Translation choice · documented · Feminine
What the source reads — the young woman (Hebrew ʿalmah) shall conceive
What this version reads — the virgin (Latin virgo, from Greek parthénos) shall conceive
Hebrew ʿalmah means a young woman of childbearing age — fertile, marriageable; the specific word for virgin is betulah, which Isaiah did not use. The Septuagint rendered it parthénos, the Vulgate virgo, and Matthew 1:23 reads it as the virgin birth. Read one way it founded a doctrine; read the other, a fertile woman was frozen into a perpetual virgin — the feminine desexualized, her power scrubbed out. A translation choice, recorded not judged.
Read this chapter side by side — Isaiah 7:14 →