Conceive and Bear, Call his Name…
😇 Advent 4’s reference to Matthew 1 might seem like straightforward narrative—Joseph receives an angelic announcement, Mary gives birth, the child is named Jesus. But beneath the surface, Matthew is working with an ancient linguistic formula that runs through the entire biblical tradition, from Genesis to the Gospels. Understanding this formula reveals just how deliberately the Gospel writers positioned Jesus within the story of Israel's miraculous deliverers.
The formula is deceptively simple: an announcement that a woman will conceive and bear a son, followed by an imperative to name him a specific name. In Greek, this appears as variations of ἔχω or συλλαμβάνω (conceive/be pregnant) + τίκτω (bear) + υἱός (son) + καλέω τὸ ὄνομα (call the name). This three-part structure appears at pivotal moments in biblical history, always marking the arrival of someone significant in God's plan.
The pattern first appears in Genesis 16:11, when an angel tells Hagar: "Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael." Here we find all three elements: conception, bearing, and the naming imperative. The formula appears again in Judges 13, repeated three times across verses 3, 5, and 7, when an angel announces to Manoah's wife that she will conceive and bear Samson, the Nazirite deliverer. Isaiah 7:14 uses it in the famous Immanuel prophecy: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"—though notably this shifts from imperative ("you shall call") to third person ("she shall call").
What's striking is that these aren't random birth announcements. They're reserved for angelic annunciations to unlikely mothers about miraculous deliverers. Hagar is a slave in the wilderness. Manoah's wife is barren. The young woman in Isaiah faces impossible political circumstances. Each announcement signals divine intervention breaking into human impossibility.
The formula also appears in narrative fulfillment, not just prophetic announcement. In 1 Samuel 1:20, when Hannah finally conceives after years of barrenness and prayer, the text reports: "she conceived and bore a son and called his name Samuel." Same formula, past tense instead of future, indicative instead of imperative. The pattern works both directions—forward in prophecy, backward in reporting.
Now consider how the New Testament writers deploy this tradition. Luke gives Mary the most complete angelic annunciation since Genesis 16:11: "You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus" (Luke 1:31). Full formula, all three elements intact. Luke knows exactly what he's doing—he's placing Jesus in the direct line of miraculous deliverers announced by angels to unlikely mothers.
But Luke also does something clever with John the Baptist. When Gabriel announces John's birth to Zechariah (Luke 1:13), the formula is incomplete: "your wife Elizabeth will bear a son to you, and you shall call his name John." There's bearing and naming, but no conception verb, and Luke uses γεννάω instead of τίκτω. The annunciation to Mary, by contrast, gets the full traditional formula. Luke is signaling: John is important, but Jesus is something more.
Matthew works differently. In 1:21, the angel tells Joseph: "she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." This echoes the Judges 13 pattern—announcement of bearing, naming imperative, and salvific mission. Judges 13:5 declared that Samson would "begin to save Israel from the Philistines." Matthew declares that Jesus will "save his people from their sins." The parallel is unmistakable.
Then Matthew does what Hannah's story did—he reports the fulfillment in narrative form. Matthew 1:25 states: "she bore a son, and he called his name Jesus." The formula appears again, completing the arc from angelic announcement to historical reality. Matthew brackets the birth with the same linguistic structure: prophecy in verse 21, fulfillment in verse 25.
What emerges from tracing this formula is a sophisticated literary tradition linking Jesus to the entire history of Israel's divinely appointed deliverers. Matthew and Luke aren't inventing stories from whole cloth; they're writing within a recognizable biblical pattern that their audiences would have known from the Greek Septuagint. Every time this formula appears, it signals: God is intervening, impossibility is being overcome, a deliverer is coming.
This matters because it shows us how to read the infancy narratives. These aren't simply biographical details. They're theological announcements embedded in Israel's scriptural DNA. When Matthew reports that Joseph named the child Jesus, he's not just documenting a circumcision ceremony—he's completing an ancient formula that stretches back through Samson to Ishmael, declaring that in this birth, all of Israel's hopes for deliverance have found their fulfillment.
The formula also reveals something about how Scripture builds on itself. The New Testament writers aren't abandoning the Hebrew Bible; they're working deeply within its linguistic and theological patterns, showing how Jesus brings to completion what God has been doing all along. Every miraculous birth, every angelic announcement, every unlikely mother has been pointing toward this moment when the formula achieves its ultimate meaning: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
