Matthew 1:23
What does Matthew 1:23 mean?
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a son. They shall call his name Immanuel”; which is, being interpreted, “God with us.”
The short answer
Matthew 1:23 quotes an ancient promise from the prophet Isaiah: a virgin will bear a son, and his name will be Immanuel. Then Matthew does something unusual for him — he translates. Immanuel, he explains, means "God with us." He wants no reader to miss the claim: in the child about to be born, God has come near.
Here is a curious detail, though. Nobody in the Gospel ever actually calls Jesus "Immanuel." The angel tells Joseph to name him Jesus, and Jesus is what everyone calls him. That is not a slip. In the Bible, a name like this describes a reality rather than functioning as a label on a birth certificate. The point is not what people will write on documents; the point is what this person is. Wherever Jesus is, God is present with his people.
The verse also works as the opening bracket of the entire Gospel. Matthew begins with "God with us" and ends with Jesus telling his disciples he is with them always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). Everything in between — the teaching, the healing, the cross, the resurrection — unfolds inside that promise. The story starts with presence and closes with presence.
And the claim carried an edge in its own day. Matthew wrote under Roman rule, in an empire that advertised itself as the source of salvation and peace. Against that backdrop, saying that God's presence and power are found not in emperors or elites but in a child from Nazareth was a quiet act of defiance. Matthew locates the real center of the world not in a palace but in a person — one who, crucified and risen, remains "God with us" among his followers.
What scholars say
The first excerpt asks how faith could survive under an empire that claimed to embody salvation and peace, and answers that Matthew locates God's presence in Jesus, "God with us," from 1:23 to the Gospel's final scene; the second, though centered on Ezekiel, pauses on Matthew 1 to observe that Immanuel was never meant as a personal name — the name points to a reality.
“How could faithful vision, hope, and practice be nurtured under the brutal and violent dominion of a world power that proclaimed itself the embodiment of “salvation” and “peace” (the pax Romana)? For Matthew, God’s presence and power are not discerned in association with human forms of power—whether Jewish elites or Roman emperors—but in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been granted. The crucified and risen Jesus is present among disciples as “God with us” (Matt. 1:23; 28:18–20). As the incarnate presence of God and the agent of God’s power, Jesus breaches the boundaries between the human and the divine, between heaven and earth. Matthew’s story trains audiences for faithful ways of living in the transformed time and space that is the “empire [or “kingdom”] of heaven.”
“I’m therefore as excited by the closing sentence of Ezekiel as I am about the paragraph in chapter 43 that describes Yahweh ’s splendor returning. The city’s name will be Yahweh-Is-There. Ezekiel doesn’t mean the road signs will be changed, any more than Matthew 1 means Jesus will be “called” Immanuel as his personal name. The name refers to the reality, not merely the label. The city will be the place where God is. It will be such a contrast with the city Ezekiel has known. Its rebellious and oppressive nature didn’t make it look like one where Yahweh lived. Its destruction reflected God’s departure and its loss of the protection that came from his presence. But Yahweh is committed to being there again.”
What it means for you
If the name Immanuel describes a reality rather than a title, then the question for a reader today is not whether we use the right words about Jesus but whether we live as though God is actually present. Matthew's Gospel assumes that presence changes how people handle fear, power, money, and enemies — the whole of life.
It also offers a word for anyone living under pressures that feel immovable. Matthew's first readers knew what it was to live under a power that claimed to own the future. This verse insists the future belongs elsewhere: with the God who has come near and has promised to stay.
Matthew 1 in context
Matthew 1 opens with a long genealogy tracing Jesus from Abraham through David to Joseph — rooting him deep in Israel's story. Then the chapter narrows to a crisis: Mary is pregnant before she and Joseph live together, and Joseph plans to end the engagement quietly. An angel intervenes in a dream, telling Joseph the child is from the Holy Spirit and should be named Jesus, "for it is he who shall save his people from their sins." Verse 23 follows as Matthew's comment on the whole scene: this birth fulfills Isaiah's promise of Immanuel.