Isaiah 9:2(v79)The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The light has shined on those who lived in the land of the shadow of death.
Matthew 4:16(v79)the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”
Acts 26:18(v79)to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins…
Isaiah 42:7(v79)to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness out of the prison.
Malachi 3:1(v76)“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the…
Show all 93 cross-references
Ephesians 5:8(v79)For you were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light,
John 12:46(v79)I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness.
Malachi 4:2(v78)But to you who fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings. You will go out, and leap like calves of the…
Psalms 107:14(v79)He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke away their chains.
John 8:12(v79)Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have…
2 Peter 1:19(v78)We have the more sure word of prophecy; and you do well that you heed it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns, and…
Psalms 107:10(v79)Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron,
John 9:5(v79)While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
Isaiah 40:3-5(v76)The voice of one who calls out, “Prepare the way of Yahweh in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God. Every valley…
Revelation 22:16(v78)I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify these things to you for the assemblies. I am the root and the offspring of David, the Bright and…
Acts 5:31(v77)God exalted him with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins.
Psalms 23:4(v79)Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they…
Isaiah 49:9(v79)saying to those who are bound, ‘Come out!’; to those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves!’ “They shall feed along the paths, and their…
Acts 2:38(v77)Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will…
Acts 10:43(v77)All the prophets testify about him, that through his name everyone who believes in him will receive remission of sins.”
Numbers 24:17(v78)I see him, but not now. I see him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel, and shall strike through…
Isaiah 11:1(v78)A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit.
Isaiah 57:19-21(v79)I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace, to him who is far off and to him who is near,” says Yahweh; “and I will heal them.” But the…
Mark 1:2-3(v76)As it is written in the prophets, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you: the voice of one…
John 1:9(v79)The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
John 1:34(v77)I have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
Ephesians 5:14(v78)Therefore he says, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Jeremiah 2:6(v79)They didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts…
Zechariah 3:8(v78)Hear now, Joshua the high priest, you and your fellows who sit before you; for they are men who are a sign: for, behold, I will bring out…
Zechariah 6:12(v78)and speak to him, saying, ‘Yahweh of Armies says, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: and he shall grow up out of his place; and he…
Matthew 3:3(v76)For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make the way of the Lord ready!…
Matthew 11:9-10(v76)But why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet. For this is he, of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I…
Matthew 11:28-29(v79)“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am…
Matthew 14:5(v76)When he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.
Luke 2:32(v79)a light for revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”
John 1:23(v76)He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”
John 1:29(v77)The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Acts 3:19(v77)“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, so that there may come times of refreshing from the presence of the…
Ephesians 1:7(v77)in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
Colossians 3:12(v78)Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance;
1 John 1:5-7(v79)This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that…
Psalms 25:8-10(v79)Good and upright is Yahweh, therefore he will instruct sinners in the way. He will guide the humble in justice. He will teach the humble…
Isaiah 42:16(v79)I will bring the blind by a way that they don’t know. I will lead them in paths that they don’t know. I will make darkness light before…
Isaiah 49:6(v79)Indeed, he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of…
Isaiah 63:15(v78)Look down from heaven, and see from the habitation of your holiness and of your glory. Where are your zeal and your mighty acts? The…
Jeremiah 31:34(v77)They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh;’ for they will all know me, from their…
Mark 1:3-4(v77)the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!’ ” John came baptizing in the…
Luke 3:3(v77)He came into all the region around the Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for remission of sins.
Luke 3:6(v77)All flesh will see God’s salvation.’ ”
Luke 7:47-50(v77)Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He…
John 1:7-9(v77)The same came as a witness, that he might testify about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but was sent…
John 3:16(v78)For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:27-36(v77)John answered, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves testify that I said, ‘I am not the…
Acts 16:17(v76)Following Paul and us, she cried out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us a way of salvation!”
Acts 19:4(v77)Paul said, “John indeed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe in the one who would come…
Ephesians 2:4-5(v78)But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive…
Philippians 1:8(v78)For God is my witness, how I long after all of you in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:1(v78)If therefore there is any exhortation in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and…
1 John 3:17(v78)But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain…
Psalms 25:6(v78)Yahweh, remember your tender mercies and your loving kindness, for they are from old times.
Psalms 25:12(v79)What man is he who fears Yahweh? He shall instruct him in the way that he shall choose.
Psalms 44:19(v79)though you have crushed us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death.
Isaiah 48:22(v79)“There is no peace”, says Yahweh, “for the wicked.”
Isaiah 60:1-3(v79)“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and Yahweh’s glory has risen on you. For, behold, darkness will cover the earth, and thick darkness…
Isaiah 63:7(v78)I will tell of the loving kindnesses of Yahweh and the praises of Yahweh, according to all that Yahweh has given to us, and the great…
Jeremiah 6:16(v79)Yahweh says, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for…
Mark 11:32(v76)If we should say, ‘From men’ ”—they feared the people, for all held John to really be a prophet.
Luke 1:32(v76)He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
Luke 1:35(v76)The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one…
John 3:28(v76)You yourselves testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before him.’
Acts 13:38-39(v77)Be it known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man is proclaimed to you remission of sins, and by him everyone who believes is…
Romans 3:17(v79)The way of peace, they haven’t known.”
Romans 3:25(v77)whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of…
Romans 4:6-8(v77)Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are…
1 Thessalonians 5:4-5(v79)But you, brothers, aren’t in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief. You are all children of light and children of the…
1 John 4:9-10(v78)By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is…
Job 10:22(v79)the land dark as midnight, of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as midnight.’ ”
Psalms 87:5(v76)Yes, of Zion it will be said, “This one and that one was born in her;” the Most High himself will establish her.
Proverbs 3:17(v79)Her ways are ways of pleasantness. All her paths are peace.
Isaiah 48:17(v79)Yahweh, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel says: “I am Yahweh your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way that you…
Isaiah 59:8(v79)They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them…
Malachi 4:5(v76)Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes.
Matthew 3:11(v76)I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will…
Matthew 21:26(v76)But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude, for all hold John as a prophet.”
Luke 1:16-17(v76)He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the…
Luke 3:4-6(v76)As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the…
Luke 6:35(v76)But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most…
Luke 7:27-28(v76)This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’ “For I tell you,…
John 1:15-17(v77)John testified about him. He cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me, for he was before…
John 1:27(v76)He is the one who comes after me, who is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to loosen.”
Acts 13:24-25(v76)before his coming, when John had first preached the baptism of repentance to Israel. As John was fulfilling his course, he said, ‘What do…
Job 3:5(v79)Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.
Proverbs 8:20(v79)I walk in the way of righteousness, in the middle of the paths of justice,
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (21 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv76–79Though thou be at this present never so little.
Though thou be at this present never so little.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv76–7976 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet…
76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
Ver. 76. And thou, child] scil. qui nunc tantillus es, in virum magnum evades: Though little, thou shalt prove great.
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Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord] Any relation to whom ennobleth, and advanceth all worth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv76–79Zacharias here foretells what came to pass about thirty…
Zacharias here foretells what came to pass about thirty years after, for it cannot be thought that John began his ministry before the sacerdotal age, especially considering Christ did not begin sooner, Luk 3:23.
Thou shalt be called the prophet; that may either signify, thou shalt be a prophet, as Mat 5:9; Joh 1:12; or thou shalt be owned or taken notice of as the prophet
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of the Highest. Both were true in John. He was a prophet, (though not that Prophet, Joh 1:21), yea, and more than a prophet, saith our Saviour, Mat 11:9.
For thou shalt go before his face to prepare his ways. This was according to the prophecy, Isa 40:3; Mal 4:5; and according to what John said of himself, Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3. See Poole on "Mat 3:3".
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv76–79And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of…
And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest,.... Here Zacharias turns himself to his son John, though an infant, and incapable of knowing what was said to him; and for the sake of those that were present, describes his office and work; and says, that he should be "called", that is, that he should "be", and be accounted a "prophet": for he was not only a preacher of Christ and his Gospel, but he also foretold the coming of the Messiah; and the vengeance that should fall on the Jewish nation, for their unfruitfulness, impenitence, and unbelief: and the Prophet "of the Highest"; that is, of God; as the Persic version renders it, of the most high God; and by whom is meant, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose prophet, harbinger, and forerunner John was; and so is a proof of Christ being the supreme, or most high God:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways; as the angel had suggested in Luk 1:17 and as was prophesied of him in Isa 11:3. See Gill on Mat 3:3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv76–78And thou, child - He now speaks to John;…
And thou, child - He now speaks to John; yet not as a parent, but as a prophet.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn v76Verse 76. And thou, child, c.] Zacharias proclaims the…
Verse 76. And thou, child, c.] Zacharias proclaims the dignity, employment, doctrine, and success of his son and the ruin and recovery of the Jews and the Gentiles.
1. His dignity. Thou shalt be called (constituted) a prophet of the Most High. Prophet has two acceptations:-
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1st. A person who foretells future events; and;
2dly. A teacher of men in the things of God, 1Co 14:3.
John was a prophet in both senses: he proclaimed the mercy which should be communicated; announced the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and taught men how to leave their sins, and how to find the salvation of God. See Lu 3:5-14. His very name, Jehochanan, the grace or mercy of Jehovah, (see Lu 1:60,) was a constant prediction of the salvation of God. Our Lord terms him the greatest prophet which had ever appeared in the world. He had the honour of being the last and clearest prophet of the old covenant, and the first of the new.
2. His employment. Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. He should be the immediate forerunner of Jesus Christ, none being capable of succeeding him in his ministry but Christ himself. He was to prepare his ways, to be the honoured instrument, in the hands of God, of disposing the hearts of multitudes of the Israelites to believe in and follow the Lord Jesus.
3. Zacharias points out the doctrine or teaching of John. It should be γνωσις σωτηριας, the science of salvation. Men are ignorant, and they must be instructed. Human sciences may be profitable in earthly matters, but cannot profit the soul. The science that teaches God must come from God. No science is of any avail to the soul that does not bring salvation with it: this is the excellence of heavenly science, and an excellence that is peculiar to itself. No science but that which comes from God can ever save a soul from the power, the guilt, and the pollution of sin.
4. Zacharias predicts the success of his son's ministry. Under his preaching, the people should be directed to that tender mercy of God, through which they might obtain the remission of their sins, Lu 1:77-78. Those who are sent by God, and preach his truth, and his only, shall always be successful in their work; for it is for this very purpose that God has sent them; and it would be a marvellous thing, indeed, should they labour in vain. But there never was such a case, since God made man, in which a preacher was Divinely commissioned to preach Jesus and his salvation, and yet had no fruit of his labour.
5. Zacharias points out the wretched state in which the inhabitants of Judea and the Gentile world were then found.
(1) Their feet had wandered out of the way of peace, (Lu 1:79,) of temporal and spiritual prosperity.
(2) They had got into a state of darkness - they were blind concerning the things of God, and the things which belonged to their salvation.
(3) They had become contented inhabitants of this land of intellectual darkness - they had sat down in it, and were not concerned to get out of it.
(4) They were about to perish in it - death had his dominion there; and his swift approaches to them were now manifested to the prophet by seeing his shadow cast upon them.
Ignorance of God and salvation is the shadow of death; and the substance, eternal ruin, is essentially connected with the projected shadow. See these phrases explained at large on Mt 4:16.
6. Zacharias proclaims the recovery of a lost world. As the removal of this darkness, and redemption from this death, were now at hand, John is represented as being a day-spring from on high, a morning star, that foretold the speedy approach of the day, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness. That these words should be applied to John, and not to Christ, I am fully satisfied; and cannot give my reasons better for the arrangement I have made in the preceding notes, than in the words of an eminent critic, who, I find, has adopted nearly the same plan with myself. The passage, as I read it, is as follows: Through the tender mercy of our God, by which he hath visited us: a day-spring from on high, to give light to them that sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death, c. "Let the reader judge, whether my arrangement of this passage, which much better suits the original, be not far more elegant, and in all respects superior to the old translation. Thou, child! wilt be a teacher-THOU WILT BE a day-spring from the sky. And with what beauty and propriety is John, the forerunner of our Lord, styled the dawn of day, that ushers in the rising of the Sun of righteousness! And the concluding words - to guide our feet into the way of peace - is a comprehensive clause, after the manner of Hebrew poetry, belonging equally to the former sentence, beginning at - And thou, child! - and the latter, beginning at - A day-spring from the sky: for the people spoken of in the former are the Jews and in the latter, the Gentiles." - WAKEFIELD.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv76, 79Luk 1:76-78. And thou child — He now speaks…
Luk 1:76-78. And thou child — He now speaks to John his son, yet not as a parent, but as a prophet; shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest — Thou shalt be the messenger of God Most High. Our Lord declares that John was more than a prophet: that is, he was a great preacher of righteousness, who called aloud to the people to repent, that they might be forgiven; and he foretold that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way — Thou shalt go before the Lord Christ, to point him out as the Messiah to his people, and to dispose and prepare them to receive him as such by repentance toward God, productive of fruit worthy of repentance, and by faith in him and subjection to him as a divinely-commissioned teacher, a mighty Saviour, and righteous governor. See note on Mat 3:3. To give knowledge of salvation to his people — To preach to God’s people the glad tidings of salvation, present and eternal, as attainable; to show them the way of attaining it, namely, by repentance and faith in the Messiah, and to give all such as should comply with these terms the knowledge of their having attained it, at least in part, by assuring them of the remission of their sins, that blessing being a branch of present, and a pledge and earnest of future salvation. Through the tender mercy of our God — Σπλαγχνα ελεους, the bowels of mercy, a strong Hebraism, implying God’s tender compassions for mankind, immersed as they are in sins and miseries. “These two words are often used in Scripture both jointly and separately. They signify pity, because that passion in us is commonly attended with a motion of the bowels, especially when the object of it is one we have an interest in. See Isa 63:15; Php 2:1; Col 3:12; where bowels of mercy signify the most tender mercy. The word σπλαγχνα, bowels, used by itself signifies any strong affection whatever, Phm 1:7.” John the Baptist gave people to understand, that though their case was deplorable, by reason of sin, it was not desperate, because pardon might be obtained through the tender and unspeakable mercy of God. Whereby the day-spring — The dawning day of morning light; that is, the gospel dispensation, as superior to the patriarchal or Mosaic, with their types and shadows, as the light of the rising sun is superior to that of the moon and stars. This gospel-day dawned in the ministry of John the Baptist; and it increased more and more during the personal ministry of Christ, and it shone out with meridian splendour on the day of pentecost, and thenceforward, when, in consequence of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit, in his various gifts and graces, ordinary and extraordinary, was poured out on the Christian Church. It is true the word ανατολη, here rendered day-spring, may signify, as some render it, the rising sun: for Zacharias is here alluding to the passages in the prophetic writings which describe the Messiah by the metaphors of the light and sun, particularly Mal 4:2; where he is called the Sun of righteousness, both on account of the light of his doctrine, and the joy produced by his appearing. See the note there, and on Isa 60:1-2; Isa 60:19. “Indeed no figure was ever more happily imagined, or more naturally applied, than this which represents the promised seed under the notion of the sun. For most aptly may Jesus be likened to the rising sun; his doctrine being to the souls of men what light is to their bodies. It is altogether necessary for directing our steps in the paths of truth and righteousness; it is exceedingly sweet to the spiritual taste, by discovering the most important and delightful truths; nay, like the light, it throws a beauty and pleasantness upon every thing in this lower world, which, without the assurance of God’s reconcileableness, would be but a dark and dreary scene to sinners, however noble and beautiful in itself.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv76–79And thou, child ... - Zechariah predicts in this…
And thou, child ... - Zechariah predicts in this and the following verses the dignity, the employment, and the success of John. He declares what would be the subject of his preaching, and what his success.
Prophet of the Highest - Prophet of God; a prophet “appointed by God” to declare his will, and to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.
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The face of the Lord - The Lord Jesus, the Messiah, that was about to appear. To go before “the face of one” is the same as to go immediately before one, or to be immediately followed by another.
To prepare his ways - This is taken from Isa 40:3. See the Mat 3:3 niote, and Isa 40:3 note.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv77–79Jesus is our salvation, and St. John [the Baptist]…
Jesus is our salvation, and St. John [the Baptist] was sent to give to the people the knowledge of this salvation: he bore testimony of Christ; (Theophylactus) by whom alone remission of sins can be obtained.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv76–79Here are the dying echoes of this song; and…
Here are the dying echoes of this song; and very beautiful are these closing notes--like the setting sun, shorn indeed of its noontide radiance, but skirting the horizon with a wavy and quivering light--as of molten gold--on which the eye delights to gaze, till it disappears from the view. The song passes not here from Christ to John, but only from Christ direct to Christ as heralded by His forerunner.
thou child--not "my son"--this child's relation to himself being lost in his relation to a Greater than either.
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prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before him--that is, "the Highest." As "the Most High" is an epithet in Scripture only of the supreme God, it is inconceivable that inspiration should apply this term, as here undeniably, to Christ, unless He were "God over all blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv77–79II. Luk_1:76-79. The prediction addressed to his son, the…
II. Luk_1:76-79. The prediction addressed to his son, the infant Baptist, in regard to his office.
77. Salvation… by remission of sins—On condition of repentance in faith on an approaching Messiah.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv76–7976. child] Rather, little child (paidion)—“quantillus nunc es,” Bengel.
76. child] Rather, little child (paidion)—“quantillus nunc es,” Bengel.
To prepare his ways] An allusion to the prophecies of the Forerunner in Isa_40:3; Mal_3:1.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv76–79(76) Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of…
(76) Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest.—Note the recurrence of the same divine name that had appeared in Luk_1:32; Luk_1:35.
Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord.—The verse is, as it were, an echo of two great prophecies, combining the “going before Jehovah” of Mal_3:1, with the “preparing the way” of Isa_40:3.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv76–79And thou, child; literally, little child. Here the father…
And thou, child; literally, little child. Here the father breaks forth into an expression of gladness at the thought of the great part his baby-son was to bear in this great national deliverance. His son, too oh, joy undreamed of! is to be ranked among the glorious company of the prophets of the Highest.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv77–78To give knowledge of salvation
Luk_1:77
To give knowledge of salvation
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Source of salvation
All great rivers, unlike some great men who have begun life in lowly circumstances, boast a lofty descent.
It is after the Alpine traveller has left smiling valleys beneath him, and toiling along rugged glens and through deep mountain gorges, reaches at length the shores of an icy sea, that he stands at the source of the river, which, cold as the snows that feed it, and a full-grown torrent at its birth, rushes out from the cavern of the hollowed glacier. Yet such a river, in the loftiness of its birth-place, is but an humble image of salvation. How high its source! He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
God a great forgiver
Mr. Fleming, in his Fulfilling of the Scriptures, relates the case of a man who was a very great sinner, and for his horrible wickedness was put to death in the town of Ayr. This man had been so stupid and brutish a fellow, that all who knew him thought him beyond the reach of all ordinary means of grace; but while the man was in prison the Lord wonderfully wrought on his heart, and in such a measure discovered to him his sinfulness, that, after much serious exercise and sore wrestling, a most kindly work of repentance followed, with great assurance of mercy, insomuch that when he came to the place of execution he could not cease crying out to the people, under the sense of pardon and the comforts of the presence and favour of God, Oh, He is a great forgiver! He is a great forgiver! And he added the following words: Now hath perfect love cast out fear. I know God hath nothing to lay against me, for Jesus Christ hath paid all; and those are free whom the Son makes free. (Arvine.)
Nature silent concerning salvation.
On one occasion the late Dr. Newton was travelling in a railway carriage, when he found himself in the presence of an infidel, who soon began to obtrude his opinions upon his fellow passengers, declaring his contempt for the Bible, adding that he did not need it; the book of nature affording him all the information that he required on religious and moral subjects. Dr. Newton, observing a young man in the company who might receive some injury from these remarks, deemed it his duty to interfere. Looking at the infidel, he said, The book of nature, sir, that you have mentioned, is a large volume, and he is a very learned man that is acquainted with all its contents. Yet there is one subject on which I think it gives no information. Indeed, said the infidel, what is that? What is that, rejoined Dr. Newton, it is salvation. Salvation! exclaimed the infidel. Aye, salvation, rejoined the Doctor. Every man is sensible from what passes in his own conscience that he has done wrong, and that that which all people confess to be morally wrong, everywhere meets our sight. To do wrong renders us liable to punishment, and therefore we need salvation. But where do you find anything about salvation in the book of nature? Do you find it in the grass of the fields, either when it grows or when it fades away? Do you find it in the ever-varying surface of the sea? or in the clouds as they pass over your head? The book which you too exclusively admire was written too soon for the purpose of instructing men with respect to the nature and method of salvation. It was written before there was sin in the world, and therefore before salvation was needed. The infidel stood aghast, and said not a word.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson1891 · Public DomainOn v7676–79. Thou, child. The babe, John, before him. Prophet…
76–79. Thou, child. The babe, John, before him. Prophet of the Highest. “The Most High” is an epithet in Scripture only of the supreme God.
By the remission of their sins. The remainder of the sentence embodies the gospel in brief. It promises (1) salvation, (2) not merely political but spiritual. A remission of, and redemption from sin, (3) indicates the cause—the divine mercy (compare John 3:16; Eph. 2:4–8), and (4) promises the result, “like to eyes in darkness, and peace to feet straying in paths of sorrow and perplexity.”
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The dayspring. Christ is the morning light, the rising sun (Mal. 4:2). The gospel brings light with it (John 3:19).
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v78
Luke
ZACHARIAS’S HYMN
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THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH
Luk 1:78 - Luk 1:79.
As the dawn is ushered in by the notes of birds, so the rising of the Sun of Righteousness was heralded by song, Mary and Zacharias brought their praises and welcome to the unborn Christ, the angels hovered with heavenly music over His cradle, and Simeon took the child in his arms and blessed it. The human members of this choir may be regarded as the last of the psalmists and prophets, and the first of Christian singers. The song of Zacharias, from which my text is taken, is steeped in Old Testament allusions, and redolent of the ancient spirit, but it transcends that. Its early part is purely national, and hails the coming of the Messiah chiefly as the deliverer of Israel from foreign oppressors, though even in it their deliverance is regarded mostly as the means to an end, and the end one very appropriate on the lips of a priestly prophet-viz. sacerdotal service by the whole nation ‘in holiness and righteousness all their days.’
But in this latter portion, which is separated from the former by the pathetic, incidental, and slight reference to the singer’s own child, the national limits are far surpassed. The song soars above them, and pierces to the very heart and kernel of Christ’s work. ‘The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ Nothing deeper, nothing wider, nothing truer about the mission and issue of Christ’s coming could be spoken. And thus we have to look at the three things that lie in this text, as bearing upon our conceptions of Christ and His work-the darkness, the dawn, and the directing light.
I. The darkness.
Zacharias, as becomes the last of the prophets, and a man whose whole religious life was nourished upon the ancient Scriptures, speaks almost entirely in Old Testament phraseology in this song. And his description of ‘them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ is taken almost verbally from the great words from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who speaks, in immediate connection with his prophecy of the coming of the Christ, of ‘the people that walk in darkness and them that dwell,’ or sit, ‘in the shadow of death, upon whom the light hath shined.’
The picture that rises before us is that of a group of travellers benighted, bewildered, huddled together in the dark, afraid to move for fear of pitfalls, precipices, wild beasts, and enemies; and so sighing for the day and compelled to be inactive till it comes. That is the picture of humanity apart from Jesus Christ, a darkness so intense, so tragic, that it is, as it were, the very shadow of the ultimate and essential darkness which is death, and in it men are sitting torpid, unable to find their way and afraid to move.
Now darkness, all the world over, is the emblem of three things-ignorance, impurity, sorrow. And all men who are rent away from Jesus Christ, or on whom His beams have not yet fallen, this text tells us, have that triple curse lying upon them.
Ignorance. Think of what, without Jesus Christ, the world has deemed of the unseen, and of the God, if there be a God, that may inhabit there. He has been to them a great Peradventure, a great Terror, a great Inscrutable, a stone-eyed Fate, a thin, nebulous Nothing, with no emotion, no attributes, no heart, no ear to hear, the nearest approach to nonentity, according to the despairing saying of a master of philosophy, that ‘pure Being is equal to pure Nothing.’ And if all men do not rise to such heights of melancholy abstraction as that, still how little there is of blessed certainty, how little clearness of conception of a Divine Person that turns to us with love and tenderness in His heart, apart from Christ and His teaching! If you take away from civilised men all the knowledge of God that they owe to Jesus Christ, what have you left? The ladder by which they climbed is kicked away by a great many people nowadays, but it is to Him that they owe the very conceptions in the name of which some of them turn round and deny Him.
Ignorance of God, ignorance of one’s own self and of one’s deepest duties, and ignorance of that solemn future, the fact of which is plain to most men, but the how of which is such a blank mystery but for Jesus Christ-these things are elements of the darkness that wraps the world. Go to heathendom if you want to see the problem worked out, as to what men know outside of the revelation which culminates in Jesus Christ. And take your own hearts, dear friends who stand aside from that sweet Lord and light of our lives, and ask yourselves, What do I know, with a certainty which is to me as valid, as-yea! more valid than that given by sense and outward perceptions? What do I know of God that I do not owe to Jesus Christ? Nothing. You may guess much, you may hope a little, you may dread a great deal, you may question more than all, but you will know nothing.
Well, then, further, this solemn emblem stands for impurity. And we have only to consult our own hearts to feel how true it is about us all, that we dwell in a region all darkened, if not by the coarse transgressions which men consent to call sins, yet darkened more subtly and oftentimes more hopelessly by the obscuration of pure selfishness and living to myself and by myself. Wherever that comes, it is like the mists that steal up from some poisonous marsh, and shut out stars and sky, and drape the whole country in a melancholy veil. It is white but it is poisonous, it is white but it is darkness all the same. There are other kinds of sin than the sins that break the Ten Commandments; there are other kinds of sin than the sins that the world takes cognisance of. The worst poisons are the tasteless ones, and colourless gases are laden with fatal power. We may walk in a darkness that may be felt, though there be nothing in our lives that men call sin, and little there of which our consciences are as yet educated enough to be ashamed. Rent from God, man lives to himself, and so is sunk in darkness.
And what shall I say about the third of the doleful triad of which this pregnant emblem is the recognised symbol all the world over? Surely, though earth be full of blessing, and life of possibilities of joy, no man travels very far along the road without feeling that the burden of sorrow is a burden that we all have to carry. There are blessings in plenty, there is mirth more than enough. There is ‘the laughter’ which is ‘the crackling of thorns’ under a pot. There are plenty of distractions and amusements, ‘blessings more plentiful than hope’; but yet the ground tone of every human life, when the first flush of inexperience and novelty has worn off, apart from God, is sadness, conscious of itself sometimes, and driven to all manner of foolish attempts at forgetfulness, unconscious of itself sometimes, and knowing not what is the disease of which it languishes. There it is, like some persistent minor in a great piece of music, wailing on through all the embroidery and lightsomeness of the cheerfuller and loftier notes. ‘Every heart knoweth its own bitterness,’ and every heart has a bitterness of its own to know.
I do not understand how it is that men who have no religion in them can bear their own sorrows and see their neighbours’ and not go mad. Sometimes the world seems to me to be moving round its central sun with a doleful atmosphere of sighs wherever it goes, and all the mirth and stir and bustle are but like a thin crust of grass with flowers upon it, cast across the sulphurous depths of some volcano that may slumber for a while, but is there all the same.
Brother! you and I, away from Jesus Christ, have to face the certainties of ignorance, of sin, of sorrow-ignorance unenlightened, sin unconquered, sorrow uncomforted.
And then comes the other tragic, and yet most picturesque emblem in the representation here: ‘They sit in darkness.’ Yes! what can they do, poor creatures? They know not where to go. The light has left them, inactivity is a necessity. And so, with folded hands, they wish for the day, or try to forget the night by lighting some little torch of their own that only serves to make darkness visible, and dies all too soon, leaving them to lie down in sorrow.
But, you say, ‘What nonsense! Inactivity! look at the fierce energy of life in our Western lands.’ Well, grant it all, there may be plenty of material activity attendant upon inward stagnation and torpor. But, again, I would like to ask how much of the most godless, commercial, artistic, intellectual activity of so-called civilised and Christian countries is owing to the stimulus and ferment that Jesus Christ brought. If you want to see how true it is that men without Him sit in the darkness, go to heathen lands, and see the stagnation, the torpor, there.
Now, dear brethren, all this is true about us, in the measure in which we do not participate by faith and love, welcoming Him into our hearts in the illumination that Jesus Christ brings. And what I want to do is to lay upon the hearts and consciences of each of us here this thought, that the solemn, tragic picture of my text is the picture of me, separate from Christ, however I may try to conceal it from myself, and to mask it from other people by busying myself with inferior knowledges, by avoiding to listen to the answer that conscience gives to the question as to my moral character, and by befooling myself with noisy joys and tumultuous pleasures, in which there is no pleasure.
II. Now, note secondly, the dayspring, or dawn.
My text, in the part on which I have just been speaking, links itself with ancient Messianic prophecy, and this expression, ‘the dayspring from on high.’ also links itself with other prophecies of the same sort. Almost the last word of prophecy before the four centuries of silence which Mary and Zacharias broke, was, ‘Unto you that fear His name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His beams.’ There can be little doubt, I think, that the allusion of my text is to these all but the last words of the prophet Malachi. For that final chapter of the Old Testament colours the song both of Mary and of Zacharias. And it is to be observed that the Greek translation of the Hebrew uses the same verb, of which the cognate noun is here employed, for the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. The picturesque old English word ‘dayspring’ means neither more nor less than sunrising. And it is here used practically as a name for Jesus Christ, who is Himself the Sun, represented as rising over a darkened earth, and yet, with a singular neglect of the propriety of the metaphor, as descending from on high, not to shine on us from the sky, but to ‘visit us’ on earth.
Jesus Christ Himself, over and over again, said by implication, and more than once by direct claim, ‘I am the Light of the world.’ And my text is the anticipation, perhaps from lips that did not fully understand the whole significance of the prophecy which they spoke, of these later declarations. I have said that the darkness is the emblem of three baleful things, of the converse of which light is the symbol. As the darkness speaks to us of ignorance, so Christ, as the Sun illumines us with the light of ‘the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ For doubt we have blessed certainty, for a far-off God we have the knowledge of God close at hand. For an impassive will or a stony-eyed fate we have the knowledge {and not only the wistful yearning after the knowledge} of a loving heart, warm and throbbing. Our God is no unemotional abstraction, but a living Person who can love, who can pity, and we are speaking more than poetry when we say, God is compassion, and compassion is God. This we know because ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ And the solid certainty of a loving God, tender, pitying, mighty to help, quick to hear, ready to forgive, waiting to bless, is borne into our hearts, and comes there, sweet as the sunshine, when we turn ourselves to the light of Christ.
In like manner the darkness, born of our own sin, which wraps our hearts, and shuts out so much that is fair and sweet and strong, will pass away if we turn ourselves to Him. His light pouring into our souls will hurt the eye at first, but it will hurt to cure. The darkness of sin and alienation will pass, and the true light will shine.
The darkness of sorrow-well! it will not cease, but He will ‘smooth the raven down of darkness till it smiles,’ and He will bring into our griefs such a spirit of quiet submission as that they shall change into a solemn scorn of ills, and be almost like gladnesses. Peace, which is better than exuberant delight, will come to quiet the sorrow of the soul that trusts in Jesus Christ. The day which is knowledge, purity, gladsomeness, the cheerful day will be ours if we hold by Him. We ‘are all the children of the light and of the day’; we ‘are not of the night nor of darkness.’
Brother, it is possible to grope at noontide as in the dark, and in all the blaze of Christ’s revelation still to be left in the Cimmerian folds of midnight gloom. You can shut your eyes to the sunshine; have you opened your hearts to its coming?
I cannot dwell {your time will not allow of it} upon the other points connected with this description of the day spring, except just to point out in passing the singular force and depth of the words-which I suppose are more forcible and deep than he who spoke them understood at the time that visitation was described. The dayspring is ‘from on high.’ This Sun has come down on to the earth. It has not risen on a far-off horizon, but it has come down and visited us, and walks among us. This Sun, our life-star, ‘hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar.’ For He that rises upon us as the Light of life, hath descended from the heavens, and was, before He appeared amongst men.
And His coming is a divine visitation. The word here ‘hath visited us’ {or ‘shall visit us,’ as the Revised Version varies it}, is chiefly employed in the Old Testament to describe the divine acts of self-revelation, and these, mostly redemptive acts. Zacharias employs it in that sense in the earlier portion of the song, where he says that ‘God hath visited and redeemed His people.’ And so from the use of this word we gather these two thoughts-God comes to us when Christ comes to us, and His coming is wondrous, blessed nearness, and nearness to each of us. ‘What is man that Thou shouldst be mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou shouldst visit him?’ said the old Psalmist. We say ‘What is man that the Dayspring from on high should come down upon earth, and round His immortal beams, should, as it were, cast the veil and obscuration of a human form; and so walk amongst us, the embodied Light and the Incarnate God?’ ‘The dayspring from on high hath visited us.’
III. Lastly, note the directing by the light.
‘To guide our feet into the way of peace.’ This Sun stoops to the office of the star that moved before the wise men and hovered over His cradle, and becomes to each individual soul a guide and director. The picture of my text, I suppose, carries us on to the morning, when the benighted travellers catch the first gleams of the rising sun and resume their activity, and there is a cheerful stir through the encampment and the way is open before them once more, and they are ready to walk in it. The force of the metaphor, however, implies more than that, for it speaks to us of the wonder that this universal Light should become the special guide of each individual soul, and should not merely hang in the heavens, to cast the broad radiance of its beams over the whole surface of the earth, but should move before each man, a light unto his feet and a lamp to his path, in special manifestation to him of his duty and his life’s pilgrimage.
There is only one way of peace, and that is to follow His beams and to be directed by His preceding us. Then we shall realise the most indispensable of all the conditions of peace-Christ brings you and me the reconciliation which puts us at peace with God, which is the foundation of all other tranquillity. And He will guide docile feet into the way of peace in yet another fashion-in that the following of His example, the cleaving to Him, the holding by His skirts or by His hand, and the treading in His footsteps, is the only way by which the heart can receive the solid satisfaction in which it rests, and the conscience can cease from accusing and stinging. The way of wisdom is a path of pleasantness and a way of peace. Only they who walk in Christ’s footsteps have quiet hearts and are at amity with God, in concord with themselves, friends of mankind, and at peace with circumstances. There is no strife within, no strained relations or hostile alienation to God, no gnawing unrest of unsatisfied desires, no pricks of accusing conscience; for the man who puts his hand into Christ’s hand, and says, ‘Order Thou my footsteps by Thy word’; ‘Where Thou goest I will go, and what Thou commandest I will do.’
Brother, put thy hand out from the darkness and clasp His, and ‘the darkness shall be light about thee’; and He will fulfil His own promise when He said, ‘I am the Light of the world. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v77Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23")
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann1924 · Public DomainOn v76A hymn of prophecy:
A hymn of prophecy:
v. 76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways;
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v. 77. to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins,
v. 78. through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us,
v. 79. to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
v. 80. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.
From a contemplation of the wonderful gifts of the redemption Zacharias turns to a prophecy concerning the future of the son that had been born to him according to the promise of the Lord. John would be a prophet in the highest and fullest sense of the word, Mat 11:9. His life’s work would consist in going before the face of the Lord as a true herald to prepare His ways before Him, as the prophets had said, Isa 40:3; Mal 3:1. And when the proclamation of the Law would have prepared the hearts in removing all self-righteousness and supposed piety, then John would be able to dispense the knowledge of salvation which consists in forgiveness of sins; redemption is transmitted through the remission of sins. "John is to come and give the people of God a knowledge, which is not to be a knowledge of sin, of wrath, of death, but a knowledge of salvation, that is, such preaching from which one learns how to be saved and delivered from death and sin. That is an art of which the world knows not one word. " And this preaching is made possible through the bowels, the heart of mercy, of our God. His whole heart yearns toward us with inexpressible love and tender mercy, and for the sake of that the Daystar from on high has visited us, the light, star, or sun is risen upon us in Jesus the Savior. This true morning star with the rays of God’s divine love illumined the darkness which had been caused by sin and enmity toward Him. And the result is that those that sat in such darkness and shadow of death have felt the light and the warmth of His glow, Isa 60:1-2. Those unable to find their way in the darkness of spiritual death, He will awaken to true life, illumine them with the light of the Gospel, and guide them to the way of peace, Rom 5:1. It is a beautiful and effective, as well as complete description of the work which God performs in us through the Gospel. "This certainly means, as I think, cutting off all merit and good works from the forgiveness of sins, in order that no one may say: I have earned it. Remission of sins has only one reason, namely, because God is merciful, and out of such mercy has sent and given us His Son that He might pay for us and we should be saved through Him. Therefore it reads thus: Forgiveness of sins is not the result of our merit, nor of our good works, but of the sincere mercy of God, that He has loved us of His own free will. We had with our sins earned the fire of hell, but God looked upon His boundless mercy. That is the reason why He sent His Son and for the sake of His Son forgives us our sins. " Of the entire hymn, Augustine writes: "O blessed hymn of joy and praise! Divinely inspired by the Holy Ghost, and divinely pronounced by the venerable priest, and daily sung in the Church of God! Oh, may thy words be often in my mouth, and the sweetness of them always in my heart! The expressions thou usest are the comfort of my life; and the subject thou treatest of the hope of all the world!"
The evangelist concludes with a note concerning the youth of John the Baptist, saying that lie grew in body and mind and spent his time out in the deserts until the Lord gave him ail indication that the period of seclusion must be followed by that of public ministry.
Summary.After a short preface, Luke relates the stories of the announcement of John the Baptist’s birth, of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, of the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, with the hymn of Mary, and of the birth, childhood, and youth of the Baptist, with the hymn of his father Zacharias.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv76, 78Yes, and you
Yes, and you
Zechariah uses this phrase to begin his direct address to his son. You may have a similar way to direct speech in your language.
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you, child, will be called a prophet
People will realize that he is a prophet. This can be stated in active form. AT: "people will know that you are a prophet" (See: Active or Passive)
of the Most High
These words are a euphemism for God. AT: "who serves the Most High" or "who speaks for God Most High" (See: Euphemism)
will go before the face of the Lord
Before the Lord comes, he will go and announce to the people that the Lord will come to them. See how you translated this in Luke 1:17.
the face of the Lord
"the face of" someone can be an idiom that refers to the that person's presence. It is sometimes omitted in translation. AT: "the Lord" See how you translated this in Luke 1:17. (See: Idiom)
to prepare his paths
This is a metaphor that means that John will prepare the people to listen to and believe the Lord's message. (See: Metaphor)
to give knowledge of salvation ... by the forgiveness of their sins
The phrase "give knowledge" is a metaphor for teaching. The abstract nouns "salvation" and "forgiveness" can be expressed with the verbs "save" and "forgive." AT: "to teach his people salvation through the forgiveness of their sins" or "to teach his people how God saves people by forgiving their sins" (See: Metonymy and Abstract Nouns)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv76, 781:76-77 And you, my little son: Zechariah turned from…
1:76-77 And you, my little son: Zechariah turned from speaking about the coming Messiah to address his newborn son, John, who would prepare the Messiah’s way. • called the prophet of the Most High: John was the last and greatest in the line of Old Testament prophets (see 7:28). • prepare the way for the Lord: See Isa 40:3.
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv76–79 Though thou be at this present never so little.
Though thou be at this present never so little.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv76–79 76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet…
76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
Ver. 76. And thou, child] scil. qui nunc tantillus es, in virum magnum evades: Though little, thou shalt prove great.
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Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord] Any relation to whom ennobleth, and advanceth all worth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv76–79 Zacharias here foretells what came to pass about thirty…
Zacharias here foretells what came to pass about thirty years after, for it cannot be thought that John began his ministry before the sacerdotal age, especially considering Christ did not begin sooner, Luk 3:23.
Thou shalt be called the prophet; that may either signify, thou shalt be a prophet, as Mat 5:9; Joh 1:12; or thou shalt be owned or taken notice of as the prophet
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of the Highest. Both were true in John. He was a prophet, (though not that Prophet, Joh 1:21), yea, and more than a prophet, saith our Saviour, Mat 11:9.
For thou shalt go before his face to prepare his ways. This was according to the prophecy, Isa 40:3; Mal 4:5; and according to what John said of himself, Mat 3:3; Mar 1:3. See Poole on "Mat 3:3".
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv76–79 And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of…
And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest,.... Here Zacharias turns himself to his son John, though an infant, and incapable of knowing what was said to him; and for the sake of those that were present, describes his office and work; and says, that he should be "called", that is, that he should "be", and be accounted a "prophet": for he was not only a preacher of Christ and his Gospel, but he also foretold the coming of the Messiah; and the vengeance that should fall on the Jewish nation, for their unfruitfulness, impenitence, and unbelief: and the Prophet "of the Highest"; that is, of God; as the Persic version renders it, of the most high God; and by whom is meant, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose prophet, harbinger, and forerunner John was; and so is a proof of Christ being the supreme, or most high God:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways; as the angel had suggested in Luk 1:17 and as was prophesied of him in Isa 11:3. See Gill on Mat 3:3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv76–78 And thou, child - He now speaks to John;…
And thou, child - He now speaks to John; yet not as a parent, but as a prophet.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v76 Verse 76. And thou, child, c.] Zacharias proclaims the…
Verse 76. And thou, child, c.] Zacharias proclaims the dignity, employment, doctrine, and success of his son and the ruin and recovery of the Jews and the Gentiles.
1. His dignity. Thou shalt be called (constituted) a prophet of the Most High. Prophet has two acceptations:-
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1st. A person who foretells future events; and;
2dly. A teacher of men in the things of God, 1Co 14:3.
John was a prophet in both senses: he proclaimed the mercy which should be communicated; announced the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and taught men how to leave their sins, and how to find the salvation of God. See Lu 3:5-14. His very name, Jehochanan, the grace or mercy of Jehovah, (see Lu 1:60,) was a constant prediction of the salvation of God. Our Lord terms him the greatest prophet which had ever appeared in the world. He had the honour of being the last and clearest prophet of the old covenant, and the first of the new.
2. His employment. Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. He should be the immediate forerunner of Jesus Christ, none being capable of succeeding him in his ministry but Christ himself. He was to prepare his ways, to be the honoured instrument, in the hands of God, of disposing the hearts of multitudes of the Israelites to believe in and follow the Lord Jesus.
3. Zacharias points out the doctrine or teaching of John. It should be γνωσις σωτηριας, the science of salvation. Men are ignorant, and they must be instructed. Human sciences may be profitable in earthly matters, but cannot profit the soul. The science that teaches God must come from God. No science is of any avail to the soul that does not bring salvation with it: this is the excellence of heavenly science, and an excellence that is peculiar to itself. No science but that which comes from God can ever save a soul from the power, the guilt, and the pollution of sin.
4. Zacharias predicts the success of his son's ministry. Under his preaching, the people should be directed to that tender mercy of God, through which they might obtain the remission of their sins, Lu 1:77-78. Those who are sent by God, and preach his truth, and his only, shall always be successful in their work; for it is for this very purpose that God has sent them; and it would be a marvellous thing, indeed, should they labour in vain. But there never was such a case, since God made man, in which a preacher was Divinely commissioned to preach Jesus and his salvation, and yet had no fruit of his labour.
5. Zacharias points out the wretched state in which the inhabitants of Judea and the Gentile world were then found.
(1) Their feet had wandered out of the way of peace, (Lu 1:79,) of temporal and spiritual prosperity.
(2) They had got into a state of darkness - they were blind concerning the things of God, and the things which belonged to their salvation.
(3) They had become contented inhabitants of this land of intellectual darkness - they had sat down in it, and were not concerned to get out of it.
(4) They were about to perish in it - death had his dominion there; and his swift approaches to them were now manifested to the prophet by seeing his shadow cast upon them.
Ignorance of God and salvation is the shadow of death; and the substance, eternal ruin, is essentially connected with the projected shadow. See these phrases explained at large on Mt 4:16.
6. Zacharias proclaims the recovery of a lost world. As the removal of this darkness, and redemption from this death, were now at hand, John is represented as being a day-spring from on high, a morning star, that foretold the speedy approach of the day, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness. That these words should be applied to John, and not to Christ, I am fully satisfied; and cannot give my reasons better for the arrangement I have made in the preceding notes, than in the words of an eminent critic, who, I find, has adopted nearly the same plan with myself. The passage, as I read it, is as follows: Through the tender mercy of our God, by which he hath visited us: a day-spring from on high, to give light to them that sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death, c. "Let the reader judge, whether my arrangement of this passage, which much better suits the original, be not far more elegant, and in all respects superior to the old translation. Thou, child! wilt be a teacher-THOU WILT BE a day-spring from the sky. And with what beauty and propriety is John, the forerunner of our Lord, styled the dawn of day, that ushers in the rising of the Sun of righteousness! And the concluding words - to guide our feet into the way of peace - is a comprehensive clause, after the manner of Hebrew poetry, belonging equally to the former sentence, beginning at - And thou, child! - and the latter, beginning at - A day-spring from the sky: for the people spoken of in the former are the Jews and in the latter, the Gentiles." - WAKEFIELD.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv76, 79 Luk 1:76-78. And thou child — He now speaks…
Luk 1:76-78. And thou child — He now speaks to John his son, yet not as a parent, but as a prophet; shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest — Thou shalt be the messenger of God Most High. Our Lord declares that John was more than a prophet: that is, he was a great preacher of righteousness, who called aloud to the people to repent, that they might be forgiven; and he foretold that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way — Thou shalt go before the Lord Christ, to point him out as the Messiah to his people, and to dispose and prepare them to receive him as such by repentance toward God, productive of fruit worthy of repentance, and by faith in him and subjection to him as a divinely-commissioned teacher, a mighty Saviour, and righteous governor. See note on Mat 3:3. To give knowledge of salvation to his people — To preach to God’s people the glad tidings of salvation, present and eternal, as attainable; to show them the way of attaining it, namely, by repentance and faith in the Messiah, and to give all such as should comply with these terms the knowledge of their having attained it, at least in part, by assuring them of the remission of their sins, that blessing being a branch of present, and a pledge and earnest of future salvation. Through the tender mercy of our God — Σπλαγχνα ελεους, the bowels of mercy, a strong Hebraism, implying God’s tender compassions for mankind, immersed as they are in sins and miseries. “These two words are often used in Scripture both jointly and separately. They signify pity, because that passion in us is commonly attended with a motion of the bowels, especially when the object of it is one we have an interest in. See Isa 63:15; Php 2:1; Col 3:12; where bowels of mercy signify the most tender mercy. The word σπλαγχνα, bowels, used by itself signifies any strong affection whatever, Phm 1:7.” John the Baptist gave people to understand, that though their case was deplorable, by reason of sin, it was not desperate, because pardon might be obtained through the tender and unspeakable mercy of God. Whereby the day-spring — The dawning day of morning light; that is, the gospel dispensation, as superior to the patriarchal or Mosaic, with their types and shadows, as the light of the rising sun is superior to that of the moon and stars. This gospel-day dawned in the ministry of John the Baptist; and it increased more and more during the personal ministry of Christ, and it shone out with meridian splendour on the day of pentecost, and thenceforward, when, in consequence of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit, in his various gifts and graces, ordinary and extraordinary, was poured out on the Christian Church. It is true the word ανατολη, here rendered day-spring, may signify, as some render it, the rising sun: for Zacharias is here alluding to the passages in the prophetic writings which describe the Messiah by the metaphors of the light and sun, particularly Mal 4:2; where he is called the Sun of righteousness, both on account of the light of his doctrine, and the joy produced by his appearing. See the note there, and on Isa 60:1-2; Isa 60:19. “Indeed no figure was ever more happily imagined, or more naturally applied, than this which represents the promised seed under the notion of the sun. For most aptly may Jesus be likened to the rising sun; his doctrine being to the souls of men what light is to their bodies. It is altogether necessary for directing our steps in the paths of truth and righteousness; it is exceedingly sweet to the spiritual taste, by discovering the most important and delightful truths; nay, like the light, it throws a beauty and pleasantness upon every thing in this lower world, which, without the assurance of God’s reconcileableness, would be but a dark and dreary scene to sinners, however noble and beautiful in itself.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv76–79 And thou, child ... - Zechariah predicts in this…
And thou, child ... - Zechariah predicts in this and the following verses the dignity, the employment, and the success of John. He declares what would be the subject of his preaching, and what his success.
Prophet of the Highest - Prophet of God; a prophet “appointed by God” to declare his will, and to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.
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The face of the Lord - The Lord Jesus, the Messiah, that was about to appear. To go before “the face of one” is the same as to go immediately before one, or to be immediately followed by another.
To prepare his ways - This is taken from Isa 40:3. See the Mat 3:3 niote, and Isa 40:3 note.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv77–79 Jesus is our salvation, and St. John [the Baptist]…
Jesus is our salvation, and St. John [the Baptist] was sent to give to the people the knowledge of this salvation: he bore testimony of Christ; (Theophylactus) by whom alone remission of sins can be obtained.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv76–79 Here are the dying echoes of this song; and…
Here are the dying echoes of this song; and very beautiful are these closing notes--like the setting sun, shorn indeed of its noontide radiance, but skirting the horizon with a wavy and quivering light--as of molten gold--on which the eye delights to gaze, till it disappears from the view. The song passes not here from Christ to John, but only from Christ direct to Christ as heralded by His forerunner.
thou child--not "my son"--this child's relation to himself being lost in his relation to a Greater than either.
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prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before him--that is, "the Highest." As "the Most High" is an epithet in Scripture only of the supreme God, it is inconceivable that inspiration should apply this term, as here undeniably, to Christ, unless He were "God over all blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv77–79 II. Luk_1:76-79. The prediction addressed to his son, the…
II. Luk_1:76-79. The prediction addressed to his son, the infant Baptist, in regard to his office.
77. Salvation… by remission of sins—On condition of repentance in faith on an approaching Messiah.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv76–79 76. child] Rather, little child (paidion)—“quantillus nunc es,” Bengel.
76. child] Rather, little child (paidion)—“quantillus nunc es,” Bengel.
To prepare his ways] An allusion to the prophecies of the Forerunner in Isa_40:3; Mal_3:1.
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Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv76–79 (76) Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of…
(76) Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest.—Note the recurrence of the same divine name that had appeared in Luk_1:32; Luk_1:35.
Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord.—The verse is, as it were, an echo of two great prophecies, combining the “going before Jehovah” of Mal_3:1, with the “preparing the way” of Isa_40:3.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv76–79 And thou, child; literally, little child. Here the father…
And thou, child; literally, little child. Here the father breaks forth into an expression of gladness at the thought of the great part his baby-son was to bear in this great national deliverance. His son, too oh, joy undreamed of! is to be ranked among the glorious company of the prophets of the Highest.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv77–78 To give knowledge of salvation
Luk_1:77
To give knowledge of salvation
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Source of salvation
All great rivers, unlike some great men who have begun life in lowly circumstances, boast a lofty descent.
It is after the Alpine traveller has left smiling valleys beneath him, and toiling along rugged glens and through deep mountain gorges, reaches at length the shores of an icy sea, that he stands at the source of the river, which, cold as the snows that feed it, and a full-grown torrent at its birth, rushes out from the cavern of the hollowed glacier. Yet such a river, in the loftiness of its birth-place, is but an humble image of salvation. How high its source! He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
God a great forgiver
Mr. Fleming, in his Fulfilling of the Scriptures, relates the case of a man who was a very great sinner, and for his horrible wickedness was put to death in the town of Ayr. This man had been so stupid and brutish a fellow, that all who knew him thought him beyond the reach of all ordinary means of grace; but while the man was in prison the Lord wonderfully wrought on his heart, and in such a measure discovered to him his sinfulness, that, after much serious exercise and sore wrestling, a most kindly work of repentance followed, with great assurance of mercy, insomuch that when he came to the place of execution he could not cease crying out to the people, under the sense of pardon and the comforts of the presence and favour of God, Oh, He is a great forgiver! He is a great forgiver! And he added the following words: Now hath perfect love cast out fear. I know God hath nothing to lay against me, for Jesus Christ hath paid all; and those are free whom the Son makes free. (Arvine.)
Nature silent concerning salvation.
On one occasion the late Dr. Newton was travelling in a railway carriage, when he found himself in the presence of an infidel, who soon began to obtrude his opinions upon his fellow passengers, declaring his contempt for the Bible, adding that he did not need it; the book of nature affording him all the information that he required on religious and moral subjects. Dr. Newton, observing a young man in the company who might receive some injury from these remarks, deemed it his duty to interfere. Looking at the infidel, he said, The book of nature, sir, that you have mentioned, is a large volume, and he is a very learned man that is acquainted with all its contents. Yet there is one subject on which I think it gives no information. Indeed, said the infidel, what is that? What is that, rejoined Dr. Newton, it is salvation. Salvation! exclaimed the infidel. Aye, salvation, rejoined the Doctor. Every man is sensible from what passes in his own conscience that he has done wrong, and that that which all people confess to be morally wrong, everywhere meets our sight. To do wrong renders us liable to punishment, and therefore we need salvation. But where do you find anything about salvation in the book of nature? Do you find it in the grass of the fields, either when it grows or when it fades away? Do you find it in the ever-varying surface of the sea? or in the clouds as they pass over your head? The book which you too exclusively admire was written too soon for the purpose of instructing men with respect to the nature and method of salvation. It was written before there was sin in the world, and therefore before salvation was needed. The infidel stood aghast, and said not a word.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On v76 76–79. Thou, child. The babe, John, before him. Prophet…
76–79. Thou, child. The babe, John, before him. Prophet of the Highest. “The Most High” is an epithet in Scripture only of the supreme God.
By the remission of their sins. The remainder of the sentence embodies the gospel in brief. It promises (1) salvation, (2) not merely political but spiritual. A remission of, and redemption from sin, (3) indicates the cause—the divine mercy (compare John 3:16; Eph. 2:4–8), and (4) promises the result, “like to eyes in darkness, and peace to feet straying in paths of sorrow and perplexity.”
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The dayspring. Christ is the morning light, the rising sun (Mal. 4:2). The gospel brings light with it (John 3:19).
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v78
Luke
ZACHARIAS’S HYMN
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THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH
Luk 1:78 - Luk 1:79.
As the dawn is ushered in by the notes of birds, so the rising of the Sun of Righteousness was heralded by song, Mary and Zacharias brought their praises and welcome to the unborn Christ, the angels hovered with heavenly music over His cradle, and Simeon took the child in his arms and blessed it. The human members of this choir may be regarded as the last of the psalmists and prophets, and the first of Christian singers. The song of Zacharias, from which my text is taken, is steeped in Old Testament allusions, and redolent of the ancient spirit, but it transcends that. Its early part is purely national, and hails the coming of the Messiah chiefly as the deliverer of Israel from foreign oppressors, though even in it their deliverance is regarded mostly as the means to an end, and the end one very appropriate on the lips of a priestly prophet-viz. sacerdotal service by the whole nation ‘in holiness and righteousness all their days.’
But in this latter portion, which is separated from the former by the pathetic, incidental, and slight reference to the singer’s own child, the national limits are far surpassed. The song soars above them, and pierces to the very heart and kernel of Christ’s work. ‘The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ Nothing deeper, nothing wider, nothing truer about the mission and issue of Christ’s coming could be spoken. And thus we have to look at the three things that lie in this text, as bearing upon our conceptions of Christ and His work-the darkness, the dawn, and the directing light.
I. The darkness.
Zacharias, as becomes the last of the prophets, and a man whose whole religious life was nourished upon the ancient Scriptures, speaks almost entirely in Old Testament phraseology in this song. And his description of ‘them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ is taken almost verbally from the great words from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who speaks, in immediate connection with his prophecy of the coming of the Christ, of ‘the people that walk in darkness and them that dwell,’ or sit, ‘in the shadow of death, upon whom the light hath shined.’
The picture that rises before us is that of a group of travellers benighted, bewildered, huddled together in the dark, afraid to move for fear of pitfalls, precipices, wild beasts, and enemies; and so sighing for the day and compelled to be inactive till it comes. That is the picture of humanity apart from Jesus Christ, a darkness so intense, so tragic, that it is, as it were, the very shadow of the ultimate and essential darkness which is death, and in it men are sitting torpid, unable to find their way and afraid to move.
Now darkness, all the world over, is the emblem of three things-ignorance, impurity, sorrow. And all men who are rent away from Jesus Christ, or on whom His beams have not yet fallen, this text tells us, have that triple curse lying upon them.
Ignorance. Think of what, without Jesus Christ, the world has deemed of the unseen, and of the God, if there be a God, that may inhabit there. He has been to them a great Peradventure, a great Terror, a great Inscrutable, a stone-eyed Fate, a thin, nebulous Nothing, with no emotion, no attributes, no heart, no ear to hear, the nearest approach to nonentity, according to the despairing saying of a master of philosophy, that ‘pure Being is equal to pure Nothing.’ And if all men do not rise to such heights of melancholy abstraction as that, still how little there is of blessed certainty, how little clearness of conception of a Divine Person that turns to us with love and tenderness in His heart, apart from Christ and His teaching! If you take away from civilised men all the knowledge of God that they owe to Jesus Christ, what have you left? The ladder by which they climbed is kicked away by a great many people nowadays, but it is to Him that they owe the very conceptions in the name of which some of them turn round and deny Him.
Ignorance of God, ignorance of one’s own self and of one’s deepest duties, and ignorance of that solemn future, the fact of which is plain to most men, but the how of which is such a blank mystery but for Jesus Christ-these things are elements of the darkness that wraps the world. Go to heathendom if you want to see the problem worked out, as to what men know outside of the revelation which culminates in Jesus Christ. And take your own hearts, dear friends who stand aside from that sweet Lord and light of our lives, and ask yourselves, What do I know, with a certainty which is to me as valid, as-yea! more valid than that given by sense and outward perceptions? What do I know of God that I do not owe to Jesus Christ? Nothing. You may guess much, you may hope a little, you may dread a great deal, you may question more than all, but you will know nothing.
Well, then, further, this solemn emblem stands for impurity. And we have only to consult our own hearts to feel how true it is about us all, that we dwell in a region all darkened, if not by the coarse transgressions which men consent to call sins, yet darkened more subtly and oftentimes more hopelessly by the obscuration of pure selfishness and living to myself and by myself. Wherever that comes, it is like the mists that steal up from some poisonous marsh, and shut out stars and sky, and drape the whole country in a melancholy veil. It is white but it is poisonous, it is white but it is darkness all the same. There are other kinds of sin than the sins that break the Ten Commandments; there are other kinds of sin than the sins that the world takes cognisance of. The worst poisons are the tasteless ones, and colourless gases are laden with fatal power. We may walk in a darkness that may be felt, though there be nothing in our lives that men call sin, and little there of which our consciences are as yet educated enough to be ashamed. Rent from God, man lives to himself, and so is sunk in darkness.
And what shall I say about the third of the doleful triad of which this pregnant emblem is the recognised symbol all the world over? Surely, though earth be full of blessing, and life of possibilities of joy, no man travels very far along the road without feeling that the burden of sorrow is a burden that we all have to carry. There are blessings in plenty, there is mirth more than enough. There is ‘the laughter’ which is ‘the crackling of thorns’ under a pot. There are plenty of distractions and amusements, ‘blessings more plentiful than hope’; but yet the ground tone of every human life, when the first flush of inexperience and novelty has worn off, apart from God, is sadness, conscious of itself sometimes, and driven to all manner of foolish attempts at forgetfulness, unconscious of itself sometimes, and knowing not what is the disease of which it languishes. There it is, like some persistent minor in a great piece of music, wailing on through all the embroidery and lightsomeness of the cheerfuller and loftier notes. ‘Every heart knoweth its own bitterness,’ and every heart has a bitterness of its own to know.
I do not understand how it is that men who have no religion in them can bear their own sorrows and see their neighbours’ and not go mad. Sometimes the world seems to me to be moving round its central sun with a doleful atmosphere of sighs wherever it goes, and all the mirth and stir and bustle are but like a thin crust of grass with flowers upon it, cast across the sulphurous depths of some volcano that may slumber for a while, but is there all the same.
Brother! you and I, away from Jesus Christ, have to face the certainties of ignorance, of sin, of sorrow-ignorance unenlightened, sin unconquered, sorrow uncomforted.
And then comes the other tragic, and yet most picturesque emblem in the representation here: ‘They sit in darkness.’ Yes! what can they do, poor creatures? They know not where to go. The light has left them, inactivity is a necessity. And so, with folded hands, they wish for the day, or try to forget the night by lighting some little torch of their own that only serves to make darkness visible, and dies all too soon, leaving them to lie down in sorrow.
But, you say, ‘What nonsense! Inactivity! look at the fierce energy of life in our Western lands.’ Well, grant it all, there may be plenty of material activity attendant upon inward stagnation and torpor. But, again, I would like to ask how much of the most godless, commercial, artistic, intellectual activity of so-called civilised and Christian countries is owing to the stimulus and ferment that Jesus Christ brought. If you want to see how true it is that men without Him sit in the darkness, go to heathen lands, and see the stagnation, the torpor, there.
Now, dear brethren, all this is true about us, in the measure in which we do not participate by faith and love, welcoming Him into our hearts in the illumination that Jesus Christ brings. And what I want to do is to lay upon the hearts and consciences of each of us here this thought, that the solemn, tragic picture of my text is the picture of me, separate from Christ, however I may try to conceal it from myself, and to mask it from other people by busying myself with inferior knowledges, by avoiding to listen to the answer that conscience gives to the question as to my moral character, and by befooling myself with noisy joys and tumultuous pleasures, in which there is no pleasure.
II. Now, note secondly, the dayspring, or dawn.
My text, in the part on which I have just been speaking, links itself with ancient Messianic prophecy, and this expression, ‘the dayspring from on high.’ also links itself with other prophecies of the same sort. Almost the last word of prophecy before the four centuries of silence which Mary and Zacharias broke, was, ‘Unto you that fear His name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His beams.’ There can be little doubt, I think, that the allusion of my text is to these all but the last words of the prophet Malachi. For that final chapter of the Old Testament colours the song both of Mary and of Zacharias. And it is to be observed that the Greek translation of the Hebrew uses the same verb, of which the cognate noun is here employed, for the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. The picturesque old English word ‘dayspring’ means neither more nor less than sunrising. And it is here used practically as a name for Jesus Christ, who is Himself the Sun, represented as rising over a darkened earth, and yet, with a singular neglect of the propriety of the metaphor, as descending from on high, not to shine on us from the sky, but to ‘visit us’ on earth.
Jesus Christ Himself, over and over again, said by implication, and more than once by direct claim, ‘I am the Light of the world.’ And my text is the anticipation, perhaps from lips that did not fully understand the whole significance of the prophecy which they spoke, of these later declarations. I have said that the darkness is the emblem of three baleful things, of the converse of which light is the symbol. As the darkness speaks to us of ignorance, so Christ, as the Sun illumines us with the light of ‘the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ For doubt we have blessed certainty, for a far-off God we have the knowledge of God close at hand. For an impassive will or a stony-eyed fate we have the knowledge {and not only the wistful yearning after the knowledge} of a loving heart, warm and throbbing. Our God is no unemotional abstraction, but a living Person who can love, who can pity, and we are speaking more than poetry when we say, God is compassion, and compassion is God. This we know because ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ And the solid certainty of a loving God, tender, pitying, mighty to help, quick to hear, ready to forgive, waiting to bless, is borne into our hearts, and comes there, sweet as the sunshine, when we turn ourselves to the light of Christ.
In like manner the darkness, born of our own sin, which wraps our hearts, and shuts out so much that is fair and sweet and strong, will pass away if we turn ourselves to Him. His light pouring into our souls will hurt the eye at first, but it will hurt to cure. The darkness of sin and alienation will pass, and the true light will shine.
The darkness of sorrow-well! it will not cease, but He will ‘smooth the raven down of darkness till it smiles,’ and He will bring into our griefs such a spirit of quiet submission as that they shall change into a solemn scorn of ills, and be almost like gladnesses. Peace, which is better than exuberant delight, will come to quiet the sorrow of the soul that trusts in Jesus Christ. The day which is knowledge, purity, gladsomeness, the cheerful day will be ours if we hold by Him. We ‘are all the children of the light and of the day’; we ‘are not of the night nor of darkness.’
Brother, it is possible to grope at noontide as in the dark, and in all the blaze of Christ’s revelation still to be left in the Cimmerian folds of midnight gloom. You can shut your eyes to the sunshine; have you opened your hearts to its coming?
I cannot dwell {your time will not allow of it} upon the other points connected with this description of the day spring, except just to point out in passing the singular force and depth of the words-which I suppose are more forcible and deep than he who spoke them understood at the time that visitation was described. The dayspring is ‘from on high.’ This Sun has come down on to the earth. It has not risen on a far-off horizon, but it has come down and visited us, and walks among us. This Sun, our life-star, ‘hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar.’ For He that rises upon us as the Light of life, hath descended from the heavens, and was, before He appeared amongst men.
And His coming is a divine visitation. The word here ‘hath visited us’ {or ‘shall visit us,’ as the Revised Version varies it}, is chiefly employed in the Old Testament to describe the divine acts of self-revelation, and these, mostly redemptive acts. Zacharias employs it in that sense in the earlier portion of the song, where he says that ‘God hath visited and redeemed His people.’ And so from the use of this word we gather these two thoughts-God comes to us when Christ comes to us, and His coming is wondrous, blessed nearness, and nearness to each of us. ‘What is man that Thou shouldst be mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou shouldst visit him?’ said the old Psalmist. We say ‘What is man that the Dayspring from on high should come down upon earth, and round His immortal beams, should, as it were, cast the veil and obscuration of a human form; and so walk amongst us, the embodied Light and the Incarnate God?’ ‘The dayspring from on high hath visited us.’
III. Lastly, note the directing by the light.
‘To guide our feet into the way of peace.’ This Sun stoops to the office of the star that moved before the wise men and hovered over His cradle, and becomes to each individual soul a guide and director. The picture of my text, I suppose, carries us on to the morning, when the benighted travellers catch the first gleams of the rising sun and resume their activity, and there is a cheerful stir through the encampment and the way is open before them once more, and they are ready to walk in it. The force of the metaphor, however, implies more than that, for it speaks to us of the wonder that this universal Light should become the special guide of each individual soul, and should not merely hang in the heavens, to cast the broad radiance of its beams over the whole surface of the earth, but should move before each man, a light unto his feet and a lamp to his path, in special manifestation to him of his duty and his life’s pilgrimage.
There is only one way of peace, and that is to follow His beams and to be directed by His preceding us. Then we shall realise the most indispensable of all the conditions of peace-Christ brings you and me the reconciliation which puts us at peace with God, which is the foundation of all other tranquillity. And He will guide docile feet into the way of peace in yet another fashion-in that the following of His example, the cleaving to Him, the holding by His skirts or by His hand, and the treading in His footsteps, is the only way by which the heart can receive the solid satisfaction in which it rests, and the conscience can cease from accusing and stinging. The way of wisdom is a path of pleasantness and a way of peace. Only they who walk in Christ’s footsteps have quiet hearts and are at amity with God, in concord with themselves, friends of mankind, and at peace with circumstances. There is no strife within, no strained relations or hostile alienation to God, no gnawing unrest of unsatisfied desires, no pricks of accusing conscience; for the man who puts his hand into Christ’s hand, and says, ‘Order Thou my footsteps by Thy word’; ‘Where Thou goest I will go, and what Thou commandest I will do.’
Brother, put thy hand out from the darkness and clasp His, and ‘the darkness shall be light about thee’; and He will fulfil His own promise when He said, ‘I am the Light of the world. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v77 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23")
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v76 A hymn of prophecy:
A hymn of prophecy:
v. 76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways;
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v. 77. to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins,
v. 78. through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us,
v. 79. to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
v. 80. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.
From a contemplation of the wonderful gifts of the redemption Zacharias turns to a prophecy concerning the future of the son that had been born to him according to the promise of the Lord. John would be a prophet in the highest and fullest sense of the word, Mat 11:9. His life’s work would consist in going before the face of the Lord as a true herald to prepare His ways before Him, as the prophets had said, Isa 40:3; Mal 3:1. And when the proclamation of the Law would have prepared the hearts in removing all self-righteousness and supposed piety, then John would be able to dispense the knowledge of salvation which consists in forgiveness of sins; redemption is transmitted through the remission of sins. "John is to come and give the people of God a knowledge, which is not to be a knowledge of sin, of wrath, of death, but a knowledge of salvation, that is, such preaching from which one learns how to be saved and delivered from death and sin. That is an art of which the world knows not one word. " And this preaching is made possible through the bowels, the heart of mercy, of our God. His whole heart yearns toward us with inexpressible love and tender mercy, and for the sake of that the Daystar from on high has visited us, the light, star, or sun is risen upon us in Jesus the Savior. This true morning star with the rays of God’s divine love illumined the darkness which had been caused by sin and enmity toward Him. And the result is that those that sat in such darkness and shadow of death have felt the light and the warmth of His glow, Isa 60:1-2. Those unable to find their way in the darkness of spiritual death, He will awaken to true life, illumine them with the light of the Gospel, and guide them to the way of peace, Rom 5:1. It is a beautiful and effective, as well as complete description of the work which God performs in us through the Gospel. "This certainly means, as I think, cutting off all merit and good works from the forgiveness of sins, in order that no one may say: I have earned it. Remission of sins has only one reason, namely, because God is merciful, and out of such mercy has sent and given us His Son that He might pay for us and we should be saved through Him. Therefore it reads thus: Forgiveness of sins is not the result of our merit, nor of our good works, but of the sincere mercy of God, that He has loved us of His own free will. We had with our sins earned the fire of hell, but God looked upon His boundless mercy. That is the reason why He sent His Son and for the sake of His Son forgives us our sins. " Of the entire hymn, Augustine writes: "O blessed hymn of joy and praise! Divinely inspired by the Holy Ghost, and divinely pronounced by the venerable priest, and daily sung in the Church of God! Oh, may thy words be often in my mouth, and the sweetness of them always in my heart! The expressions thou usest are the comfort of my life; and the subject thou treatest of the hope of all the world!"
The evangelist concludes with a note concerning the youth of John the Baptist, saying that lie grew in body and mind and spent his time out in the deserts until the Lord gave him ail indication that the period of seclusion must be followed by that of public ministry.
Summary.After a short preface, Luke relates the stories of the announcement of John the Baptist’s birth, of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, of the visit of Mary to Elisabeth, with the hymn of Mary, and of the birth, childhood, and youth of the Baptist, with the hymn of his father Zacharias.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv76, 78 Yes, and you
Yes, and you
Zechariah uses this phrase to begin his direct address to his son. You may have a similar way to direct speech in your language.
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you, child, will be called a prophet
People will realize that he is a prophet. This can be stated in active form. AT: "people will know that you are a prophet" (See: Active or Passive)
of the Most High
These words are a euphemism for God. AT: "who serves the Most High" or "who speaks for God Most High" (See: Euphemism)
will go before the face of the Lord
Before the Lord comes, he will go and announce to the people that the Lord will come to them. See how you translated this in Luke 1:17.
the face of the Lord
"the face of" someone can be an idiom that refers to the that person's presence. It is sometimes omitted in translation. AT: "the Lord" See how you translated this in Luke 1:17. (See: Idiom)
to prepare his paths
This is a metaphor that means that John will prepare the people to listen to and believe the Lord's message. (See: Metaphor)
to give knowledge of salvation ... by the forgiveness of their sins
The phrase "give knowledge" is a metaphor for teaching. The abstract nouns "salvation" and "forgiveness" can be expressed with the verbs "save" and "forgive." AT: "to teach his people salvation through the forgiveness of their sins" or "to teach his people how God saves people by forgiving their sins" (See: Metonymy and Abstract Nouns)
translationWords
prophet
Most High
lord
know
save
forgive
sin
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv76, 78 1:76-77 And you, my little son: Zechariah turned from…
1:76-77 And you, my little son: Zechariah turned from speaking about the coming Messiah to address his newborn son, John, who would prepare the Messiah’s way. • called the prophet of the Most High: John was the last and greatest in the line of Old Testament prophets (see 7:28). • prepare the way for the Lord: See Isa 40:3.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.