I wanted to go over the topic of the virgin birth, considering some of the other topics my articles cover, this is a very basic concept and I consider it part of the foundation of the faith in Yeshua. But what exactly are the Hebrew Israelites telling us through their writings about Yeshua the Messiah? Was He really born from a virgin? If so, why? Is there a purpose that was being made in this miracle? Let’s take a look at the famous passage that the Israelite Isaiah wrote:
10 Later, the Lord sent this message to King Ahaz: 11 "Ask the Lord your God for a sign of confirmation, Ahaz. Make it as difficult as you want - as high as heaven or as deep as the place of the dead."
12 But the king refused. "No," he said, "I will not test the Lord like that."
13 Then Isaiah said, "Listen well, you royal family of David! Isn't it enough to exhaust human patience? Must you exhaust the patience of my God as well? 14 All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means 'God is with us').
-Isaiah 7:10–14
So here we see that it was foretold that a virgin woman would give birth to a child and that the child would represent Elohim (God of Israel) is with us, hence Him being called by the name Immanuel. This same passage is mentioned in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew:
18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. "Joseph, son of David," the angel said, "do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord's message through his prophet:
23 "Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means 'God is with us.'"
24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.
-Matthew 1:18–25
So here we have the account of the virgin birth from the perspective of Mary’s fiance Joseph and we see a few things. First, if Mary truly wasn’t a virgin, why then would Joseph be thinking about calling off the wedding? Also notice that the virgin birth is directly correlated with Isaiah’s prophecy of such so we know Isaiah was speaking about Yeshua’s birth since the Israelite Matthew confirmed it here in the New Testament. Then the angel confirmed that the One who would be called “Immanuel” was to be named Yeshua so we know that even though Immanuel was an important term He would be known by, would not be His actual Name He would be called by. Here is another passage from the Gospel of the Hebrew Israelite Luke:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. 28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, "Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!"
29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 "Don't be afraid, Mary," the angel told her, "for you have found favor with God! 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!"
34 Mary asked the angel, "But how can this happen? I am a virgin."
35 The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.
-Luke 1:26–35
So here, Mary flat out asked the angel how could she become pregnant and then stated plainly that she was a virgin. Gabriel then had to explain to her what was going to happen and that the Holy Spirit would intervene so that the Baby would be Holy. But why was it so important for this Baby to be Holy enough that the Holy Spirit would intervene? Let’s take a look at a passage from one of the letters a Jew named Paul wrote:
20 But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.
21 So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. 22 Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.
-1 Corinthians 15:20–22
Here Paul reveals that sin entered into the world through a man, this man was Adam, the first man made by YAH’s own Hands. This is reiterated as well in Romans, another one of Paul’s letters, to Rome:
12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. 13 Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. 14 Still, everyone died - from the time of Adam to the time of Moses - even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. 15 But there is a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.
-Romans 5:12–15
So here again we see that it was Adam’s sin that brought death and it came through him. Even though Eve sinned first, she was persuaded to sin. But Adam sinned on his own because he loved his wife Eve more than being obedient to YAH and this also reveals the motive of Satan in this act. Satan knew Adam loved his wife, so he got Eve to sin knowing Adam would follow his wife into death. Because of both of their disobedience, they were cursed to die for falling away from YAH but again, it is important to note that the sin entered Adam and spread to all humans through the male seed even today still. Therefore, anyone who is born of a male seed will automatically have sin within them as soon as they are born! This explains why Yeshua had to be born of the Holy Spirit so that He would not have sin in Him from birth. But if this is so, how then is Yeshua considered a descendant of David if He was born of the Holy Spirit? It was clearly written that Mashiach (the Messiah) would come from the House of David and even be born in a small town of Judah (Bethlehem). Let’s take a look at another passage that will shine some light on this mystery:
38 About this time, Judah left home and moved to Adullam, where he stayed with a man named Hirah. 2 There he saw a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua, and he married her. When he slept with her, 3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and he named the boy Er. 4 Then she became pregnant again and gave birth to another son, and she named him Onan. 5 And when she gave birth to a third son, she named him Shelah. At the time of Shelah's birth, they were living at Kezib.
6 In the course of time, Judah arranged for his firstborn son, Er, to marry a young woman named Tamar. 7 But Er was a wicked man in the Lord's sight, so the Lord took his life. 8 Then Judah said to Er's brother Onan, "Go and marry Tamar, as our law requires of the brother of a man who has died. You must produce an heir for your brother."
9 But Onan was not willing to have a child who would not be his own heir. So whenever he had intercourse with his brother's wife, he spilled the semen on the ground. This prevented her from having a child who would belong to his brother. 10 But the Lord considered it evil for Onan to deny a child to his dead brother. So the Lord took Onan's life, too.
-Genesis 38:1–10
So here an old Israelite law of the Old (Mosaic) Covenant is revealed, that if the brother of an Israelite was not capable of producing offspring, it became the obligation of his brethren to produce one for him. In this case, Er died and so the child Onan would have produced with Tamar would have been known as the seed of Er since Er was not capable of producing his own offspring since he died. This is what we see with the virgin birth. The seed of Joseph was already sinful, therefore the Holy Spirit stepped in on his behalf to produce what Joseph could not. As stated above, the sin is passed on through the male so even though Mary was produced from a sinful seed and had sin within her, she would not pass the sin on to her children. Only the children she had that came from the seed of a man would have sin in them from birth. So we see, the Holy Spirit produced a Perfect Man in the womb of a sinful woman and this Perfect Man Yeshua lived a Perfect life without sinning. This is why He is Mashiach and why He is able to save all who would believe and obey Him. This is also why the paternal lineage of Yeshua is written in this manner (as shown below) in Matthew and why Yeshua is a Hebrew Israelite of the tribe of Judah even though He was not of the physical seed of Joseph.
1 This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac.
Isaac was the father of Jacob.
Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.
3Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar).
Perez was the father of Hezron.
Hezron was the father of Ram.
4Ram was the father of Amminadab.
Amminadab was the father of Nahshon.
Nahshon was the father of Salmon.
5Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab).
Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth).
Obed was the father of Jesse.
6Jesse was the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).
7Solomon was the father of Rehoboam.
Rehoboam was the father of Abijah.
Abijah was the father of Asa.
8Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram.
Jehoram was the father of Uzziah.
9Uzziah was the father of Jotham.
Jotham was the father of Ahaz.
Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah.
10Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh.
Manasseh was the father of Amon.
Amon was the father of Josiah.
11Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers (born at the time of the exile to Babylon).
12After the Babylonian exile:
Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel.
Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel.
13Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.
Abiud was the father of Eliakim.
Eliakim was the father of Azor.
14Azor was the father of Zadok.
Zadok was the father of Akim.
Akim was the father of Eliud.
15Eliud was the father of Eleazar.
Eleazar was the father of Matthan.
Matthan was the father of Jacob.
16Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
-Matthew 1:1–16