra Celsum I.34-35) develops the argument with extensive Hebrew lexical engagement. Jerome (Commentary on Isaiah III) defends the parthenos rendering against Jewish objections. Modern conservative scholarship (Edward Young, The Book of Isaiah, 1965; J.A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 1993; John Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39 NICOT, 1986) defends the virginity-implication on lexical, contextual, and LXX-attestation grounds.

The dual-fulfillment reading is widely held in modern Reformed and conservative-evangelical scholarship (Calvin's Commentary on Isaiah; Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology; Walter Kaiser, The Messiah in the Old Testament, 1995): a near-fulfillment validates the sign for Ahaz; the canonical Matthean-fulfillment identifies the virgin conception of Christ as the consummating reality the prophecy was always pointing toward. Edward J. Young argues the full fulfillment is exclusively Messianic; J. Barton Payne similarly. The exact balance of near-vs-far fulfillment is a live exegetical debate among orthodox Christians; the parthenos rendering and Christ-fulfillment are not.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Central anchors: Isaiah 7.14, Matthew 1.23, Genesis 24:43 (where almah and bethulah describe the same person, Rebekah).