What manner of child shall this be! — Better, what shall this child be! The question was not, what kind of child He should be, but what the child would grow to.
And the hand of the Lord was with him. — Some good MSS. give, “for the hand of the Lord,” as giving the reason for the previous question. The “hand” implies, in the familiar language of the Old Testament (e.g., Judges 2:15; 2 Chronicles 30:12; Ezra 7:9), what we more commonly call the “guidance” or the “providence” of God. The phrase was essentially a Hebrew one; one of the vivid anthropomorphic idioms which they could use more boldly than other nations, because they had clearer thoughts of God as not made after the similitude of men (Deuteronomy 4:12).