Luke 1:11-17

Ver. 11. Here, with the appearance of the angel, begins the marvellous character of the story which lays it open to the suspicion of criticism. And if, indeed, the Christian dispensation were nothing more than the natural development of the human consciousness, advancing by its own laws, we should necessarily and unhesitatingly reject as fictitious this supernatural element, and at the same time everything else in the Gospel of a similar character. But if Christianity was an entirely new beginning (Verny) in history, the second and final creation of man, it was natural that an interposition on so grand a scale should be accompanied by a series of particular interpositions. It was even necessary. For how were the representatives of the ancient order of things, who had to co-operate in the new work, to be initiated into it, and their attachment won to it, except by this means?

According to the Scripture, we are surrounded by angels (2 Kings 6:17; Psa 34:8), whom God employs to watch over us; but in our ordinary condition we want the sense necessary to perceive their presence. For that, a condition of peculiar receptivity is required. This condition existed in Zacharias at this time. It had been created in him by the solemnity of the place, by the sacredness of the function he was about to perform, by his lively sympathy with all this people who were imploring Heaven for national deliverance, and, last of all, by the experience of his own domestic trial, the feeling of which was to be painfully revived by the favour about to be shown him. Under the influence of all these circumstances combined, that internal sense which puts man in contact with the higher world was awakened in him. But the necessity of this inward predisposition in no way proves that the vision of Zacharias was merely the result of a high state of moral excitement. Several particulars in the narrative make this explanation inadmissible, particularly these two: the difficulty with which Zacharias puts faith in the promise made to him, and the physical chastisement which is inflicted on him for his unbelief. These facts, in any case, render a simple psychological explanation impossible, and oblige the denier of the objectivity of the appearance to throw himself upon the mythical interpretation.

The term ἄγγελος κυρίου, angel of the Lord, may be regarded as a kind of proper name, and we may translate the angel of the Lord, notwithstanding the absence of the article. But since, when once this personage is introduced, the word angel is preceded by the article (Luke 1:13), it is more natural to translate here an angel.

The entrance to the temple facing the east, Zacharias, on entering, had on his right the table of shew-bread, placed on the north side; on his left the candelabrum, placed on the south side; and before him the golden altar, which occupied the end of the Holy Place, in front of the veil that hung between this part of the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies. The expression, on the right side of the altar, must be explained according to the point of view of Zacharias; the angel stood, therefore, between the altar and the shew-bread table. The fear of Zacharias proceeds from the consciousness of sin, which is immediately awakened in the human mind when a supernatural manifestation puts it in direct contact with the divine world. The expression φόβος ἐπέπεσεν is a Hebraism (Gen 15:12).

Was it morning or evening? Meyer concludes, from the connection between the entrance of Zacharias into the temple and the drawing of the lot (Luke 1:9), that it was morning. This proof is not very conclusive. Nevertheless, the supposition of Meyer is in itself the most probable.

The message of the angel: Luke 1:13-17. “ But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John 14. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 15. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 16. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 17. And he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. ”

The angel begins by reassuring Zacharias (Luke 1:13); then he describes the person of the son of Zacharias (Luke 1:14-15), and his mission (Luke 1:16-17).

In the 13th verse the angel tells Zacharias that he has not come on an errand of judgment, but of favour; comp. Daniel 10:12.

The prayer of Zacharias to which the angel alludes would be, in the opinion of many, an entreaty for the advent of the Messiah. This, it is said, is the only solicitude worthy of a priest in such a place and at such a time. But the preceding context (Luke 1:7) is in no way favourable to this explanation, nor is that which follows (Luke 1:13 b); for the sense of the καί is most certainly this: “ And so thy wife Elizabeth...” Further, the two personal pronouns, σοῦ and σοί, “ thy wife shall bear thee,” as also the σοί, “ thou shalt have (Luke 1:14), prove positively the entirely personal character of the prayer and its answer. The objection that, according to Luke 1:7, he could no longer expect to have a child, and consequently could not pray with this design, exaggerates the meaning of this word.

The phrase καλεῖν ὄνομα is a Hebraism; it signifies, properly, to call any one by his name. The name ᾿Ιωάννης, John, is composed of יהוה, H3378 and חָנַן, H2858: Jehovah shows grace. It is not the character of the preaching of this person which is expressed by this name; it belongs to the entire epoch of which his appearance is the signal.

The 14th verse describes the joy which his birth will occasion; it will extend beyond the narrow limits of the family circle, and be spread over a large part of the nation. There is an evident rising towards a climax in this part of the message: 1st, a Song of Song of Solomon 2 d, a son great before God; 3d, the forerunner of the Messiah. ᾿Αγαλλίασις expresses the transports which a lively emotion of joy produces. The beginning of the fulfilment of this promise is related, Luke 1:64-66. The reading γενέσει is certainly preferable to γεννήσει, which is perhaps borrowed from the use of the verb γεννᾶν (Luke 1:13).

The ardour of this private and public joy is justified in the 15th verse by the eminent qualities which this child will possess (γάρ). The only greatness which can rejoice the heart of such a man as Zacharias is a greatness which the Lord Himself recognises as such: great before the Lord. This greatness is evidently that which results from personal holiness and the moral authority accompanying it.

The two και following may be paraphrased by: and in fact.

The child is ranked beforehand amongst that class of specially consecrated men, who may be called the heroes of theocratic religion, the Nazarites. The ordinance respecting the kind of life to be led by these men is found in Numbers 6:1-21. The vow of the Nazarite was either temporary or for life. The Old Testament offers us two examples of this second form: Samson (Jdg 13:5-7) and Samuel (1Sa 1:11). It was a kind of voluntary lay priesthood. By abstaining from all the comforts and conveniences of civilised life, such as wine, the bath, and cutting the hair, and in this way approaching the state of nature, the Nazarite presented himself to the world as a man filled with a lofty thought, which absorbed all his interest, as the bearer of a word of God which was hidden in his heart (Lange). Σικέρα denotes all kinds of fermented drink extracted from fruit, except that derived from the grape. In place of this means of sensual excitement, John will have a more healthful stimulant, the source of all pure exaltation, the Holy Spirit. The same contrast occurs in Ephesians 5:18: “ Be not drunk with wine..., but be filled with the Spirit. ” And in his case this state will begin from his mother's womb: ἔτι, even, is not put for ἤδη, already; this word signifies, whilst he is yet in his mother's womb. The fact related (Luke 1:41-44) is the beginning of the accomplishment of this promise, but it in no way exhausts its meaning.

Vers. 16, 17. The mission of the child; it is described (Luke 1:16) in a general and abstract way: he will bring back, turn; this is the הֵשִׁיב of the Old Testament. This expression implies that the people are sunk in estrangement from God.

The 17th verse specifies and developes this mission. The pronoun αὐτός, he, brings out prominently the person of John with a view to connect him with the person of the Lord, who is to follow him (αὐτοῦ). The relation between these two personages thus set forth is expressed by the two prepositions, πρό, before (in the verb), and ἐνώπιον, under the eyes of; he who precedes walks under the eyes of him that comes after him. The Alex. reading προσελεύσεται has no meaning.

The pronoun αὐτοῦ (before him) has been referred by some directly to the person of the Messiah. An attempt is made to justify this meaning, by saying that this personage is always present to the mind of the Israelite when he says “ he. ” But this meaning is evidently forced; the pronoun him can only refer to the principal word of the preceding verse: the Lord their God. The prophecy (Mal 3:1), of which this passage is an exact reproduction, explains it: “ Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in. ” According to these words, therefore, in the eyes of the prophet the Messiah is no other than Jehovah Himself. For it is Jehovah who speaks in this prophecy. It is He who causes Himself to be preceded in His appearance as the Messiah by a forerunner who receives (Luke 4:5) the name of Elijah, and who is to prepare His way. It is He who, under the names of Adonaï (the Lord), and the Angel of the covenant, comes to take possession of His temple. From the Old as well as the New Testament point of view, the coming of the Messiah is therefore the supreme theophany. Apart from this way of regarding them, the words of Malachi and those of the angel in our 17th verse are inexplicable. See an αὐτοῦ very similar to this in the strictly analogous passage, John 12:41 (comp. with Isaiah 6).

It appears from several passages in the Gospels that the people, with their learned men, expected, before the coming of the Messiah, a personal appearance of Elijah, or of some other prophet like him, probably both (John 1:21-22; Matthew 16:14; Matthew 17:10; Matthew 27:47). The angel spiritualizes this grossly literal hope: “Thy son shall be another Elijah.” The Spirit designates the divine breath in general; and the term power, which is added to it, indicates the special character of the Spirit's influence in John, as formerly in Elijah. The preposition ἐν, in, makes the Holy Spirit the element into which the ministry of John is to strike its roots.

The picture of the effect produced by this ministry is also borrowed from Malachi, who had said: “ He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. ” The LXX., and, after their example, many modern interpreters, have applied this description to the re-establishment of domestic peace in Israel. But nothing either in the ministry of Elijah or of John the Baptist had any special aim in this direction. Besides, such a result has no direct connection with the preparation for the work of the Messiah, and bears no proportion to the threat which follows in the prophetic word: “ Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. ” Lastly, the thought, “ and the heart of the children to their fathers,” taken in this sense, could not have substituted for it in the discourse of the angel, “ and the rebellious to the wisdom of the just,” unless we suppose that in every Israelitish family the children are necessarily rebellious and their parents just. Some explain it thus: “He will bring back to God all together, both the hearts of the fathers and those of the children;” but this does violence to the expression employed. Calvin and others give the word heart the sense of feeling: “He will bring back the pious feeling of the fathers [faithful to God] to the present generation [the disobedient children], and turn the latter to the wisdom of the former.” But can “ to turn their hearts towards ” mean “to awaken dispositions in”? For this sense εἰς would have been necessary instead of ἐπί (τέκνα); besides, we cannot give the verb ἐπιστρέψαι such a different sense from ἐπιστρέψει in Luke 1:16. The true sense of these words, it seems to me, may be gathered from other prophetic passages, such as these: Isaiah 29:22, “ Jacob shall no more be ashamed, neither shall his face wax pale, when he seeth his children become the work of my hands. ” Isaiah 63:16, “ Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not; Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer! ” Abraham and Jacob, in the place of their rest, had blushed at the sight of their guilty descendants, and turned away their faces from them; but now they would turn again towards them with satisfaction in consequence of the change produced by the ministry of John. The words of Jesus (John 8:56), “ Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad,” proves that there is a reality underlying these poetic images. With this meaning the modification introduced into the second member of the phrase is easily explained. The children who will turn towards their fathers (Malachi), are the Jews of the time of the Messiah, the chilaren of the obedient, who return to the wisdom of the pious patriarchs (Luke). Is not this modification made with a view to enlarge the application of this promise? The expression, the rebellious, may, in fact, comprehend not only the Jews, but also the heathen. The term ἀπειθεῖς, rebellious, is applied by Paul (Romans 11) to both equally. Φρόνησις δικαίων, the wisdom of the just, denotes that healthy appreciation of things which is the privilege of upright hearts.

The preposition of rest, ἐν, is joined to a verb of motion, ἐπιστρέψαι, to express the fact that this wisdom is a state in which men remain when once they have entered it.

It will be John's mission, then, to reconstitute the moral unity of the people by restoring the broken relation between the patriarchs and their descendants. The withered branches will be quickened into new life by sap proceeding from the trunk. This restoration of the unity of the elect people will be their true preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

Some interpreters have proposed to make ἀπειθεῖς the object of ἑτοιμάσαι, and this last a second infinitive of purpose, parallel to ἐπιστρέψαι : “And to prepare, by the wisdom of the just, the rebellious, as a people made ready for the Lord.” It is thought that in this way a tautology is avoided between the two words ἑτοιμάσαι, to prepare, and κατεσκευασμένον, made ready, disposed. But these two terms have distinct meanings. The first bears on the relation of John to the people; the second on the relation of the people to the Messiah. John prepares the people in such a way that they are disposed to receive the Messiah.

Of course it is the ideal task of the forerunner that is described here. In reality this plan will succeed only in so far as the people shall consent to surrender themselves to the divine action.

Is it probable that after the ministry of Jesus, when the unbelief of the people was already an historical fact, a later writer would have thought of giving such an optimist colouring to the discourse of the angel?