Luke 1:8-12
The lot fell to him
A priest served at the incense altar perhaps once in a lifetime, and the whole multitude was praying outside. He sees the messenger standing on the right side and is troubled, and fear falls on him.
People of the Bible
Zechariah the priest
Asked for evidence and was given nine months of silence, and used the first words he got back to sing.
Zechariah is a priest of the course of Abia, and on the one day of his life when the lot falls to him to burn incense in the temple, a messenger is standing on the right side of the altar. He is told his prayer is heard and that his wife will bear a son. His reply is reasonable and fatal: whereby shall I know this, for I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years. He is struck dumb until the day it happens, and comes out unable to give the blessing the crowd is waiting for.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Zechariah the priest
- 01
- 02
Luke 1:18-22
Whereby shall I know this
He asks for a sign and receives one he did not want. When he comes out he cannot speak, and the people perceive he has seen a vision because he beckons to them and remains speechless.
- 03
Luke 1:59-64
His name is John
On the eighth day they try to name the boy after him. He asks for a writing tablet and writes five words, and immediately his mouth is opened and his tongue loosed.
- 04
Luke 1:67-79
The dayspring from on high
Filled with the Holy Ghost he prophesies: a horn of salvation in the house of David, the oath sworn to Abraham, and a child who will go before to give knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins.
Why it matters
The contrast with Mary is deliberate and Luke builds it carefully. She asks how, he asks how shall I know, and only one of them is silenced. What makes him more than a cautionary tale is what he does with the silence: when his tongue is loosed the first thing out of it is not a complaint but the Benedictus, a song about a horn of salvation raised up in the house of David, and about his own son going before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
