bethulah-virgin vs almah-virgin

[tonychanyt]

Abraham's servant prayed to God to help him to find a wife for Isaac in (NIV) Genesis 24:

15 Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. 16The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.

a virgin
בְּתוּלָ֕ה (bə·ṯū·lāh)
Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 1330: A virgin, sometimes, a bride

Strong's Hebrew: 1330. בְּתוּלָה (bethulah) — 50 Occurrences

H1330 unambiguously refers to a virgin who has never had sexual intercourse.

Brown-Driver-Briggs:

noun feminine: virgin

Later, the servant recounted the story using a different word:

42“When I came to the spring today, I said, ‘Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will, please grant success to the journey on which I have come. 43See, I am standing beside this spring. If a young woman comes out to draw water and I say to her, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar,” 44and if she says to me, “Drink, and I’ll draw water for your camels too,” let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master’s son.’

a young woman
הָֽעַלְמָה֙ (hā·‘al·māh)
Article | Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 5959: A young woman, a virgin

Strong's Hebrew: 5959. עַלְמָה (almah) — 7 Occurrences

Brown-Driver-Briggs:

young woman (ripe sexually; maid or newly married);

H5959 is not as common as H1330 and its meaning is ambiguous.

H5959 was used in (NIV) Isaiah 7:

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

New American Bible:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.

Lexically, bethulah means virgin unambiguously while almah sometimes refers to a virgin.

 

[Reluctant Theologian]

The difference is easy to define; every Betulah (virgin) is also an Almah young woman, but not every Almah (young woman) is a Betulah (virgin).

So when understood that Betulah is just a specialised subset of Almah; its usage becomes clear.

When the subject in a story is a virgin - both words can be used/mixed, but when the subject in a story is a young woman only, 'Almah' would be used exclusively.

In Isaiah 7:14 the word Almah is used and obviously the sign in those days about a young woman who would conceive within a certain time frame was not about a miraculous virgin birth; the sign was about the time frame.

It remains a mystery why the Greek LXX/seventy translation of the TNK/OT chose to translate Almah in this verse with 'parthénos' (virgin). The LXX translates 'Almah' ONLY in Genesis 24 and Isaiah 7 with 'parthénos' - while it uses 'neanis' for the other instances.

The NAB translation with 'young woman' in Isaiah 7:14 is a better one than the NIV with 'virgin'. The NIV is retrospectively trying to harmonise the Hebrew with the LXX and Gospel of Matthew (which quotes the LXX translation) - but that's not how proper translating is supposed to be done.