Luke 1:5 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Luke 1:5-25)Luke’s orderly declaration of those things begins with the annunciation of the birth of John the Baptist. John will be the last of the Old Testament prophets and the first of the New. In a sense he will be the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, for he will be the forerunner of the Christ, who will prepare the way before him (Matthew 11:11). But all the emphasis will fall on the Lord Jesus, who was born after John in time, but who in reality was before him (John 1:15), and is preferred before him. John would concede all pre-eminence to Christ, and take for himself the most lowly of positions (John 1:27); he knew he was called to be ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord’ (John 1:23), as Isaiah had said. This took place in the days of herod. Which herod? This is herod the Great, the son of Antipater. Edersheim tells us that with the help of the Roman sword Antipater became ruler over Idumea – what remained of the Edomite kingdom – and was later made Procurator of Judaea. His son herod is described by Hendriksen as capable, crafty, and cruel. After much intrigue and in confusion of the times, he was made King of Judea by the Roman senate. This was a title in name only to begin with, and he needed to conquer the region which he at first did with the help of Roman forces. He is the herod responsible for the slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2:1-18).Zacharias was a serving priest, who belonged to the course of Abia, or Abijah. This was one of the twenty-four divisions of the descendants of Aaron appointed by King David (1 Chronicles 24:1-19). The priests were assigned to these divisions by lot, in which they were to serve the Lord. It is pointed out that after the Babylonian exile, only four of these divisions were represented by those who returned to Jerusalem with Ezra (Ezra 2:36-39), but from these four divisions, the whole twenty-four seem to have been reconstituted, so that Zacharias is here said to belong to the eighth division, that of Abia. A priests served for a week as part of his tour of duty. Both Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth were descended from Aaron, though, as Hendriksen tells us, there was no necessity that a priest marry within his own tribe (Leviticus 21:7-14). The meaning of their names is: Zachariah – ‘Remembered of the Lord’, and Elisabeth – ‘God is my oath’.