Promises Find Their Voices

Verses 1–4 are a single long sentence in polished literary Greek, the kind historians and medical writers put at the head of a serious work. At verse 5 the style changes abruptly into the cadence of the Greek Old Testament. “Most surely believed” can also be read as “fulfilled”, things brought to completion among us.

“Delivered” is the technical verb for handing on tradition, the one Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15:3. “Ministers” are attendants, hyperetai, the word Luke uses for the synagogue attendant who takes back the scroll in 4:20.

“Perfect understanding” is literally “having followed closely and accurately”. “From the very first” is anothen, from the top, which can also mean from above. “In order” is a word only Luke uses in the New Testament. “Most excellent” is the address Acts uses for the governors Felix and Festus (23:26, 26:25).

“Certainty” is asphaleia, security, firm footing, and Luke saves it for the last word of the Greek sentence. “Instructed” is katecheo, to teach by word of mouth, the root of “catechism”. Theophilus’ name means friend of God, or loved by God.

Herod the Great died in 4 BC, which places these events before then. The course of Abia is Abijah, the eighth of the twenty-four priestly divisions drawn by lot in 1 Chronicles 24:10. Elisabeth bears the name of Aaron’s own wife, Elisheba (Exodus 6:23), so both husband and wife are of priestly descent.

“Commandments and ordinances” is the pair the Greek Old Testament uses for the whole range of the Law’s requirements. “Walking” is the Hebrew picture of conduct as a road travelled. “Blameless” means no one could point to a failure, not that they were sinless.

“Well stricken in years” repeats the phrase used of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18:11, righteous, old and childless. Luke’s first readers who knew their Scriptures would recognise the setting before any angel appears.

Each of the twenty-four divisions served in the temple for a week, twice a year, and all served together at the great feasts. Zacharias is on duty in the ordinary rotation; nothing about the day is exceptional until verse 11.

Priests were so numerous, around twenty thousand by Josephus’ reckoning, that duties were assigned by lot. The Mishnah says a priest who had once burned the incense could not be chosen for it again, so this was likely the one time in his life. “Temple” here means the sanctuary building itself, which only priests entered.

Incense was offered at the morning and evening sacrifices, and the people gathered in the courts to pray while it burned. Psalm 141:2 makes the link: “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense.” Acts 3:1 names the ninth hour, mid-afternoon, as the hour of prayer.

The golden altar of incense stood in the holy place just before the veil, between the lampstand and the table of shewbread (Exodus 30:1–6). The angel stands on its right side, the side of favour. Zacharias is alone in the room, and there is no one to share what he sees.

Fear is the ordinary response to an angel in Scripture; Manoah, Samson’s father, is sure he will die for having seen one (Judges 13:22). Luke doubles the reaction: troubled, and fear fell upon him.

Which prayer is heard is not stated. It may be the couple’s long prayer for a child, or the prayer for Israel’s redemption a priest would offer at the incense; the angel’s answer covers both. John is Yohanan, “the LORD has been gracious”.

“Joy and gladness” is where Luke begins, and his book ends the same way, with the disciples returning to Jerusalem “with great joy” (24:52). The joy is not kept in the family; “many” will share it.

“Strong drink” is sikera, fermented drink not made from grapes, such as date wine or beer. The pair was forbidden to priests on duty (Leviticus 10:9) and was part of Hannah’s vow for Samuel in the Greek of 1 Samuel 1:11. “Great in the sight of the Lord” is a measured greatness; compare verse 32.

“Turn” is the prophets’ word for repentance, a return along a road already walked away from. The promise is for “many”, not all, a realistic expectation for any prophet in Israel’s history.

“Before him” refers back to “the Lord their God” in verse 16, so John goes ahead of God himself. The angel quotes the first half of Malachi’s line and replaces the second with “the disobedient to the wisdom of the just”. Malachi’s closing threat of a curse is not repeated.

“Whereby shall I know this?” is word for word Abraham’s question in the Greek of Genesis 15:8, asked about the land he was promised. Abraham received a sign in a covenant ceremony. Zacharias receives one too, of a very different kind.

Gabriel appears only in Daniel in the Old Testament (8:16, 9:21), and in Daniel 9:21 he comes “about the time of the evening oblation”, the hour of incense. To “stand in the presence” is courtly language for a king’s close attendant, one who waits for his orders.

The sign Zacharias asked for is given, and it is his own silence. “Dumb” renders a word that elsewhere can mean deaf as well as mute. “In their season” is kairos, the appointed time, which in this case is nine months away.

The incense took only minutes, and a long delay in the sanctuary was alarming. The Mishnah says that on the Day of Atonement the high priest kept his prayer short so as not to frighten the people waiting outside. “Waited” is imperfect: they stood there waiting.

After the incense, the officiating priests were to pronounce the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 over the people from the steps. Zacharias cannot say it. Luke’s gospel ends with Jesus lifting up his hands and blessing his disciples (24:50), the blessing the book began without.

“Ministration” is leitourgia, public service, the root of the word liturgy. His week ended, he goes home to the hill country of Judea, the town left unnamed until Mary travels there in verse 39.

Luke does not say why Elisabeth hid herself. One suggestion is that she waited until the pregnancy was visible and could not be doubted; that is an inference. Five months brings her to the sixth month in which verse 26 begins.

“To take away my reproach” echoes Rachel at the birth of Joseph: “God hath taken away my reproach” (Genesis 30:23). Barrenness was widely read as disgrace. “Looked on me” means God’s attention turned to her.

“The sixth month” is counted from Elisabeth’s conception, tying the two announcements together. Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament or by Josephus; it was a small village in the hills above the Jezreel valley. Luke calls it a city, the word for any settled town.

Betrothal was a binding legal contract that only divorce could end, though the bride stayed in her father’s house until the wedding, often about a year later. “Of the house of David” belongs grammatically to Joseph. The word “virgin” appears twice in one verse.

“Hail” is chaire, the ordinary Greek greeting, which literally means rejoice. “Highly favoured” is built on the same root, charis, grace: one who has been graced. The greeting and the title are a play on the same word.

Zacharias was troubled at the sight of the angel (verse 12); Mary is troubled at his words. “Cast in her mind” is imperfect, she kept turning it over, and Luke gives her a thoughtful response before any question.

“Found favour with God” is said of Noah in Genesis 6:8 and of Moses in Exodus 33:17. The favour is charis again, the word from verse 28, and the angel’s repetition answers Mary’s puzzlement over his greeting.

The wording follows Isaiah 7:14 in the Greek Old Testament closely: conceive in the womb, bear a son, call his name. Luke does not cite Isaiah; Matthew does. Jesus is Yeshua, the same name as Joshua, meaning “the LORD saves”. Here Mary gives the name.

“The Highest” translates the Hebrew Elyon, the title of God first heard from Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18. John was to be “great in the sight of the Lord” (verse 15); Jesus is simply “great”, without qualification.

“No end” echoes Isaiah 9:7: “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David.” The “house of Jacob” is Israel as a whole, all twelve tribes, not only the royal tribe of Judah.

“Know not a man” is the Hebrew idiom for sexual relations, as in Genesis 4:1, “Adam knew Eve”. The Greek is present tense, describing her present state. Her question is about the means, how, not about whether God can do it.

“Overshadow” is the verb used in the Greek of Exodus 40:35, where the cloud rested on the tabernacle and the glory filled it. Luke uses it once more, of the cloud on the mountain of the transfiguration (9:34). “That holy thing” is neuter in Greek, the holy one to be born.

“Who was called barren” is what people said of her, the label about to be retired. The sign given to Mary can be checked: a kinswoman six months pregnant in her old age, a few days’ journey away. Mary goes to see it at once.

The line recalls Genesis 18:14, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?”, said to Sarah about a son in her old age. In Greek the word for “thing” is rhema, which also means word: no word from God will be without power.

“Handmaid” is doule, a female slave, the lowest standing in a household, taken up willingly. “Be it unto me” is a Greek optative, the mood of wishing: may it happen so. Her last words to the angel echo his own, “according to thy word”.

“With haste” can mean with eagerness as much as speed. The hill country of Judea lay some eighty or more miles south of Nazareth, a journey of four or five days. The town is not named; the tradition placing it at Ein Karem, west of Jerusalem, came centuries later.

She enters the house of Zacharias but greets Elisabeth. The greeting would be the ordinary wish of peace. Luke gives no words for it, because what matters is what happens when it is heard.

“Leaped” is the verb the Greek Old Testament uses for Jacob and Esau struggling in Rebekah’s womb (Genesis 25:22). The angel had promised that John would be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother’s womb (verse 15); here it begins, and his mother is filled too.

“Spake out” renders a verb used in the Greek of Chronicles for the Levites sounding their instruments before the ark (1 Chronicles 16:4–5). Jael (Judges 5:24) and Judith were praised as blessed among women for delivering Israel; Elisabeth gives Mary the same praise.

Some readers hear David before the ark in 2 Samuel 6:9, “How shall the ark of the LORD come to me?”, especially since the ark stayed three months in the house of Obed-edom (6:11), as Mary stays three months (verse 56). The echo is suggestive, not stated. “My Lord” is the title used of God throughout the chapter.

“For joy” is agalliasis, exultation, the root of Mary’s “my spirit hath rejoiced” three verses later (verse 47). Elisabeth describes the movement of her child as joyful, so the first to rejoice at Jesus’ coming is a child not yet born.

“For” can equally be read as “that”: blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment. “Performance” means accomplishment, the carrying through of what was said. Elisabeth speaks of Mary in the third person, as though pronouncing a blessing over her.

The song is called the Magnificat from its first word in the Latin Bible. To “magnify” is to declare great. A few Latin manuscripts give this verse to Elisabeth, but almost every Greek manuscript gives it to Mary.

“Soul” and “spirit” are a Hebrew poetic pair, the same thing said twice, not two parts of her. “God my Saviour” echoes Habakkuk 3:18: “I will joy in the God of my salvation.” The verb shifts to the past tense: her spirit has already rejoiced.

When Leah bore Asher she said, “the daughters will call me blessed” (Genesis 30:13); Mary widens it to “all generations”. “Low estate” is tapeinosis, lowliness or humiliation, a social station, not a mood.

“He that is mighty” echoes Zephaniah 3:17, “the LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty”. Moses told Israel that God “hath done for thee these great and terrible things” (Deuteronomy 10:21). “Holy is his name” comes from Psalm 111:9.

Close to Psalm 103:17: “the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him.” “Fear” is reverence toward God, the posture of those who take him seriously. The mercy is not limited to one generation, including hers.

“Arm” is the Exodus picture of God’s power, the “stretched out arm” of Deuteronomy 5:15. Psalm 89:10 joins arm and scattering: “thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.” “Imagination of their hearts” means the plans they laid.

“Seats” are thrones. Ezekiel 21:26 says, “exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.” Luke returns to the same reversal in Jesus’ own sayings: whoever exalts himself shall be abased (14:11, 18:14).

Psalm 107:9: “he filleth the hungry soul with goodness.” Jesus will say the same thing in Luke’s version of the beatitudes: blessed are you who hunger now, and woe to you who are rich (6:21, 24). Mary’s song anticipates her son’s sermon.

“Holpen” is the old past participle of help. The verb in Greek means to take hold of in order to support, the verb of Isaiah 41:9 in the Greek Old Testament, where God tells Israel his servant, “I have taken thee from the ends of the earth”.

Micah 7:20 ends that prophet’s book: “Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.” The song closes on “for ever”, its farthest horizon.

“Her own house” means her family’s house: she is still betrothed and not yet living with Joseph. In the next chapter she travels to Bethlehem as “his espoused wife” (2:5).

“Full time came” is literally “the time was fulfilled”, Luke’s favoured language of fulfilment, which he uses again for Mary in 2:6. The verse is brief because the angel’s promise has already said everything about this son.

“Shewed great mercy” is literally “magnified his mercy”, the verb of Mary’s “My soul doth magnify” (verse 46). The rejoicing of neighbours fulfils the angel’s “many shall rejoice at his birth” (verse 14).

Circumcision on the eighth day followed Genesis 17:12 and Leviticus 12:3. Old Testament children were usually named at birth, so this is early evidence for naming at circumcision. “They called him” is imperfect: they were going to call him, and were stopped.

“Not so” is a firm no. Luke does not say how Elisabeth knew the name. Zacharias could have written it for her in the months of silence; that is an inference the text leaves room for.

John, Yohanan, was a common name, borne by high priests and Maccabean princes. The objection is not that it is strange but that no one in the family has it. The relatives treat names as family property.

Naming belonged to the father’s authority. When the dying Rachel named her son Benoni, Jacob overruled her and called him Benjamin (Genesis 35:18). The relatives expect the father to settle the dispute, perhaps against the mother.

A “writing table” is a small wooden tablet with a wax surface, written on with a stylus. Everyone marvels, since the parents have agreed on a name no one expected. The father confirms the mother without either being heard by the other.

“Immediately” is parachrema, a word Luke uses more than any other New Testament writer. The Greek has one verb for both mouth and tongue, and the King James adds “loosed” to make sense of it. More than nine months of silence end in praise.

The fear is awe at God’s evident hand in events, not terror. “Noised abroad” means talked over from village to village. The hill country of Judea is the upland around and south of Jerusalem.

Laying things up in the heart is what Mary will do twice in the next chapter (2:19, 51). “The hand of the Lord” is the Old Testament’s phrase for God’s power upon a prophet, used of Elijah when he ran before Ahab’s chariot (1 Kings 18:46).

The song is called the Benedictus from its first word in Latin. A Jewish tradition held that prophecy had ceased in Israel after Malachi; in Luke’s first chapter the Spirit fills Elisabeth, then Zacharias, and prophecy is heard again.

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel” is, almost word for word, the doxology that closes the first and fourth books of the Psalms (41:13, 106:48). “Visited” is the word of Exodus 4:31, when Israel in Egypt heard that the LORD had visited them. “Redeemed” means paid the ransom.

The horn was the image of an animal’s strength, and Psalm 132:17 had said, “There will I make the horn of David to bud.” A priest of Aaron’s line speaks of salvation rising from the royal house of David, not his own.

Peter uses almost the same phrase in Acts 3:21: “spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” Luke writes both books, and both reach back to the whole prophetic line. “Since the world began” means from of old.

Psalm 106:10 describes the Exodus in nearly the same words: “he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.” The enemies are not named, and Zacharias’ hearers would have supplied their own.

Some readers find the family’s names folded into these lines: John means “God is gracious” (mercy), Zacharias means “the LORD remembers” (remember), and Elisabeth, in the next verse, “my God is an oath”. Whether the wordplay is intended is uncertain, but all three are there.

The oath to Abraham was sworn after the binding of Isaac: “By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD” (Genesis 22:16). An oath God swears by himself has nothing greater to appeal to. Abraham is called “our father”, the whole nation’s ancestor.

In Greek “without fear” stands first in the clause, an emphatic place. “Serve” is latreuo, the word for worship and priestly service. A priest speaks of the whole delivered people performing that service.

Zacharias served in the temple one week at a time; he speaks of a service before God “all the days of our life”. “Holiness and righteousness” pair devotion toward God with just dealing among people.

The eight-day-old boy is addressed directly. He will be “the prophet of the Highest”, where Jesus is “the Son of the Highest” (verse 32). “Go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways” combines Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3.

The task is to give knowledge of salvation, not salvation itself. “Remission” is aphesis, release, the word that appears twice in Isaiah’s text when Jesus reads it at Nazareth: “deliverance to the captives” and “set at liberty” (4:18).

“Tender mercy” is literally “the bowels of mercy”, the inward parts regarded as the seat of feeling. “Dayspring” is anatole, sunrise, but the Greek Old Testament uses the same word for the “Branch”, the shoot of David, in Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 3:8.

Isaiah 9:2: “they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” The people are sitting, unable to move in the dark; the verse ends with their feet guided onto a road.

The same words are used of Jesus in 2:40: the child grew and waxed strong in spirit. “Deserts” is plural, the wild country of Judea sloping down to the Dead Sea. “Shewing” is anadeixis, a word used for the public installation of an official.