בס”ד
A reader asked Rabbi Tovia Singer a question. His pastor had said: “If alma only means ‘young woman,’ why does it always refer to a virgin everywhere in the Bible?”
Rabbi Singer answers that this claim is incorrect and misleading. It is surprising that people still make it, because today a word study takes only a few minutes on a computer.
Why this matters so much
For almost two thousand years, the Church has taught that the Hebrew word alma (עלמה) can only mean “virgin.” This is important to Christianity because Matthew 1:22-23 translates alma in Isaiah 7:14 as “virgin.” This is the only “Old Testament” proof text for the virgin birth of Jesus.
If alma does not mean “virgin,” then Matthew misquoted Isaiah. Then a key Christian belief, and the credibility of the first Gospel, would fall apart. The stakes are high.
Let’s check the Bible itself
The only place to test this claim is the Jewish Scriptures. If alma means “virgin,” every use must clearly refer to a virgin, or at least be unclear. The word appears seven times in the feminine and twice in the masculine. If even one time it refers to a woman who is clearly not a virgin, Matthew’s translation of Isaiah 7:14 cannot stand.
The proof from Proverbs
One of these places is Proverbs 30:18-20:
There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a young woman [b’alma]. This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wrong.”
The word “proverb” means “to be like.” A proverb compares a simple picture with a deep truth. Here, King Solomon compares a man with an alma to three other things. What do all four have in common? They leave no trace.
- After an eagle flies through the sky, nobody can tell it was there.
- After a snake crosses a rock, nothing shows it passed (unlike sand or grass, where it leaves a trail).
- After a ship sails through the sea, the wake disappears.
In the same way, after a man is intimate with an alma, a young woman, nothing visible remains. A virgin is different: she leaves a discharge of blood when her hymen is broken.
That is why the next verse speaks about the adulterous woman. She “eats” (a metaphor for her immorality), removes the trace, “wipes her mouth,” and says, “I have done no wrong.” So here the word alma clearly does not mean a virgin.
What alma really means
In English, “young woman” says nothing about purity. In Hebrew too, there is no link between alma and “virgin.” Alma only tells us age and gender. It is also usually young women who have children.
If Isaiah had wanted to say “virgin,” he would have used betulah (בתולה). This is the only word, in biblical and modern Hebrew, that expresses sexual purity, and it appears often in the Jewish Scriptures.1
The masculine form
The masculine form of alma is elem (עלם). It means “young man,” not “male virgin.” It appears twice, in 1 Samuel 17:56 and 20:22. All Christian Bibles translate it correctly as “young man,” “lad,” or “stripling,” never “virgin.”
So why does the King James Version translate the masculine la’elem as “to the young man” in 1 Samuel 20:22, but the feminine ha’alma as “a virgin” in Isaiah 7:14? The answer: Christian Bibles had no reason to mistranslate 1 Samuel 20:22, because the New Testament never quoted it.
This text is an abridged version, published with permission, of Rabbi Tovia Singer, Let’s Get Biblical! Why Doesn’t Judaism Accept the Christian Messiah?, Volume … All credit for the content goes to Rabbi Singer. You can get the book here: outreachjudaism.org.
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