Luke 2:25-28

Simeon. Συμεών, introduced as a stranger (ἄνθρωπος ἦν). The legendary spirit which loves definite particulars about celebrities of Scripture has tried to fill up the blank. The father of Gamaliel the son of Hillel, one of the seventy translators of the Hebrew Bible, are among the suggestions. A bracketed passage in Euthy. Zig. says, in reference to the latter suggestion, that Simeon alone of the company objected to the rendering of Isaiah 7:14 : “the virgin shall conceive,” and that an angel told him he should live to take the virgin's son into his arms. δίκαιος καὶ εὐλαβής. The evangelist is careful to make known what this man was, while giving no indication who he was (“who they were no man knows, what they were all men know,” inscription on a tombstone in a soldiers' graveyard in Virginia), just and God-fearing, a saint of the O. T. type. προσδεχόμενος παράκλησιν τ. Ἰ.: an earnest believer in the Messianic hope, and fervently desiring its early fulfilment. Its fulfilment would be Israel's consolation. The Messianic hope, the ideal of a good time coming, was the child of present sorrow sin and misery prevalent, all things out of joint. The keynote of this view is struck in Isaiah 40:1 : “comfort ye”. παρακαλεῖτε. The Rabbis called Messiah the Comforter, Menahem. Cf. προσδεχ. λύτρωσιν. in Luke 2:38.