Did the prophet Isaiah foretell the future?

A:Not really. An example of Isaiah appearing to fortell the future is in Isaiah 7:14: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." A few verses later, the young woman did indeed have a baby. But bear in mind that the 'prophecy' and its fulfilment both had to have happened before Isaiah wrote his book. To really say Isaiah had truly fortold this birth, we should have proof that he wrote this passage down before the young woman even became pregnant.

There is another version of the same passage that comes from the Septuagint, a flawed, early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. In this version, Isaiah 7:14 says, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." This has been read to be a prophecy of Jesus, although it does not actually mention him. In this case, we should remember that Isaiah never wrote 'virgin' in this passage.