What Does Matthew 1:23 Mean?
Look, the virgin will carry in her womb, and will bring forth a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, God with us.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.THE KEY
Emmanuel is more than a label: the name gives the child’s nature in three words, God with us.
THE MEANING
Emmanuel speaks into your present: God is with us within embodied, vulnerable human life. Divine nearness takes form among us, meeting life from within it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that God is absent from embodied, vulnerable human life.
THE ROOT
τέξεται
téxetai
GROWS FROM
τεκ-
To beget; to bring forth by birth.
“bring forth” in this verse is téxetai. The verse’s verb τέξεται (téxetai, she will bear) belongs to the Greek birth family of τεκ- (tek-, begetting and birth). That family also gives words for a child and for birth itself, joining the act of bringing forth to the life that comes forth.
ALSO GROWS
téknon: child
τέκνον
This child-word belongs to the same τεκ- birth family, linking birth with the life brought forth.
tókos: birth; offspring
τόκος
This word from the τίκτω (tíktō, give birth or beget) family names birth and its result from the same consonantal seed.
ὄνομα
ónoma
GROWS FROM
ὀνομα-
Name; designation.
The verse itself gives the meaning of Ἐμμανουήλ (Emmanouēl, Emmanuel: God with us), so ὄνομα (ónoma, name) carries the child’s nature as a spoken identity. The Hebrew parallel שֵׁם (shem, name) also carries character, and here that nature is made explicit as God’s presence with us.
ALSO GROWS
onomázō: to name; to call
ὀνομάζω
This verb grows from the same ὀνομα- family, turning a name into the act of naming or calling.
onomasía: naming; designation
ὀνομασία
This noun shares the ὀνομα- family and names the act or result of giving a name.
THE PATTERN
God’s presence meets human vulnerability as companionship and sustaining nearness.
Where shall I go from your breath? And where shall I flee from your face?Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not look about in dismay, for I am your God. I will grip you, and I will help you, and I will hold you up with the right hand of my alignment.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.THE THREAD
A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.Both verses use forms of τίκτω (tíktō, to give birth or beget), the birth-root behind Matthew’s τέξεται (téxetai, she will bear). Matthew joins the name Emmanuel to a birth; John uses the same root for the arrival of a human life through travail.
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