Luke 1:36

1:36 “And look,¹ your relative² Elizabeth has also become pregnant with³ a son in her old age – although she was called barren, she is now in her sixth month!⁴

Luke 2:37

2:37 She had lived as a widow since then for eighty-four years.⁵ She never left the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.⁶

Luke 15:9

15:9 Then⁷ when she has found it, she calls together her⁸ friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice⁹ with me, for I have found the coin¹⁰ that I had lost.’

Luke 21:4

21:4 For they all offered their gifts out of their wealth.¹¹ But she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had to live on.”¹²

¹tn Grk “behold.”

²tn Some translations render the word συγγενίς (sungeni") as “cousin” (so Phillips) but the term is not necessarily this specific.

³tn Or “has conceived.”

⁴tn Grk “and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren.” Yet another note on Elizabeth’s loss of reproach also becomes a sign of the truth of the angel’s declaration.

⁵tn Grk “living with her husband for seven years from her virginity and she was a widow for eighty four years.” The chronology of the eighty-four years is unclear, since the final phrase could mean “she was widowed until the age of eighty-four” (so BDAG 423 s.v. ἕως 1.b.α). However, the more natural way to take the syntax is as a reference to the length of her widowhood, the subject of the clause, in which case Anna was about 105 years old (so D. L. Bock, Luke [BECNT], 1:251-52; I. H. Marshall, Luke, [NIGTC], 123-24).

⁶sn The statements about Anna worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day make her extreme piety clear.

⁷tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

⁸tn Grk “the”; in context the article is used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

⁹sn Rejoice. Besides the theme of pursuing the lost, the other theme of the parable is the joy of finding them.

¹⁰tn Grk “drachma.”

¹¹tn Grk “out of what abounded to them.”

¹²tn Or “put in her entire livelihood.”