Jesus' Birth - Christmas

The Greek reads literally "you shall call his name Jesus," a Semitic idiom carried into Greek. Rendered here as "you are to name him Jesus" for natural English rhythm; the future indicative (καλέσεις) functions as a command, so "you shall call" or "you must name him" are equally defensible. "His people" translates τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; λαός is the word regularly used for Israel as God's covenant people, and the possessive is deliberately open-ended — the text does not say "the people of Israel" or "the people of God," but simply "his own people." The emphatic pronoun αὐτός ("he himself") stands at the head of the clause; English marks it lightly with the placement of "he will save," while a fuller rendering would be "he is the one who will save."

Ἰησοῦς is the Greek form of Hebrew Yēšûaʿ, a shortened form of Yəhôšuaʿ (Joshua), traditionally understood as "the LORD saves" or "the LORD is salvation." The angel's explanation turns on this etymology: he is to be named "the LORD saves" precisely because "he will save" (σώσει) his people. The wordplay is audible in Hebrew or Aramaic between the name and the verb yāšaʿ (to save); in Greek and English only the logic of the sentence preserves it, since Ἰησοῦς and σώσει share no sound. The verb σῴζω covers rescue, deliverance, and healing as well as spiritual salvation.

Naming a child was the father's prerogative and constituted legal acknowledgment. By instructing Joseph rather than Mary to name the boy, the angel makes him the legal father, grafting Jesus into the Davidic line traced in the preceding genealogy — even though the conception is not from him. The name Yeshua was extremely common in first-century Jewish Palestine; the wonder lies not in the name's rarity but in the reason given for it. Many contemporaries expected deliverance from foreign rule; here the promised salvation is defined as deliverance from sins.

Saving "his people from their sins" is a striking claim: in the Scriptures of Israel it is God who forgives and redeems from iniquity (see Psalm 130:8). Matthew thus links the child's identity to God's own saving work, a theme completed in the next verses with the name Emmanuel, "God with us." Interpreters differ on the scope of "his people": some read it of Israel specifically, in continuity with the covenant promises, others of the wider people Jesus gathers, anticipating the closing commission to all nations. The verse also frames Jesus' mission as fundamentally about sin rather than political liberation, a point echoed later in the cup that is poured out "for the forgiveness of sins."

This verse belongs to the Advent and Christmas cycle, read where Joseph's dream is recounted, and is central to observances of the Naming of Jesus on the eighth day after Christmas. Its words have shaped hymnody and devotion to the name of Jesus for centuries.

The quotation follows Isaiah 7:14 in its Greek form. The Greek reads literally "the virgin will have in the womb and will bear a son, and they will call his name Immanuel; which is, being translated, 'With us God.'" Two idioms have been smoothed for the ear: "have in the womb" becomes "conceive," and the Semitic "call his name X" becomes "call him X," which is how English naturally speaks. The definite article is retained — "the virgin," not "a virgin" — because the Greek has it and it points to a particular figure. "They will call" keeps the plural of the Greek rather than smoothing it to "you will call" or "his name will be called"; the unnamed "they" is the community that will come to know him by this name. The closing explanation is set off with a dash and quotation marks so a reader aloud can hear where the prophecy ends and the evangelist's comment begins.

The Greek παρθένος (parthenos) normally means "virgin," and it is the word the older Greek version of Isaiah used to render the Hebrew עַלְמָה ('almah), which denotes a young woman of marriageable age — a term that ordinarily implied virginity without being a technical word for it. Hebrew has a more precise term for virgin (בְּתוּלָה, bethulah), which Isaiah did not use; much discussion of this verse turns on that fact. ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει is a stock idiom, literally "will have in the belly/womb," the ordinary way of saying "be pregnant." The name Ἐμμανουήλ transliterates Hebrew עִמָּנוּ אֵל, a two-word sentence: "with-us [is] God." The evangelist's rendering Μεθ' ἡμῶν ὁ θεός keeps the Hebrew word order, so the emphatic "with us" stands first — the emphasis is on the presence, not merely the deity.

This is the first of the evangelist's fulfillment quotations and the theological keystone of the birth narrative: the child conceived by the Spirit is God's own presence among his people. The name Immanuel functions as a title describing who Jesus is rather than as the name he was actually given (v. 25 records that he was called Jesus); Hebrew thought regularly used names to declare a person's role or significance. The theme forms a great arch across the Gospel: it opens with "God with us" and closes with the risen Jesus saying "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (28:20). Interpreters have long debated whether Isaiah's oracle had an immediate eighth-century referent, a messianic one, or both; the evangelist reads it as finding its full and intended depth in Jesus, a pattern of reading that sees earlier events as foreshadowings brought to completion. The verse has carried great doctrinal weight in the church's confession of the virginal conception and of the incarnation.

Isaiah spoke these words to King Ahaz of Judah around 734 BC, when Jerusalem was threatened by an alliance of Israel and Syria. The birth of a child named "God with us" was offered as a sign that the threat would pass. Reading such a text as pointing forward to the Messiah was a recognized practice among Jewish interpreters of the first century, who searched the Scriptures for patterns fulfilled in later deliverances. In that culture a name was public theology: parents named children to commemorate God's acts, to voice hope, or to mark circumstances of birth, so a name-bearing prophecy would have struck hearers as entirely natural.

The dominant reading is the plural καλέσουσιν, "they will call." Some witnesses, including an important early bilingual manuscript and several Old Latin and Syriac texts, read the singular καλέσεις, "you will call," harmonizing with the Greek form of Isaiah and with the angel's command in v. 21. The Hebrew of Isaiah has "she will call." The plural is almost certainly original here, and it broadens the horizon beyond Joseph or Mary to the whole people who will confess him by this name.

This verse is among the most frequently read texts of Advent and Christmas, appearing in the readings for the Sunday before Christmas and in the traditional Christmas cycle. The name Immanuel supplies the final of the ancient "O" antiphons sung in the days before Christmas — "O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, come and save us" — and through that antiphon it entered the beloved Advent hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel." The phrase "God with us" also recurs in creeds, carols, and prayers of the season.

The Greek 'logos' is rendered "Word," the traditional English choice, kept here for its familiarity and its rhythm in reading aloud. No single English term captures the full range of 'logos': it can mean spoken word, message, account, reason, or the ordering principle behind reality. Alternatives such as "Message," "Reason," or leaving the term untranslated as "Logos" each capture one facet while losing others. The preposition 'pros' with the accusative is translated "with," though it carries a dynamic sense of facing or being turned toward someone, suggesting relationship rather than mere proximity. In the third clause the Greek word order places 'theos' first for emphasis; because English cannot reproduce this without awkwardness, the clause is rendered in normal order, "and the Word was God." The threefold repetition of "and the Word" mirrors the deliberate cadence of the Greek and is well suited to being read aloud.

'En archē' echoes the opening words of Genesis in Greek, inviting the reader to hear this as a new creation account. The verb 'ēn' is imperfect — continuous existence, not a coming into being — and stands in sharp contrast to the aorist 'egeneto' ("came to be") used of created things in verse 3 and of John the Baptist in verse 6. In the final clause 'theos' lacks the article while 'ho logos' has it: this grammar marks 'ho logos' as the subject and 'theos' as the predicate, describing what the Word is rather than identifying him as the same person as the Father. Greek regularly omits the article on a predicate noun placed before the verb, so the absence of the article here does not by itself make the term indefinite.

Three claims are made in quick succession: the Word existed before creation, the Word was distinct enough from God to be "with" him, and the Word shared fully in what God is. The early church appealed to this verse in formulating the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christ's full divinity. Readings that render the last clause "a god" or "divine" have been proposed but sit uneasily with the Gospel's later confession of Jesus as "my Lord and my God." Others have read "the Word was God" as identifying the Word with the Father, but the preceding clause distinguishes them.

'Logos' carried weight in more than one world of thought. In Greek philosophy, particularly among the Stoics, it named the rational principle ordering the cosmos. In Jewish tradition, the word of the Lord created and spoke through the prophets, and Wisdom was portrayed as present with God at creation; Aramaic synagogue paraphrases spoke of God's 'Memra' (Word) as his acting presence. A first-century reader from either background would have recognized the term, and then been startled by the claim in verse 14 that this Word became flesh.

The opening of this Gospel has long held a prominent place in Christian worship, read at the great festival of the Nativity and, in some traditions, recited at the close of the liturgy as a summary of the faith.