Luke 1:5 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The Holy Ghost, for infinitely wise reasons, giveth us here an account both of the time when John the Baptist was born, and also of his parentage. It was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, that is, he who was the son of Antipater: not Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, of whom you read Luke 3:1, who put John Baptist to death, that was thirty-one or thirty-two years after this. He is usually called Herod the Great; who fought his way to the government of the Jews under the Romans, and came to his throne by the slaughter of the Jewish Sanhedrim; by which means he also extinguished all the government, which till his time held in the tribe of Judah, though not in a single person, (for that was destroyed in John, soon after the time of Judas Maccabeus), yet in a select number out of that royal tribe. So that in this Herod's time the prophecy of dying Jacob, Genesis 49:10, was fulfilled. The sceptre, that is, the government, departed from Judah, and the lawgiver from his feet, which was a certain sign (in order to the fulfilling of that prophecy) that Shiloh, that is, the Messias, was coming. This for the time. A certain priest, named Zacharias; some will have him to have been the high priest, or his deputy, but that cannot be, for the high priest was but one, and so not within the courses of the priests, but of the eldest family from Aaron; and though it be said, Luke 1:9, that his lot was to burn incense, yet it must not be understood of the incense mentioned Leviticus 16:12, to be burned upon the yearly day of expiation, (which indeed none but the high priest might do), but of the daily incense mentioned in the law, Exodus 30:7,8, which any of the priests did in their courses. This Zacharias was of the course of Abia. The eldest son of Aaron was always the high priest; his other sons were priests. In a long course of time, their descendants so multiplied, that they were too many all at the same time to minister in the temple. David therefore divided them into courses; each course waited their month. 1 Chronicles 24:4,5, there is an account of the distribution of the priests into twenty-four courses. In David's time the eighth course was the course of Abijah. It appeareth by Nehemiah 12:1-47, that after the captivity they kept the denominations of these courses, but it is probable the order of them was altered. We read of Abijah in Nehemiah 12:17, but whether his was then, or at this time when Luke wrote his Gospel, the eighth course I cannot tell. It is enough for us that Zacharias was one of the ordinary priests of the course of Abia; whose office it was to serve in the temple in his course, which was the course of such as derived from the Abijah mentioned in 1 Chronicles 24:10. And his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. This is added not to signify Zacharias's obedience to the Divine law, which obliged the priests to marry within their own tribes; for the reason of that law being only to prevent the confusion of the inheritances, which fell by lot to the several tribes, and by the will of God were to be so kept distinct, the tribe of Levi having no such inheritance, might intermix with any other tribe, and did so; the high priest only was obliged to marry one of his own people, Leviticus 21:14, and Jehoiada, 2 Chronicles 22:11, married one of the tribe of Judah; but it is added to show the honourableness of Elisabeth's stock. Moses and Aaron were the two first governors of the Israelites. Elisabeth was not only of the tribe of Levi, but descended from Aaron, whom God made the noblest family of the Levites. Her name was Elisabeth. It is a Hebrew name, Exodus 6:23, and (as you may see there) was the very name of Aaron's wife, the daughter of Amminadab, and sister of Naashon. As it may be variously written it signifieth, the rest, or the oath, or the rod of my God.