Luke 1:70 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Which have been since the world began:— 'Απ αιωνος : "from the beginning of the world." By the world, in this passage, some understand the Jewish dispensation, because, before the giving of the law, no prophet spake either of God's raising up a Horn of Salvation in the house of David, or of performing his covenant with Abraham. And to these promises they suppose Zacharias now alluded, because the general strain of his discourse seems to respect the temporal deliverance which the Jews imagined the Messiah would accomplish for the Israelites. Nevertheless, if we carefullyattend to the text, we shall be sensible that this 70th verse is connected, not with the verse which precedes, but with that which follows it, in this manner: "He hath raised up an Horn of Salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, &c. as the accomplishment of a promise which he made by the prophets from the beginning of the world; which promise was, that we, the spiritual Israel, should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us." Accordingly we find that a promise of this sort was made to the parents of mankind immediately after the fall, and by them handed down to their posterity, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This sense renders Zacharias's words more consistent than the other, which can never shew how a horn of salvation in the house of David was promised by the prophets from the beginning of the Jewish dispensation. And though it should be granted, that Zacharias had not now in his eye the general spiritual deliverance of the people of God, yet, as he spake by inspiration, the meaning of the Holy Ghost here, as in many other prophesies, is much more extensive than the ideas of the prophet by whom he spake, and who often did not understand what he uttered; as St. Peter informs us, 1 Ephesians 1:10-11.