Luke 1:34-38

3. The manner in which the message was received: Luke 1:34-38. 34. “ Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? 35. And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. 36. And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 38. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. ”

Mary's question does not express doubt: it simply asks for an explanation, and this very request implies faith. Her question is the legitimate expression of the astonishment of a pure conscience.

We observe in the angel's reply the parallelism which among the Hebrews is always the expression of exalted feeling and the mark of the poetic style. The angel touches upon the most sacred of mysteries, and his speech becomes a song. Are the terms come upon, overshadow, borrowed, as Bleek thinks, from the image of a bird covering her eggs or brooding over her young? Comp. Genesis 1:3. It appears to us rather that these expressions allude to the cloud which covered the camp of the Israelites in the desert. In Luke 9:34, as here, the evangelist describes the approach of this mysterious cloud by the term ἐπισκιάζειν.

The Holy Ghost denotes here the divine power, the life-giving breath which calls into developed existence the germ of a human personality slumbering in Mary's womb. This germ is the link which unites Jesus to human nature, and makes Him a member of the race He comes to save. Thus in this birth the miracle of the first creation is repeated on a scale of greater power. Two elements concurred in the formation of man: a body taken from the ground, and the divine breath. With these two elements correspond here the germ derived from the womb of Mary, and the Holy Ghost who fertilizes it. The absolute purity of this birth results, on the one hand, from the perfect holiness of the divine principle which is its efficient cause; on the other, from the absence of every impure motion in her who becomes a mother under the power of such a principle.

By the word also (“therefore also ”) the angel alludes to his preceding words: He shall be called the Son of the Highest. We might paraphrase it: “And it is precisely for this reason that I said to thee, that...” We have then here, from the mouth of the angel himself, an authentic explanation of the term Son of God in the former part of his message. After this explanation, Mary could only understand the title in this sense: a human being of whose existence God Himself is the immediate author. It does not convey the idea of pre-existence, but it implies more than the term Messiah, which only refers to His mission. The word ὑψίστου, of the Highest, also refers to the term υἱὸς ὑψίστου, Son of the Highest, Luke 1:32, and explains it. Bleek, following the Peschito, Tertullian, etc., makes ἅγιον the predicate of κληθήσεται, and υἱὸς Θεοῦ in apposition with ἅγιον : “Wherefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, Son of God.” But with the predicate holy, the verb should have been, not “ shall be called,” but shall be. For holy is not a title. Besides, the connection with Luke 1:32 will not allow any other predicate to be given to shall be called than Son of God. The subject of the phrase is therefore the complex term τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον, the holy thing conceived in thee, and more especially ἅγιον, the holy; this adjective is taken as a substantive. As the adjective of γεννώμενον, taken substantively, it would of necessity be preceded by the article. The words ἐκ σοῦ are a gloss.

What is the connection between this miraculous birth of Jesus and His perfect holiness? The latter does not necessarily result from the former. For holiness is a fact of volition, not of nature. How could we assign any serious meaning to the moral struggles in the history of Jesus, the temptation, for example, if His perfect holiness was the necessary consequence of His miraculous birth? But it is not so. The miraculous birth was only the negative condition of the spotless holiness of Jesus. Entering into human life in this way, He was placed in the normal condition of man before his fall, and put in a position to fulfil the career originally set before man, in which he was to advance from innocence to holiness. He was simply freed from the obstacle which, owing to the way in which we are born, hinders us from accomplishing this task. But in order to change this possibility into a reality, Jesus had to exert every instant His own free will, and to devote Himself continually to the service of good and the fulfilment of the task assigned Him, namely, “the keeping of His Father's commandment.” His miraculous birth, therefore, in no way prevented this conflict from being real. It gave Him liberty not to sin, but did not take away from Him the liberty of sinning.

Mary did not ask for a sign; the angel gives her one of his own accord. This sign, it is clear, is in close connection with the promise just made to her. When she beholds in Elizabeth the realization of this promised sign, her faith will be thoroughly confirmed. ᾿Ιδὸύ, behold, expresses its unexpectedness. Καί before αὐτή, she also, brings out the analogy between the two facts thus brought together.

Mary's being related to Elizabeth in no way proves, as Schleiermacher thought, that Mary did not belong to the tribe of Judah. There was no law to oblige an Israelitish maiden to marry into her own tribe; Mary's father, even if he was of the tribe of Judah, might therefore have espoused a woman of the tribe of Levi. Could it be from this passage that Keim derives his assertion, that the priestly origin of Mary is indicated in Luke (Luke 1:33)? The dative γήρᾳ in the T. R. is only found in some MSS. All the other documents have γῆρει, from the form γῆρος.

In Luke 1:37 the angel refers the two events thus announced to the common cause which explains them both the boundless omnipotence of God. That is the rock of faith. ᾿Αδυνατεῖν signifies, properly, to be powerless. And Meyer maintains that this must be its meaning here, and that ῥῆμα is to be taken in its proper sense of word. In that case we should have to give the preference to the Alex. reading τοῦ Θεοῦ : “No word proceeding from God shall remain powerless.” But this meaning is far-fetched. Παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ cannot depend naturally either on ῥῆμα or ἀδυνατήσει. Matthew 17:20 proves that the verb ἀδυνατεῖν also signifies, in the Hellenistic dialect, to be impossible. The sense therefore is, “Nothing shall be impossible.” Παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ, with God, indicates the sphere in which alone this word is true. As though the angel said, The impossible is not divine. ῾Ρῆμα, as דָּבָר, H1821, a thing, in so far as announced. In reference to this concise vigorous expression of biblical supernaturalism, Oosterzee says: “The laws of nature are not chains which the Divine Legislator has laid upon Himself; they are threads which He holds in His hand, and which He shortens or lengthens at will.”

God's message by the mouth of the angel was not a command. The part Mary had to fulfil made no demands on her. It only remained, therefore, for Mary to consent to the consequences of the divine offer. She gives this consent in a word at once simple and sublime, which involved the most extraordinary act of faith that a woman ever consented to accomplish. Mary accepts the sacrifice of that which is dearer to a young maiden than her very life, and thereby becomes pre-eminently the heroine of Israel, the ideal daughter of Zion, the perfect type of human receptivity in regard to the divine work. We see here what exquisite fruits the lengthened work of the Holy Spirit under the old covenant had produced in true Israelites. The word ἰδού, behold, does not here express surprise, but rather the offer of her entire being. Just as Abraham, when he answers God with, Behold, here I am (Genesis 22, Behold, I), Mary places herself at God's disposal. The evangelist shows his tact in the choice of the aorist γένοιτο. The present would have signified, “Let it happen to me this very instant!” The aorist leaves the choice of the time to God.

What exquisite delicacy this scene displays! What simplicity and majesty in the dialogue! Not one word too many, not one too few. A narrative so perfect could only have emanated from the holy sphere within which the mystery was accomplished. A later origin would inevitably have betrayed itself by some foreign element. Hear the Protevangelium of James, which dates from the first part of the second century: “Fear not, said the angel to Mary; for thou hast found grace before the Master of all things, and thou shalt conceive by His word. Having heard that, she doubted and said within herself: Shall I conceive of the Lord, of the living God, and shall I give birth as every woman gives birth? And the angel of the Lord said to her: No, not thus, Mary, for the power of God...,” etc.