such as a girls' choir, or an instrument made in the city of "Alameth". In a victory parade in Psalm 68:25, the participants are listed in order of appearance: 1) the singers; 2) the musicians; and 3) the "alamot" playing cymbals or tambourines. The Song of Songs 1:3 contains a poetic chant of praise to a man, declaring that all the alamot adore him. In verse 6:8 a girl is favorably compared to 60 Queens (wives of the King), 80 Concubines, and numberless alamot. In Proverbs 30:19, concerning an adulterous wife, the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint differ: both begin by comparing the woman's acts to things the author claims are hard to predict: a bird flying in air, the movement of a snake over a rock, the path of a ship through the sea; but while the Hebrew concludes with the way of a man with an almah, the Greek reads "and the way of a man in his youth". The verses surrounding Isaiah 7:14 tell how Ahaz, the king of Judah, is told of a sign to be given in demonstration that the prophet's promise of God's protection from his enemies is a true one. The sign is that an almah is pregnant and will give birth to a son who will still be very young when these enemies will be destroyed. Greek translation The Septuagint translates most occurrences of almah into a generic word neanis νεᾶνις meaning 'young woman', both words being derived from neos 'new' and unrelated to virginity. Two occurrences, in the Genesis verse concerning Rebecca and in Isaiah 7:14, are mistranslated as parthenos (παρθένος), the basic word associated with virginity in Greek (it is a title of Athena 'The Virgin Goddess') but still occasionally used by the Greeks for a unmarried woman who is not a virgin. Most scholars agree that Isaiah's phrase ('a young woman shall conceive and bear a son') did not intend to convey any miraculous conception. In this verse, as in the Genesis occurrence concerning Rebecca, the Septuagint translators misused the Greek word parthenos generically to indicate an unmarried young woman, whose probable virginity (as unmarried young women were ideally seen at the time) was incidental. References Bibliography Book of Isaiah Christianity and Judaism related controversies Hebrew words and phrases in the Hebrew Bible Christian terminology Virgin birth of Jesus