Passage

Matthew 1.23

Book: Matthew · NASB95

Verse

"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US." (Matthew 1:23, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:"

"'BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,' which translated means, 'GOD WITH US.'"

"And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus." (Matthew 1:21-25, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: Matthew the Evangelist (narrator), citing Isaiah 7:14 to interpret the angelic announcement to Joseph.
Audience: Matthew's audience, primarily Jewish Christians, by traditional reading; Matthew structures his Gospel around fulfillment-of-prophecy (the plērōthē formula recurring throughout).
Location: the narrative is set in Bethlehem / Nazareth area; compositional setting traditionally Antioch (or Palestine) c. AD 60-80.
Time period: the angelic visit to Joseph occurs shortly before Jesus's birth, c. 6-4 BC. Matthew writes c. AD 60-80.

Theological reading

The verse is the NT charter of the virgin birth doctrine and the explicit fulfillment of Isaiah 7.14. Three claims:

The virgin shall conceive. Hē parthenos en gastri hexei, citing Isaiah 7:14 LXX directly. Matthew uses the LXX parthenos (the unambiguous Greek for virgin), not later Jewish revisions (neanis, "young woman"). See G3933 - parthenos.
And bear a son. Kai texetai huion, natural maternal birth despite supernatural conception. The full humanity of Christ is preserved alongside the supernatural origin.
They shall call His name Immanuel. Kalousin to onoma autou Emmanouēl, Imanu (with us) + El (God) = God with us. Matthew translates the name explicitly: meth' hēmōn ho theos, "God with us." This is a divinity claim by name: the child is God with us.

The doctrinal foundation. Together with Luke 1:26-38 (the Annunciation), Matthew 1:18-25 establishes:

Jesus's conception is by the Holy Spirit, without human male agency (1:18, 20).
Mary remains a virgin until Jesus's birth (1:25, eōs hou, "until", leaving open whether she remained perpetually virgin, a Catholic doctrine; or had subsequent natural marital relations with Joseph, the Protestant reading).
The virginal conception is a fulfillment of OT prophecy (1:22-23), grounding Christ's identity in the covenant story.
The child's dual identity: Yeshua (YHWH-saves) + Immanuel (God-with-us). The one who saves is God Himself, present with His people.

Apologetic weight against "myth-borrowing" claims. ris3n's notes (Debunking Christian Plagiarism/Buddha, Krishna) cite Matthew 1:23 in the rebuttal context. Pagan parallels in dying-god mythology are sometimes claimed as the source of the Christian virgin-birth tradition. Defenses:

The OT prophecy predates pagan parallels in form. Isaiah 7:14 dates to c. 700 BC. Pre-Christian Jewish translation chose parthenos by ~250 BC. Christian use is the fulfillment trajectory of an internal Jewish-OT tradition, not borrowed from outside.
The character of the parallels. Pagan "virgin-birth" stories typically involve gods physically impregnating women (Zeus / Leda; Apollo / various; Krishna). The biblical account is categorically different, the Holy Spirit's overshadowing (Luke 1:35) is non-sexual, non-anthropomorphic, theologically distinct.
First-century Jewish hostility to pagan religion. The Jewish-monotheistic context of Jesus's birth narrative makes deliberate pagan-mythology borrowing implausible. The earliest Jewish-Christian audience would have rejected (and did reject) any taint of pagan-divine-impregnation imagery.

Patristic. Ignatius of Antioch (Ephesians 19, c. AD 110), earliest extra-canonical witness, affirms the virgin birth as one of "the three mysteries shouted in silence." Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 67-84, c. AD 160) develops the lengthy apologetic against Trypho's denial. Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ 17-23, c. AD 210) defends the doctrine against Marcionite docetism, Christ truly took on flesh, of Mary, by the Spirit.

The Apostles' Creed: "born of the Virgin Mary." The Nicene Creed: "and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man." The doctrine is credal-essential across all historic Christian traditions.

Reformation. Calvin's Harmony of the Gospels commentary, ad loc.: "the angel does not say that He will be a son of David in some inferior sense, but a son of David such as God had promised: that He would also be the eternal Son of God."

Modern conservative. J. Gresham Machen's The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930) is the foundational 20th-century defense against Bultmannian demythologization. R. C. Sproul (Knowing Scripture; The Mystery of the Holy Spirit), D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo (An Introduction to the New Testament, 2005), and Andreas Köstenberger and Alexander Stewart (The First Days of Jesus, 2015) sustain the historic reading.

Key words

G3933 - parthenos, parthenos (virgin), the Matthean term, citing Isaiah 7:14 LXX
G2316 - theos, theos (God), embedded in Immanuel / "God with us"
G3686 - onoma, onoma (name), both Iēsous and Immanuel are name-revelations
G4151 - pneuma, pneuma (Spirit), the agent of the conception (1:18, 20)