Catholic Commentary
Introduction of Zechariah and Elizabeth
5There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the priestly division of Abijah. He had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.6They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord.7But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they both were well advanced in years.
Luke 1:5–7 introduces Zechariah, a priest of Abijah's division, and his wife Elizabeth, who are righteous before God but childless due to Elizabeth's barrenness and their advanced age. This mirrors Old Testament patterns where barrenness precedes divine intervention, positioning them as faithful remnant figures awaiting God's promise.
God enters history not through the powerful or the fulfilled, but through the faithful who have learned to wait in their wound.
Luke 1:5 — Historical and Priestly Setting Luke's opening phrase — "in the days of Herod, the king of Judea" — is a deliberate literary and theological move. Like the prophets who anchored their oracles in the reigns of kings (cf. Isa 1:1; Jer 1:1–3), Luke roots the Gospel in concrete history. This is not myth; salvation happens in time. The Herod named here is Herod the Great (37–4 BC), notorious for his political cunning and brutal suppression of rivals — a figure of worldly power standing in stark contrast to the priestly family God is about to visit.
Zechariah belongs to the priestly division (Greek: ephēmeria) of Abijah. Under David, the Levitical priesthood had been organized into 24 divisions (1 Chr 24:1–19), each serving a one-week rotation twice a year at the Temple. Abijah's division was the eighth (1 Chr 24:10). This detail is not decorative; it tells us Zechariah is an ordinary, working priest — not a high priest, not a political figure — a man embedded in the rhythmic, faithful service of God's house. His wife Elizabeth is introduced with equal dignity: she is "of the daughters of Aaron," meaning she too is of priestly lineage, a double priestly household. Her name, Elisheba in Hebrew (Ex 6:23), was the name of Aaron's own wife, a deliberate echo that identifies her as heir to the very origins of Israel's priesthood.
Luke 1:6 — Righteousness and Its Meaning Verse 6 is one of the most theologically dense sentences in the infancy narrative. Luke describes them as dikaioi (righteous) "before God" (enantíon toû theoû) — not merely in human estimation, but in the sight of the One who sees the heart (1 Sam 16:7). This righteousness is further defined as walking (poreuómenoi) — a dynamic, ongoing posture — "blamelessly" (ámemptoi) in all the "commandments and ordinances" (entolais kai dikaiōmasin) of the Lord. The pairing of these two legal terms likely distinguishes between the moral commandments (entolai) and the cultic/ceremonial ordinances (dikaiōmata), suggesting Zechariah and Elizabeth were obedient across the full spectrum of Torah — a wholeness of devotion.
This description is extraordinary in a Gospel that will also proclaim that all have sinned and that righteousness ultimately comes through Christ. Luke is not claiming they were sinless; rather, he is characterizing them in the tradition of the "remnant" of faithful Israel — like Noah (Gen 6:9), Abraham (Gen 17:1), and Job (Job 1:1) — people whose hearts were genuinely oriented toward God within the covenant. They are the best of the Old Covenant, standing at its threshold.
Luke 1:7 — Barrenness as Theological Landscape The adversative kai ("but") in verse 7 introduces the dramatic tension: despite their righteousness, they have no child. In the biblical world, barrenness was often read as divine disfavor (cf. Deut 7:14; 28:4). For a priestly family, the absence of an heir carried particular weight. Yet the reader of Israel's scriptures immediately recognizes a pattern: Sarah (Gen 11:30), Rebekah (Gen 25:21), Rachel (Gen 30:22–23), and Hannah (1 Sam 1:2–20) were all barren women through whom God accomplished something new and decisive. Barrenness in Scripture is not divine punishment but divine preparation — a cleared space into which God alone can speak.
Luke adds that "both were well advanced in years" (probebekótes en tais hēmérais autōn), an echo of the phrase used of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18:11. The typological parallel is unmistakable and intentional: just as God opened Sarah's womb to produce Isaac, the child of promise through whom the covenant people descended, so now God is about to open Elizabeth's womb to produce John, the one who will prepare the way for the fulfillment of every covenant promise. The two stories mirror each other across the whole arc of salvation history.
Catholic tradition reads these three verses as a hinge between the two Testaments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the economy of the Old Testament was deliberately so oriented that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ" (CCC 122). Zechariah and Elizabeth embody this orientation perfectly: they are Israel at its most faithful, awaiting fulfillment.
The Church Fathers saw in Elizabeth's barrenness a figure of the Old Law itself. St. Ambrose of Milan, in his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, writes that the barren Elizabeth signifies the synagogue, which for long ages had ceased to bear prophetic fruit — yet at the hour appointed by God, it would give birth to the voice crying in the wilderness. Similarly, Origen observed that the two elderly parents represent the Old Covenant in its advanced age, bearing at last the child it could never produce on its own strength.
The description of Zechariah and Elizabeth as "righteous before God" resonates with the Catholic understanding of justification. The Council of Trent (Session VI) affirmed that genuine righteousness — not merely imputed, but truly infused and lived — is possible within the covenant community. Zechariah and Elizabeth represent the fruits of that covenant grace, even before the fullness of grace arrives in Christ. They are, in the language of Vatican II's Lumen Gentium (§55), among the holy ones of Israel in whom "the figure of the future mother of the Saviour shines forth," a community shaped by God's grace to receive his definitive Word.
Their barrenness also illuminates the Catholic theology of suffering and trust. What appears to be a wound — the absence of a child — is, in God's providence, the precise condition required for a miraculous birth. As St. John Paul II taught in Salvifici Doloris (§11), human suffering is not meaningless but can become the locus of divine encounter when united to God's purposes.
Zechariah and Elizabeth challenge a contemporary Catholic assumption: that faithfulness to God guarantees visible blessing. They were blameless in their observance, devoted in their prayer, yet they lived with a grief the community around them would have read as failure. Many Catholics today carry private sorrows — infertility, unanswered prayers, vocations that seem unfruitful, years of faithful service with no apparent result — and can be tempted to read their suffering as spiritual inadequacy.
These verses refuse that reading. Righteousness and suffering coexist without contradiction in their story. The deeper invitation is to Zechariah and Elizabeth's quality of patient fidelity: continuing to serve in the Temple, continuing to walk in the commandments, even when the promise seems withheld. Pope Francis, in Gaudete et Exsultate (§112), describes holiness precisely as this perseverance in the ordinary — the "holiness of the faithful people of God." Concretely, this passage may prompt Catholics to examine where they are called to keep walking faithfully without visible fruit, trusting that God's timing, not theirs, is the measure of fruitfulness.