Luke 1:15-17

1:15 for he will be great in the sight of ¹  the Lord. He ²  must never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. ³  1:16 He ⁴  will turn ⁵  many of the people ⁶  of Israel to the Lord their God. 1:17 And he will go as forerunner before the Lord ⁷  in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, ⁸  to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for him.”

Luke 1:76

1:76 And you, child, ⁹  will be called the prophet ¹⁰  of the Most High. ¹¹ 

For you will go before ¹²  the Lord to prepare his ways, ¹³ 

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¹ tn Grk “before.”

² tn Grk “and he”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun in the translation.

³ tn Grk “even from his mother’s womb.” While this idiom may be understood to refer to the point of birth (“even from his birth”), Luke 1:41 suggests that here it should be understood to refer to a time before birth.

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

⁴ tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

⁵ sn The word translated will turn is a good summary term for repentance and denotes John’s call to a change of direction (Luke 3:1-14).

⁶ tn Grk “sons”; but clearly this is a generic reference to people of both genders.

⁷ tn Grk “before him”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁸ sn These two lines cover all relationships: Turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children points to horizontal relationships, while (turn) the disobedient to the wisdom of the just shows what God gives from above in a vertical manner.

⁹ sn Now Zechariah describes his son John (you, child) through v. 77.

¹⁰ tn Or “a prophet”; but since Greek nouns can be definite without the article, and since in context this is a reference to the eschatological forerunner of the Messiah (cf. John 1:17), the concept is better conveyed to the English reader by the use of the definite article “the.”

¹¹ sn In other words, John is a prophet of God; see 1:32 and 7:22-23, 28.

¹² tc Most mss, especially the later ones (A C D L Θ Ψ 0130 Ë^1,13 33 Ï sy), have πρὸ προσώπου κυρίου (pro proswpou kuriou, “before the face of the Lord”), but the translation follows the reading ἐνώπιον κυρίου (enwpion kuriou, “before the Lord”), which has earlier and better ms support (Ì⁴ א B W 0177 pc) and is thus more likely to be authentic.

¹³ tn This term is often translated in the singular, looking specifically to the forerunner role, but the plural suggests the many elements in that salvation.

sn On the phrase prepare his ways see Isa 40:3-5 and Luke 3:1-6.