“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew 1:20b-23
Trying to choose the correct pronoun can be a dangerous undertaking in conversation today. At least that is true in current-day America. While the topic of pronouns and identity is not the topic for today’s conversation, it is interesting to contemplate the importance of these little parts of speech. In Matt 1:20b-23, the author includes two names for the Son of God: Jesus and Immanuel. Matthew also includes two very important pronouns in his narrative describing these names: “you shall call his name Jesus” and “they shall call his name Immanuel.” Let’s talk a little bit about both the names and the pronouns.
What does the name “Jesus” actually mean? Jesus is the same name as Joshua, or “Yeshua” in Hebrew. Yeshua is a combination of Ya, an abbreviation for Yahweh, and yasha which is a verb meaning “rescue,” “deliver,” or “save.”1 Therefore, Jesus can be translated as “Yahweh saves” or “God is Salvation.”
Matthew makes the translation of “Immanuel” easy for us. He quotes Is 7:14, “Therefore the LORD Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” Then he helps us non-Hebrew speakers by telling us that Immanuel means “God with us.” But…did you catch the slight difference between the original prophecy in Is 7:14 and Matthew’s quotation? Yes! The difference is the pronoun “they.” In Isaiah, it seems that it is the virgin who will call the son “Immanuel,” but Matthew tells us that “they” shall call his name Immanuel. Why the difference? Is this just sloppy pronoun choice? I don’t think so. First, since Matthew was a divinely-inspired writer of Scripture, I don’t think there was any sloppiness or mistaken pronoun selection. Second, the Greek language is a lot more precise than English when it comes to pronouns. In the Greek, it is pretty clear that Matthew’s word choice was intentional, not just an “oops.”
Nope, no escaping a little Greek language lesson. Bear with me. Greek is a highly inflected language. Inflection is a term that describes how the form of a word is changed based on how it is used in the sentence. Greek words change based on number, gender, case, tense, all sorts of things. This allows the Greek language to get away without using the actual pronoun in many situations, because the pronoun is implied in the inflected form of the verb or noun used. For example, if I said “went away” without any other information, it would leave the listener with a lot of questions. Who went away? “I” went away? “You” went away? “He/she/it” went away? Furthermore, how many went away? If it was “you” that went away, was it just “you” or more than one of you? Was it just “he” that went away or was it “they” that went away? See what I mean? English is not as highly inflected as Greek. The English word “went” just doesn’t tell us who or how many people/things “went.” Greek on the other hand, has many different forms of almost every word. The “inflected” form of a Greek verb tells you exactly who and how many “did” the verb.
Keeping that in mind, let’s go back to Matthew 1. The angel tells Joseph that Mary will bear a son and καλέσεις his name Jesus. The Greek word καλέσεις is the second person singular, future tense form of the verb καλέω (καλέω means “I call/name”). Therefore, the angel is specifically telling Joseph that “You, Joseph, will call the baby’s name Jesus (Yahweh saves), because this baby, the Son of God, will save his people from their sins.”
So, if the angel was having a discussion with Joseph about naming the soon-to-be-born Messiah, why did Matthew then explain that this event is a fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah, which uses the name Immanuel rather than Jesus, and why does the English translation of Matt 1:23 add the pronoun “they” which doesn’t seem to be in the original text of Isaiah?
Let’s take a good look at the pronoun “they” which appears in the English translation of this text. The Greek verb is the same one we just looked at: καλέω (I call/name). This time though, the inflected form is καλέσουσιν which is the third person plural, future tense form. Indeed, the English translation is correct, καλέσουσιν means “they will call/name.” This brings us to another question: Who is “they”? Well, the briefest answer is (as my pastor put it), “they” is us. The people, the ones who recognize Jesus as the Messiah, will call his name Immanuel which means “God with us.” The prophecy in Isaiah spoke of the future birth of the Messiah. Matthew slightly adapted the wording of the prophecy to describe our response to the imminent birth of the Messiah.
So why the different names in a single narrative about the baby Jesus? Is this a discrepancy? Again, I believe the answer is a resounding “no”! Joseph was instructed to name the baby Jesus (God is salvation) because that name identified Jesus as the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God who would save his people from their sins. The people, however, will call his name Immanuel because we recognize that God, the One who saves us from our sins, is WITH US! He humbled himself and came to us in the form of a tiny baby human so that the God who is salvation could save us, the people whom he loves.
Although I said in the introduction that this discussion is not about the current issue of pronouns and identity in America today, perhaps that isn’t quite true. I think that these names for our Savior: Jesus and Immanuel actually have quite a bit to do with our identity. It is precisely because Jesus (Yahweh saves) is also Immanuel (God with us) that we are able to claim our identity as Christians. We are children of God, co-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17), because Jesus came to us and saved us from our sins, thereby reconciling us to God the Father as adopted sons and daughters.
Finally, MERRY CHRISTMAS! What a perfect day to think about the names given to the baby whose birth we celebrate today. Indeed, Jesus is our salvation and he is with us always.
[1] 1gotquestions.org/meaning-name-Jesus.html
seekinghimaboveallelse.com 
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