Discovery BoxLuke 1:14-16 
Context1:14 Joy and gladness will come 1 to you, and many will rejoice at 2 his birth, 3 1:15 for he will be great in the sight of 4 the Lord. He 5 must never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. 6 1:16 He 7 will turn 8 many of the people 9 of Israel to the Lord their God.
1 tn Grk “This will be joy and gladness.”
2 tn Or “because of.”
3 tn “At his birth” is more precise as the grammatical subject (1:58), though “at his coming” is a possible force, since it is his mission, as the following verses note, that will really bring joy.
4 tn Grk “before.”
5 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.
6 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.
7 tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
8 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).
9 tn Grk “sons”; but clearly this is a generic reference to people of both genders.
