Why Did Jesus and the Apostles Quote from the Septuagint?

Question 1047.

Septuagint quotations appear throughout the New Testament far more often than most readers realise, and noticing this raises a fair question. If Jesus and the apostles regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the very word of God, why do so many of their citations follow the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text underlying our modern Old Testament? I think the answer tells us something valuable about how the earliest Christians actually used their Bibles.

I want to walk through where Septuagint quotations appear in the New Testament, why the biblical writers used them so freely, and why this practice should increase rather than undermine our confidence in Scripture, especially for readers who have never stopped to ask the question before.

Why Greek Was the Practical Choice

By the first century, Greek was the common language of the eastern Mediterranean world, the result of Alexander the Great’s conquests three centuries earlier, and this context explains why Septuagint quotations became so natural for the New Testament writers. Jews scattered across the diaspora, from Alexandria to Rome, often knew Greek far better than Hebrew, and many synagogues outside Judea read Scripture in Greek because that was the language their congregations actually understood. The Septuagint was not a marginal translation. It was the Bible most Greek-speaking Jews and, later, Gentile converts actually owned and read.

Given that reality, it makes complete practical sense that New Testament authors writing to largely Greek-speaking audiences across the Roman world would reach for the Greek text their readers already possessed rather than translating fresh from Hebrew every time they cited an Old Testament passage.

Where Septuagint Quotations Appear Most Clearly

The clearest cases are where the New Testament wording matches the Septuagint precisely against a different Hebrew reading. Hebrews 10:5 quotes Psalm 40:6 as “a body have you prepared for me”, following the Septuagint, where the Hebrew text of the Masoretic tradition reads “ears you have dug for me”. The author of Hebrews builds a genuine theological argument on the Septuagint wording, applying it directly to the incarnation of Christ.

Acts 15:16-17 quotes Amos 9:11-12 in a form that follows the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text, and James uses this Septuagint reading as part of his argument at the Jerusalem Council regarding Gentile inclusion in the church. These are not incidental slips. They are deliberate, load-bearing citations.

Matthew’s Use of Isaiah 7:14

Perhaps the most famous instance is Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son”. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew word almah, meaning young woman, with the Greek parthenos, meaning virgin specifically. Some critics have argued Matthew simply misread an ambiguous Hebrew term through a Greek lens that overstated its meaning.

I do not find that objection persuasive. Almah in its actual Old Testament usage consistently refers to a young, unmarried woman, for whom virginity would have been the culturally assumed and expected state. The Septuagint translators, working centuries before Christ and with no messianic argument to construct, rendered it with parthenos because that was a faithful reflection of what the term implied in context, not because they were manufacturing a Christian doctrine in advance.

Paul’s Extensive Reliance on the Septuagint

Paul, a trained rabbi writing to largely Gentile congregations, uses Septuagint quotations extensively throughout his letters. Romans 3:10-18 strings together a catena of Old Testament citations, several following Septuagint wording, to establish universal human sinfulness. Romans 10:6-8 draws on Deuteronomy 30:12-14 in a form shaped by Septuagint phrasing to make an argument about the nearness of the gospel word.

This was not carelessness on Paul’s part. He was a meticulously trained Pharisee who knew the Hebrew Scriptures intimately. His comfortable use of the Septuagint reflects a settled conviction that the Greek translation faithfully conveyed the meaning of the Hebrew original closely enough to build doctrine upon it.

Did This Practice Threaten the Authority of the Hebrew Text?

Not in the minds of the New Testament writers themselves. They plainly regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the ultimate, inspired original, while treating a faithful Greek translation of those Scriptures as a legitimate and usable vehicle for conveying that same inspired content to a Greek-speaking audience. This is really no different in principle from a modern preacher quoting the ESV in an English sermon while affirming that the Hebrew and Greek originals remain the final court of appeal for any disputed translation question.

Verbal, plenary inspiration applies properly to the original Hebrew and Greek autographs. A translation, however excellent, participates in that authority derivatively, by faithfully conveying the meaning of the original, not by claiming an independent inspiration of its own. The New Testament writers seem to have understood this distinction perfectly well, using the Septuagint confidently without confusing it with the Hebrew original it translated.

What This Means for How We Read Septuagint Quotations Today

When you notice a New Testament citation of the Old Testament that reads slightly differently from the same passage in your English Old Testament, the explanation is very often exactly this: the New Testament author is following the Septuagint wording rather than the Hebrew text your Old Testament translation is based on. This is not evidence of an error. It is evidence of first-century citation practice operating exactly as we would expect it to.

I encourage believers who notice these small differences to see them as a window into how the earliest Christians actually handled Scripture, rather than as a problem requiring a defensive explanation. Once you understand the practice, the apparent discrepancy simply dissolves.

A Related Question: Textual Variants Within the Septuagint Itself

It is worth adding that the Septuagint itself exists in multiple manuscript families and was revised more than once in antiquity, so New Testament citations do not always match every surviving copy of the Septuagint we possess today identically. This adds a further layer of complexity for specialists but does not change the basic pastoral point: the New Testament writers used the best available Greek text of their day with confidence, and that confidence has proved well founded rather than naive.

Modern textual scholars continue to compare New Testament citations against the various Septuagint manuscript traditions, and this ongoing work has, if anything, strengthened rather than weakened the case that the New Testament authors were careful, deliberate users of the textual resources available to them.

Why This Increases Rather Than Undermines Confidence

I find this whole subject reassuring rather than troubling, for a simple reason. It shows that the earliest Christians were not naive, uncritical readers pasting proof texts together without thought. They were making deliberate, informed choices about which textual tradition best served a particular argument, while affirming the full authority of the underlying Hebrew Scriptures throughout.

That is exactly the kind of careful engagement with the biblical text that I want to model in my own preaching and teaching, and it gives me real confidence that the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament reflects careful scholarship rather than careless quotation.

Connecting This to the Wider Question of Textual Reliability

I explore the relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint more fully in my companion article comparing the two traditions directly, but the short version is this: both traditions have ancient, credible roots, and Septuagint quotations in the New Testament simply reflect the practical reality that Greek-speaking authors, writing for Greek-speaking readers, used the Greek Bible available to them. This tells us about first-century reading habits. It tells us nothing troubling about the reliability of the Old Testament itself.

Understanding this history has, if anything, deepened my own appreciation for how carefully the earliest Christians handled the Scriptures they had inherited, and how thoughtfully they applied them to the good news of Jesus.

A Final Illustration Worth Remembering

I sometimes compare Septuagint quotations in the New Testament to a modern preacher in Britain quoting the ESV while preaching to a congregation, aware that a French-speaking congregation elsewhere might quote the Louis Segond translation for the same sermon text, without either preacher imagining they have abandoned the authority of the Hebrew and Greek originals behind both translations. Language and audience shape which faithful translation gets quoted aloud. The underlying authority of the inspired original text is never in question for either preacher.

That simple analogy has helped many believers I have taught over the years stop treating Septuagint quotations as a threat and start seeing them as a small, fascinating window into how the gospel travelled confidently across language barriers from its very first generation, carried by ordinary translated Scripture rather than requiring every hearer to learn Hebrew first.

So, now what?

The next time you notice a New Testament citation that reads slightly differently from its Old Testament source as printed in your English Bible, you now know why. Septuagint quotations reflect first-century Jewish and Christian reading habits, not careless handling of Scripture. Read both passages with confidence, knowing that careful, informed choices, not accident or error, explain the difference, and that the underlying message of both the Hebrew Scriptures and their Greek translation is the same trustworthy word of God, given for your good and for His glory.

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.”

Matthew 1:23 (ESV)