Conclusion

The “son” given the name Immanuel (“God with us”) as a sign to Ahaz and the house of David as an immediate fulfillment of Isaiah’s eighth-century-BCE prophecy is best understood as a child conceived and born within the royal household not long after Isaiah gave the prophecy. Biblical chronologies preclude Hezekiah as the fulfillment of the prophecy. Nevertheless, as a “son of David,” the child “Immanuel” constituted a divine message that the house of David would not be exterminated, in spite of the sins and unfaithfulness of Ahaz and its later royal representatives. Later generations of Israelites found hope in the Immanuel prophecy as a promise of divine protection, preservation, and presence.

Matthew recognized the expansive theological possibilities of the “Immanuel” prophecy as applied to Jesus Christ—“God with us” in the flesh. This idea constitutes a sustained part of Matthew’s Christology, which he connects with the church that Jesus sought to establish, with the sacrament, and with the Lord’s promise to be “always . . . with” his disciples (Matt. 1:23; 17:17; 18:20; 26:29; 28:20; Moro. 4:3)

Nephi1, who described seeing Jesus’s birth in language drawn from Isaiah 7:14 (1 Ne. 11:13, 15, 18, 20–21; compare Alma 7:10), also likened the Immanuel prophecy to himself and his fledgling people in the face of the immediate Lamanite threat. Later, Moroni1 and the stripling sons of Ammon2’s Lamanite converts drew on and took hope in the Immanuel doctrine (see Alma 44:3–4; 56:46–48). The Immanuel prophecy took on increasing significance among the Nephites and Mulochites after the Nephite exodus to Zarahemla and their unification with the Mulochites, among whom lived many descendants of a divinely protected and preserved son of Zedekiah, the last regnant king of Judah. The full power of Nephi2’s speech to the Nephites and Mulochites in the city of Zarahemla, including his statements “the seed of Zedekiah are with us” and “he is God; and he is with them” (Hel. 8:21, 23), cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing intertextual relationship with Isaiah 7:14 and 8:8, 10. In fact, Nephi’s words in Helaman 8:13–26 offer a lens for viewing the Immanuel prophecy as it relates to the house of David, the Davidic Covenant, the house of Judah, and more broadly to the whole house of Israel.

Nephi2’s use of the Immanuel prophecy and his testimony of Jesus Christ to a Davidic audience came only decades before the Savior’s advent as God in the flesh and his subsequent appearance as a resurrected being among the Lamanites and Nephites (including Mulochites) at the temple in Bountiful. Beyond his healings and teachings throughout his ministry at the temple in Bountiful (3 Ne. 11–26), Jesus’s institution of the emblems of the sacrament among them in person, their prayers to him in person (“because I am with them,” 3 Ne. 19:22), and his high-priestly prayers stand as the ultimate expression of the Immanuel doctrine, as Israelite-Lehite religious and cultural heritage. We appreciate anew the promise in the sacrament prayers that his disciples might “always have his spirit to be with” us (3 Ne. 18:7, 11; Moro. 4:3; 5:2; D&C 20:77, 79; compare Matt. 28:20) until his physical presence is eternally “with us.”

To his disciples today, the sacrament should constitute an abiding reminder that the Lord wishes us to have his Spirit “always . . . to be with [us]” until that day. As the Lord stated to Joseph Smith, Orson Hyde, Luke S. Johnson, Lyman E. Johnson, William E. McLellin, and the early members of the restored Church: “Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come” (D&C 68:6).