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Elizabeth and Zechariah mark the end of an old covenant, just as they mark the beginning of Luke's gospel. Both are righteous, walking blamelessly in all the statutes and commands of the Lord. Elizabeth is a daughter of Aaron, Zechariah a Levite from the Abijah clan and a priest serving his rotation in the temple. They are pious Jews and share with many pious Jews before them the same grief: They are barren. They were barren all their years together and now they are old, too. Age has put an end to any lingering hope.

How familiar their story is. It was the same with Sarah and Abraham, with Rachel and Jacob, with Manoah and his wife, with Hannah and Elkanah, with the Shunammite woman and her husband. Each couple in their way pleaded with the Lord. A few tried to cheat the raw deal of childlessness. Sarah cheated with a servant girl; the result was Ishmael, cruelty, and unabated enmity millennia later. Rachel cheated, too, with the servant girl Bilhah, but it only exacerbated her grief and Leah's competitiveness.

The ones after them, maybe, learned the lesson and stopped cheating. Their reaction to the angel or the prophet bringing news of a child at last was simple disbelief. Manoah insisted on a repeat miracle, unwilling to accept his wife's testimony about Samson's eventual birth. The Shunammite woman begged Elisha not to mock her with his promise. Hannah just prayed, prayed so hard that Eli thought she was drunk and Elkanah thought she didn't love him anymore.

Cheat or no cheat, their prayers were answered. Their dirty tricks and their disbelief were forgiven. A boy was born—always a boy.

With Elizabeth and Zechariah, this string of miracles ends. It is complete.

Zechariah was no better than his predecessors when faced with an angel. He doubted like the best of them. Five precedents did nothing to prepare him for the miracle in his own life. So the judgment on his disbelief was a mute tongue, and more than that, a son who was not his son, a son set apart already in the womb, with a name different from his father's and a belly full of the Holy Spirit. Zechariah should have known better. When an angel comes and announces the birth of a son—believe!

No one need learn from Zechariah's mistake now. Angels do not announce impossible births anymore. These miracles are done with. God has spoken his piece and shown the strength of his arm. John the Baptist completes the Lord's work of bringing something from nothing in the womb of a barren wife. God's next miracle after this boy is a greater one, so great that he gladly permits the surprise and even the modest challenge of the mother. She is a virgin, not a wife; she is young, not old; she has no precedent before her. The child will take his flesh from her and yet not be hers, for he is begotten of the Father and conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. His name will be Jesus.

Jesus' cousin, John, the last son born to the childless, prepares the way. He is the prophet of the Most High. But John, whose praise his father sings, is a son to break your heart. He goes to the desert, eats locusts and wild honey, wears camel hair, never comes home, angers everyone, points to the Messiah, decreases, and loses his head to the wicked king. Elizabeth and Zechariah deliver their long-awaited son to the world, and are never heard from again. They begin the gospel, and in so doing they end the old covenant of sons for the barren.

My husband and I are barren.

Some people, on hearing the news, want to know which of us is to blame. There is precedent for the question. The Scriptures always identify who is at fault. Sarah is too old, the Shunammite woman's husband is too old, too; Rachel and Hannah and Manoah's wife are simply cursed with closed wombs. One person of the pair is always responsible.

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December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12