Luke 1:67-75 meaning

There are no apparent parallel gospel accounts of Luke 1:67-75.

In Luke 1:67-75, Zacharias, filled with the Holy Spirit, begins an extensive prophecy. This portion of Zacharias’s prophecy pertains to the generation of Israel who was alive at that time. In it, he says that God has visited and redeemed His people by raising up a mighty Savior from the house of David, in fulfillment of His covenant promises to deliver Israel from the hand of their enemies, so that they might serve Him fearlessly in holiness and righteousness all their days.

On the eighth day of his son’s life, Zacharias and Elizabeth had him circumcised and they named him John (Luke 1:59-63). Many of their neighbors and relatives were present to witness and celebrate this joyful occasion for the elderly couple.

Zacharias obeyed the angel Gabriel’s instruction (Luke 1:13) and confirmed: “His name is John” (Luke 1:63) by writing it on a tablet. Immediately the priest, who had been stricken silent and mute for the past ten months (Luke 1:20), was suddenly allowed to speak again.

“And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to speak in praise of God.”
(Luke 1:64)

The recovery of Zacharias’s speaking abilities and the birth of his and Elizabeth’s baby, miraculously born despite the old age of his parents, was much talked about all throughout the Judean hill country (Luke 1:66). Everyone who heard these wonderful stories wondered themselves who this child might become (Luke 1:67).

But Zacharias prophesied who this child would be, and the astonishing things that the Lord was about to do in Israel.

Luke provides a record of Zacharias’s prophecy:

And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying: (v 67).

The pronoun—his—in verse 67 refers to John, Zacharias’s baby son.

John’s father, Zacharias, was not only able to speak again after he obeyed the angel’s instruction about what he was to name his son, he was also filled with the Holy Spirit.

This meant that Zacharias was influenced and empowered by God’s Spirit and that the things he did or said in this moment were directly guided and/or led by the Lord Himself.

The angel Gabriel said that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit even when he was still in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15). And while still in Elizabeth’s womb, in the six month of pregnancy, John leapt for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. He recognized the voice of the mother of the Messiah (Luke 1:41). At that moment, Elizabeth—John’s mother and Zacharias’s wife—was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied about Mary and her special baby (Luke 1:41-45).

Now Zacharias—John’s father and Elizabeth’s husband—was filled with the Holy Spirit and he too prophesied, saying many things about God’s plan for Israel and the prophetic role that his baby son would play.

Zacharias’s prophecy can be divided into two halves.

The first half of what Zacharias prophesied concerned what God was doing in the nation of Israel and the fulfillment of His covenants. The first half of Zacharias’s prophecy is versess 68-75 and is the subject of this section of commentary.

The second half of what Zacharias prophesied specifically focused on who his baby son would become and what he would accomplish as the Messianic forerunner. The second half of Zacharias’s prophecy is Luke 1:76-79. This part will be the subject of the next section of The Bible Says commentary.

Zacharias’s prophecy begins with a word of praise:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people (v 68).

The Greek term Luke used which is translated as blessed is unique in his gospel account. The only place it is found in Luke is here in verse 68. It means “praise.” It is a term of pure worship of who the Lord is.

Zacharias describes the Lord as: God of Israel. Israel refers to the person of Israel—Isaac’s son, Jacob whom God renamed Israel (Genesis 32:28), and it refers to the people of Israel—those who descended from the person of Israel.

The Lord was the God of Israel the person (Genesis 33:20) and the Lord was the God of Israel the people (Jeremiah 31:1).

In describing the Lord as God of Israel, Zacharias is speaking in ethnic and nationalistic terms. This description establishes the tone for this prophecy to concern the Jewish people.

The second line of verse 68 introduces the main theme of Zacharias’s entire prophecy which concerns the fulfillment of the Lord God’s promise to redeem and save Israel.

For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people.

The word—for—connects the two lines of verse 68. The reason Zacharias praises God is because He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people.

The pronouns—He, His, and Him (v 74)—throughout Zacharias’s prophecy refer to the Lord God of Israel.

Also, the first—person plural pronouns—us and we (v 74)—refer to two groups throughout Zacharias’s prophecy.

• In a general sense, the pronouns—us and we—refer to God’s people throughout their history.
• In a particular sense, the pronoun—us and we—refer to the generation of Israelites who were alive at the time Zacharias uttered his prophecy.

Zacharias said that God has visited us because following centuries of silence God had now, in recent months, interacted with Israel once again.

• First, God sent Gabriel His angel to announce to Zacharias the birth of the Messianic forerunner (Luke 1:11-20).

• Then six months later, God sent Gabriel to announce the birth of the Messiah to his wife’s cousin—Mary (Luke 1:26-38).

• Next, a few days or weeks after that, the Holy Spirit had filled Elizabeth to prophesy (Luke 1:41-45) and may have possibly inspired Mary’s song of praise (Luke 1:46-55).

• And now three months and a week later, God has loosed Zacharias’s tongue and filled him with the Holy Spirit to prophesy (Luke 1:59-79).

The bullet points listed above are all ways God has already visited us—the present generation of Israel.

But even as Zacharias is recounting the recent past, at the same time he is also prophesying about the future—and the near future at that. This is because much of Zacharias’s prophecy is uttered in what is called the prophetic—past tense. The prophetic—past tense uses past tense verbs to describe future events. With the prophetic—past, the certainty of the future events they describe is so concrete that these events are described in a past tense as though they already have happened.

Even though God had in the distant past visited Israel, God was also about to visit them in the immediate near future in a way most profound.

God was about to personally visit us as a human.

In less than three months from when Zacharias uttered this prophecy, God would be born in a Bethlehem stable (Luke 2:6). This Child would not only be the Messiah but also the Son of God. And His name was Jesus.

Jesus would be the Word made Flesh (John 1:14) and the fullness of God in human form (Colossians 1:19). Jesus was Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’ (Matthew 1:23).

The Son of God’s personal visit to us, as Zacharias foretold, has accomplished redemption for His people.

Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man (the Messiah) came to redeem Israel from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Jesus said:

“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
(Luke 19:10)

Jesus accomplished this by perfectly fulfilling the Law by faith (Matthew 5:17) and then offering His life as a sacrifice for Israel’s (and the whole world’s) sins through His death on the cross (John 19:30). Anyone who believes in His name will be redeemed and be born into God’s family (John 1:12-13, Acts 4:12, Romans 11:26-27).

Incredibly, God’s offer of the Gift of Eternal Life—the eternal redemption—is offered to not just Israel, but the entire world (1 John 2:2). Paul wrote:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
(Romans 1:16)

See also: “Is the Gift of Eternal Life Really Available to Everyone?”

Jesus will also redeem Israel from their political enemies.

The people of Israel, from the beginning of their nationhood, have often been oppressed by political adversaries such as the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Greeks. At the time of Zacharias’s prophecy, Israel was dominated and occupied by the Romans.

Many Jews anticipated the Messiah to come and liberate His people from their Roman oppressors when He established His kingdom.

Jesus offered His kingdom to Israel (Matthew 4:17), but sadly Israel did not recognize their King (Luke 19:44, John 1:11) and they rejected and crucified Him (John 19:14-15). All of this was predicted centuries before in Isaiah’s fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12). Had His people received Jesus as their King, He would have established His kingdom, and Israel would have been politically redeemed and experienced political and spiritual peace. Jesus alluded to this when He wept over Jerusalem:

“If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.”
(Luke 19:42)

It broke Jesus’s heart that Israel rejected Him as their king (Matthew 23:27, Luke 19:41).

When Jesus returns to earth again, He will redeem Israel from their political enemies (Psalm 2:6-9, Revelation 19:11-19) and establish His kingdom in the new earth (Revelation 21:1-3).

Zacharias continues by connecting the recent and near future events with the Davidic Covenant:

And has raised up a horn of salvation for us
In the house of David His servant—
As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old— (vv 69-70).

Zacharias proclaims that God has raised up a horn of salvation for us—the Israelites who were living when he uttered this.

Powerful animals (oxen, rams, or bulls) had horns which they used to defend themselves or assert their dominance. Horns were symbols of their strength, power, or victory.

Raising up a horn after a battle was done to celebrate the triumph over the foe. Thus, the expression horn of salvation was a Hebraic metaphor for God’s power to save (2 Samuel 22:3, Psalm 18:2).

When Zacharias said God has raised up a horn of salvation for us (v 69), he was declaring how God has won the battle over Israel’s foes.

But in a deeper sense, the term a horn of salvation refers to Jesus, the Messiah, whom God raised up on the cross (John 3:14-15) to defeat the greatest enemies, which are sin and death.

Zacharias foresees that the horn of salvation has been raised up for us in the house of David, His Servant (v 69).

In saying this, Zacharias explicitly connected this horn of salvation (Messiah) to the Davidic Covenant.

The expression, His Servant (or “My Servant”), is a clear Messianic title (Isaiah 42:1 49:3, 49:6, 50:10, 52:13, 53:11).

The Davidic Covenant is found in 2 Samuel 7:8-16. In the Davidic Covenant, the LORD promised King David that he would have a descendant who would reign forever, so that “your house and your kingdom shall be endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 2:16).

Zacharias foresees that the horn of salvation has been raised up for us in the house of David, His Servant (v 69).

Zacharias then pointed out that God is raising up the Messiah in the immediate future, and that what is happening now was foretold by the prophets long ago. The translators try to capture Zacharias’s connection of a) the present events in his lifetime plus those that were to soon occur with b) the prophets of old, by using interjecting dash marks — . The point is that what the prophets foretold long ago will be fulfilled through the events currently unfolding.

Right after Zacharias’s claim that God has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant (v 69), the translators insert a dash — . Following this dash is the prophetic connection, which is followed by another dash — .

—As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old— (v 70).

The emphasis is that God is now sending the Messiah to redeem Israel, whom He told us about through the utterances of His holy prophets from long ago. This is of enormous significance. The prophetic utterances went back centuries, even millennia. People had longed for their fulfillment for ages and ages—and now they were coming to pass.

His holy prophets from of old include Moses, Nathan who delivered the Davidic Covenant to the king (2 Samuel 7:4-17), as well as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc. All these holy prophets spoke God’s words from their mouths to the people of Israel about the Messiah, who is about to visit Israel; for Zacharias the priest, this includes him, which is why he says us.

Following this interjection, Zacharias resumes his own prophetic utterance about what the coming of the Messiah means for Israel.

Zacharias mentions three purposes the Messiah’s coming will accomplish for Israel.

1. Salvation from our enemies,
   And from the hand of all who hate us (v 71).
   
   
2. To show mercy toward our fathers,
   And to remember His holy covenant,
   The oath which He swore to Abraham our father (vv 72-73)
   
   
3. To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies,
   Might serve Him without fear,
   In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days (vv 74-75).

The first purpose of the Messiah’s coming is that God will grant Israel salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us (v 71).

As mentioned above, this salvation was both spiritual and political. Israel’s spiritual enemies were sin, death, and Satan.

Satan is the adversary of God and of all humanity. But Satan has a particular hate for Israel—God’s chosen people. This is because the Messiah who will redeem the world from Satan’s hand would (and has) come through Israel. Presumably, Satan thinks that if he can destroy the people through whom God has promised a deliverer for all humanity, then he can thwart God’s plan of deliverance.

Jesus the Messiah came to bring salvation to Israel from her spiritual enemies.

• Jesus saved Israel from her sin.
  (Matthew 1:21, Romans 11:26-27)

• Jesus saved Israel from sin’s penalty of death and separation from God.
  (John 5:24, Romans 6:23)

• Jesus defeated Satan and saved Israel from his cruel hand of tyranny and exploitation.
  (Genesis 3:15, Romans 16:20, Hebrews 2:14, 1 John 3:8)

Jesus the Messiah also came to bring salvation to Israel from her political enemies.

At the time of Zacharias’s prophecy, Israel’s political enemy was Rome. Jesus did not bring political salvation at that time, during His first advent to earth, because Israel rejected Him as their Messiah. Nevertheless, He did establish His spiritual kingdom in the hearts of those who follow Him—which did bring a meaningful measure of political salvation (John 18:36).

Jesus established His spiritual kingdom in the hearts of His people by teaching His followers to love even their enemies (Luke 6:27), to serve them unto the extra mile (Matthew 5:41, Luke 6:29), and to pay unto Caesar the things that are his (Luke 20:25).

By following these teachings, the enemies of God’s people lost power over the hearts and minds of His people. And in time, Jesus’s followers, who willingly served the poor and chose to die as martyrs for their witness of Jesus and love and service to others, turned the Roman Empire upside down.

When Jesus, the Messiah returns, He will bring salvation to Israel from all their political enemies and He will deliver His people from the hand of all who hate Israel (Psalm 2:8-9, Isaiah 49:25-26, Zechariah 14:3-4, Revelation 19:15).

The second purpose Zacharias states for why the Messiah will come is to show mercy toward our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant, [specifically] the oath which He swore to Abraham our father (vv 72-73).

With this purpose, Zacharias highlights how the things which God is now doing and soon will accomplish through His Messiah will be to remember the oath and fulfill His holy covenant.

The phrase His holy covenant is specified by name. It is the oath which God swore to Abraham our father. It is the Abrahamic covenant.

But before we discuss the Abrahamic Covenant, it is worth pointing out how Zacharias makes a prophetic wordplay across the lines: And to remember His holy covenant, The oath….

The word play involves the names of himself and his wife—Zacharias and Elizabeth.

In Hebrew, the name Zacharias means “Yahweh remembers" or "The LORD remembers."

Also, the name “Elizabeth” in Hebrew means “God is my oath” or “My God is abundance,” sometimes rendered “My God is sworn” or “God is my satisfaction.”

Both names speak to the character of God and His great faithfulness.

Zacharias expresses the truth that God remembers His covenant. Zacharias is an appropriate name for the father of the forerunner to the Messiah promised long ago. And Elizabeth’s name speaks to God’s promises—His oath—and the eternal nature of the oath He swore. Elizabeth is a fitting name for the mother of the one who would prepare the way for the One who would fulfill the everlasting oath God had sworn.

Together, the names Zacharias and Elizabeth mean:

“the Lord remembers God’s oath which He swore.”
Zacharias                   Elizabeth

And the name of Zacharias and Elizabeth’s son was John, which means “God’s grace.” God’s grace is the result of the Lord’s remembrance of the oath He swore to Abraham our father.

Again, the particular oath which Zacharias specifies in v 73 is God’s holy covenant with Abraham. The Abrahamic Covenant is found in Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-21, 17:1-8.

Perhaps the way the Messiah most clearly remembers the oath of the Abrahamic Covenant are in the two oaths and promises:

“And so you shall be a blessing”
(Genesis 12:2b)

“And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
(Genesis 12:3b)

The coming of Jesus the Messiah blessed not only Israel, but the entire world (Isaiah 49:6, John 3:16, Romans 1:16). Through Jesus, Abraham’s descendant, Abraham was “a blessing… to all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:2-3).

Jesus the Messiah will also bring about the fulfillment of the land oath which God swore to Abraham and his descendants who are the people of Israel (Genesis 15:18, 17:7-8). The total fulfillment of the promises relating to the land will likely happen sometime after Jesus’s return.

In Genesis 15:18, God promised that the land of Abraham’s descendants would span from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. To this point in history, Israel has never expanded its borders to that extent. But since God promised it, this is a certain outcome that will likely occur after Jesus returns a second time and sets up His Messianic Kingdom.

Zacharias describes the Messiah’s imminent coming as a show of mercy toward our fathers.

The term our fathers means Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel), and Jacob’s twelve sons. Our fathers could also mean all the generations of the people of Israel who came after the twelve sons of Israel and have since perished and were unable to see the Messianic fulfillments during their lifetime.

The reason Zacharias describes the Messiah’s coming as mercy toward our fathers is because their fathers did not get to see the fulfillment of the LORD’s oath in their lifetimes.

The author of Hebrews expresses a similar thought when he writes:

“And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.”
(Hebrews 11:39-40)

Zacharias’s point was that the hope that God would fulfill His oath (which their fathers clung to by faith their entire lives) was now about to mercifully be fulfilled in the lifetime of us. Part of the fulfillment of these promises will occur to the present generation of Israel and part of it will come to future generations, upon Jesus’s second advent to earth. But the second advent does not occur without the first. So both are directly related to the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner of his cousin Jesus who is the Christ, the Anointed One.

The third and final purpose Zacharias offers for why the Messiah will come is To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear [and] in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. (vv 74-75).

The ultimate reason the God will send the Messiah to rescue us (Israel) from the hand of our enemies is not so that we might serve ourselves. Rather, it is that we might serve Him without fear [and] in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

The greatest commandment was not to follow the pleasures and lusts of our heart’s desires. The greatest commandments were to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5) and this was done by serving our neighbors with the same love and care that we devote to ourselves (Leviticus 19:18).

This was the example that Jesus—the Messiah, and the perfect human being—taught (Mark 12:29-31) and modeled for us (Matthew 20:28, John 15:12-13). Jesus invites believers to follow His example of laying down their own desires for His sake by faith so that they too can experience the good life (Luke 9:23-24, John 10:10).

In Abraham and through Moses, God chose the people of Israel to be His people. Israel was to serve Him and demonstrate to the world the goodness of His character (Deuteronomy 4:6-7, Isaiah 60:1-3). God instructed the sons of Israel: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).

The prophet Micah summed up what living holiness and righteousness before God looked like when he wrote:

“He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?”
(Micah 6:8)

Because Jesus defeated our enemies of sin and death, believers are no longer bound to these cruel masters (Romans 6:4-14, 17-18). Because of Jesus, believers are free to serve God without fear of sin and death. Because of Jesus, and the reality of His coming kingdom, we are not to live in fear of men—because they may only harm the body and not the soul (Luke 12:4-5).

When Jesus, the Messiah, returns a second time, He will establish His kingdom. At that time everyone in it will be able to live in holiness and righteousness (i.e. “perfect harmony”) before Him all our days unto eternity.

These are the things (v 68-75) Zacharias prophesied concerning what God was doing and was about to do for us—the nation of Israel.

In the next section (Luke 1:76-79), we will look at what Zacharias prophesied about his baby son, John, and the special role he would play in preparing the way for the Messiah.