Undeceived Wrote:Actually, the literal Greek-English translation from the Septuagint is "Behold, the virgin [in the womb will conceive], and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel." It generally means "his name shall be so called" which connotes the same meaning as Matthew's "they". Isaiah himself was speaking to the house of David, the royal family of Judah (Isaiah 7:13). They--his own people--shall call him Immanuel. But you're right that Isaiah meant the prophecy to be fulfilled in his time. Most prophecies are this way. The miracle isn't that Isaiah randomly predicted the future in the middle of a message to Ahaz. It is that all through history there are types--types of Messiahs, redeemers and saviors who illustrate and foreshadow the one Messiah who was to come. This isn't a fortune-telling. It's a demonstration of God's grand plan.
Really now? By this definition of "prophecy", I expect the messiah to have commanded two bears to maul 42 people, like Elisha did.
This makes the whole Jesus story hardly impressive if we're going to grant ourselves the freedom to pick and choose what parts of the OT were highlighting the "grand plan".
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
