call his name Emmanuel. — The LXX. render Isaiah vii. 14, thus — 'l8ou q <ra,p$evo$ fv yaffrpi hq-^trai Tibv, xai xa/Sefftic x.r.A. — Be hold the virgin shall conceive in her womb a Son, and thou shall call, etc. — Idol, Behold !) — a particle especially adapted for point ing out a Sign. — See Isa. vii. 14. — r\ -trap^'mos, the virgin) In the original Hebrew, the word employed is nD?J?n j1 and nopy de notes a virgin ; 2 whether you derive it from D7J?,3 so that it may be one who has escaped the notice of man,4 who has not been known by man (cf. ver. 25, and laike i. 34), for DPJW (to le hidden, to lie hid, to escape the notice of), and JTP (to know, etc.), are opposed to each other, both in their general signification, as in Lev. v. 3, 4, and also in this special one : or whether n^Sy (the verb cognate with which the Syriac translator has employed to represent ix^aasv5 in Rev. xiv. 18), signify ax/o.a/a, in the flower of her age. The Hebrew article n (the), prefixed in the original to the word under consideration (concerning which article cf. Gnomon on ch. xviii. 17), points out a particular individual visible on the mirror of Divine prescience. For the prophet is speak ing of a Sign, and introduces it by the word " Behold," and then immediately addresses the Virgin herself, with the words, THOU shalt call, etc. Isaiah indicates, in the first instance, some woman who lived at the time, and whose natural fecundity was con sidered doubtful, who, from a virgin, was to become a mother, and that of a son : she, however, as the sublimity of the prophet's words clearly show, was a type of that Virgin, who, still a virgin, brought forth the Messiah ; so that the force of the Sign was twofold, applying to that which wras close at hand, and to that which was far distant in the future. — See Alexander More.6
is mhs with the article prefixed.— (I. B.)
2 " The ancient version, which gave a different rendering, did so for party purposes, while the LXX., who could have no such motive, render it virgin in the very passage where it must, to their minds, have occasioned a difficulty." S. P. TREGELLES.— (I. B.)
3 thy to hide, to conceal: the Niphal of which is tkyi—to be hidden, to lie hid.— (I. B.)
4 " Qua? latuit virurn." — (I. B.) 6 tixftctvev, is fully ripe. — (I. B.)
6 ALEXANDER MORE (or MORUS) was born A.D. 1616, at Castres, in the south of France, where his father, a Scotchman by birth, was Principal of a Protestant college. He was a man of considerable talents and great attain-