Lucas 1

Zacharias prophesies

67 Now his father Zacharias was filled with Holy Spirit and prophesied saying:

68 "Blessed be the Lord,*They spoke Hebrew in Judea, and Zacharias probably said "Jehovah". the God of Israel,

because He has visited and provided redemption for His people;

69 and has raised up a horn of deliverance for us

in the house of His servant David

70 —just as He spoke through the mouth of His holy prophets from antiquity—

71 deliverance from our enemies and out of the hand of all who hate us;*Zacharias knew that the Messiah would soon be born, but was evidently expecting a physical, political kingdom that would deliver them from Roman domination. For that matter, Jesus' own disciples evidently shared the same expectation.

72 to use mercy with our fathers,

even to remember His Holy covenant,

73 the oath that He swore to our father Abraham;

74 to grant to us (having been rescued from the hand of our enemies) to serve Him without fear,

75 in holiness and righteousness*‘To serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness’—that is what life is supposed to be about, but is only possible because the Messiah came. before Him

all the days of our life.

76 And you, child, will be called Prophet of the Most High,

because you will go before the face of the Lord*Zacharias is affirming that Jesus is ‘the Lord’ and ‘the Most High’!

to prepare His ways,

77 to give a knowledge of salvation to His people

by the forgiveness of their sins,*In this paragraph Zacharias emphasizes the spiritual benefits of Messiah’s coming.

78 through the merciful compassions of our God,

with which the divine Dawn has contemplated us,*Without doubt, the coming of the Messiah, with all that involved, represented the dawning of a new Day for this world. Instead of "has contemplated us", less than 0.5% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, have "will contemplate us" (to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.). The difference may appear to be small, but I take the point to be that the Messiah was already in the virgin Mary’s womb—the incarnation was irreversibly underway.

79 to give light to those who are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace."