Lukas 1:13-15

1:13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, ¹  and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son; you ²  will name him John. ³  1:14 Joy and gladness will come ⁴  to you, and many will rejoice at ⁵  his birth, ⁶  1:15 for he will be great in the sight of ⁷  the Lord. He ⁸  must never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. ⁹ 

[1:13]  ¹ tn The passive means that the prayer was heard by God.

[1:13]  sn Your prayer has been heard. Zechariah’s prayer while offering the sacrifice would have been for the nation, but the answer to the prayer also gave them a long hoped-for child, a hope they had abandoned because of their old age.

[1:13]  ² tn Grk “a son, and you”; καί (kai) has not been translated. Instead a semicolon is used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[1:13]  ³ tn Grk “you will call his name John.” The future tense here functions like a command (see ExSyn 569-70). This same construction occurs in v. 31.

[1:13]  sn “Do not be afraid…you must call his name John.” This is a standard birth announcement (see Gen 16:11; Isa 7:14; Matt 1:21; Luke 1:31).

[1:14]  ⁴ tn Grk “This will be joy and gladness.”

[1:14]  ⁵ tn Or “because of.”

[1:14]  ⁶ tn “At his birth” is more precise as the grammatical subject (1:58), though “at his coming” is a possible force, since it is his mission, as the following verses note, that will really bring joy.

[1:15]  ⁷ tn Grk “before.”

[1:15]  ⁸ tn Grk “and he”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun in the translation.

[1:15]  ⁹ tn Grk “even from his mother’s womb.” While this idiom may be understood to refer to the point of birth (“even from his birth”), Luke 1:41 suggests that here it should be understood to refer to a time before birth.

[1:15]  sn He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. This is the language of the birth of a prophet (Judg 13:5, 7; Isa 49:1; Jer 1:5; Sir 49:7); see 1:41 for the first fulfillment.