There was in the days of Herod. — The writer begins, as he had promised, with the first facts in the divine order of events. The two Chapter s that follow have every appearance of having been based originally on an independent document, and that probably a Hebrew one. On its probable sources, see Introduction. On Herod and this period of his reign, see Notes on Matthew 2:1.
Zacharias. — The name (= “he who remembers Jehovah,” or, perhaps, “he whom Jehovah remembers,”) had been borne by many in the history of Israel, among others by the son of Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 24:20), and by the prophet of the return from the Babylonian Captivity.
Of the course of Abia. — The Greek word so translated implies a system of rotation, each “set” or “course” of the priests serving from Sabbath to Sabbath. That named after Abia, or Abijah, appears in 1 Chronicles 24:10 as the eighth of the twenty-four courses into which the houses of Eleazar and Ithamar were divided by David. On the first return from the Captivity only four of these courses are mentioned as having come back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:36-39), and the name Abijah is not one of them. It appears, however, in later lists (Nehemiah 10:7; Nehemiah 12:4; Nehemiah 12:17), and the four-and-twenty sets were probably soon re-organised.
His wife was of the daughters of Aaron. — The priests were free to marry outside the limits of their own caste under certain limitations as to the character of their wives (Leviticus 21:7), and the fact of a priestly descent on both sides was therefore worth noticing.
Her name was Elisabeth. — The name in its Hebrew form of Elisheba had belonged to the wife of Aaron, who was of the tribe of Judah (Exodus 6:23), and was naturally an honoured name among the daughters of the priestly line. It appears in an altered form (Jehovah being substituted for El) in Jehosheba, the wife of the priest Jehoiada (2 Kings 11:2).