Luke 1:5-25

Zacharias Goes Up to the Temple and Is Promised a Son Who Will Prepare the Way for God's Messiah, and He is Made Dumb in God's Presence (1:5-25).

From this point on until the end of chapter 2 all is written in Aramaic Greek in vivid contrast to the classical Greek of Luke 1:1, and the more general Greek that follows. This may partly reflect Luke's sources, but he later has no difficulty in turning his Aramaic sources into more general Greek. Thus we must see the Aramaic Greek here as deliberately retained and expanded on in order to give atmosphere to the story. It reflects the old from which the new will come.

For four hundred years there had been no prophet in Israel. Heaven had been silent, and the people had been waiting for the fulfilment of the last words of the last of the prophets, who had declared on God's behalf, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5). And now it is being clearly indicated that those dark days were ended, and God was about to act. Another has come ‘in the Spirit and power of Elijah' to fulfil the words of Malachi.

It is indeed interesting that those words were spoken by a man who was called Malachi - ‘My messenger'. And now another will arise of whom it is said that he is ‘My messenger' (Luke 7:27; compare Matthew 11:10; Mark 1:2). In the purposes of God, after the passage of the silent years, one messenger takes up where another has left off.