Isaiah 7 — Dead Sea Scrolls

The famous wordplay on the root '-m-n (believe/stand firm) is preserved identically in 1QIsaiah-a. The MT's ta'aminu ('believe, stand firm') and te'amenu ('be established') create a paronomasia that is the theological hinge of the passage: faith and stability share the same root.

1QIsaiah-a uses a slightly shorter form of the second verb but the wordplay is fully preserved. This is significant because it confirms that the wordplay was original to the text and not a later Masoretic embellishment.

This is the single most significant textual confirmation in 1QIsaiah-a. The scroll reads ha'almah (העלמה), 'the young woman,' using the same word as the MT. The scroll does NOT read betulah (בתולה), the standard Hebrew word for 'virgin.'

The word almah means 'a young woman of marriageable age.' It does not inherently specify virginity, though it can include virgins within its semantic range. The Septuagint's translation as parthenos ('virgin') in the 3rd century BCE was an interpretive choice, not a reflection of a different Hebrew Vorlage.

1QIsaiah-a, dated to approximately 125 BCE, provides the oldest manuscript evidence for this reading — predating the Masoretic Text by over 1,000 years. The fact that the pre-Christian Hebrew text reads almah (not betulah) is a critical datum for understanding the original meaning of this prophecy in its 8th-century BCE context.

The definite article ha- ('the') is present in both MT and 1QIsaiah-a, indicating a specific young woman known to the audience — likely a woman in Ahaz's court or Isaiah's own wife — rather than an abstract future figure.

The spelling in 1QIsaiah-a lacks the mater lectionis he at the end that appears in some forms, but the word is unambiguously almah. The consonantal skeleton '-l-m-h with the definite article is identical.