A certain priest named Zacharias.
--Mark how immediately the historian betakes himself to the collateral line. Something very suggestive in this. No one life independent of other lives. As every text has its context, so every life has relationships and associations which must in some degree be understood before itself can be made altogether intelligible. Hence we find that biography is much indebted to its background of contemporary and incidental events. The particularity of Luke’s statements is noticeable. He does not hurry his reader over names and circumstances which a critical inquirer would like to know something about. On the contrary, he sets down the names of kings, priests, and others, and so gives the critic the utmost opportunity of testing his accuracy by the light of collateral history. (Dr. Joseph Parker.)
The priestly descent of the Forerunner
Whereas, alike in narrative and apostolic argument, the Lord Himself is “separated” in His lineage from the priestly race (see Hebrews 7:14), it is otherwise with John the Baptist. By father and by mother he was descended in the “priestly” line. This twofold fact seems to me worth accentuating in three elements of it.
1. It strikingly differentiates historically the priesthood of our Lord from the ancient priesthood, which was a thing simply of inheritance by blood.
2. It is to be emphasized in that John the Baptist never claimed that priestly succession that he might have done as the son of Zacharias and Elisabeth. Surely this declinature to enter himself heir to so august an office is extremely noticeable! It was self-chosen, but also Divinely ordered, seeing that John was to usher in that very kingdom of grace that was destined to unconsecrate and abolish the old order of things.
3. I call attention to it further, because it could scarcely fail that the “blue blood” of the priesthood in John would have its influence in winning him audience and giving him authority with the multitudes who flocked (later) to his imperious summons. (Dr. Grosart.)
Priesthood in the davis of our Lord
As the office was hereditary, the number of the priesthood had become very great in the days of our Lord, so that, according to the Talmud, in addition to those who lived in the country, and came up to take their turn in the temple services, there were no fewer than 24,000 settled in Jerusalem, and half that number in Jericho. This, however, is no doubt an exaggeration. Josephus is more likely correct in estimating the whole number at somewhat over 20,000. But even this was an enormous proportion of clergy to the population of a country like Judaea. They must have been a more familiar sight in the streets of Jerusalem, and in the towns and villages, than the seemingly countless ecclesiastics in the towns and cities of Spain or Italy at this time. (Dr. Geikie.)
“Of the course of Abia”
Abia--Abijah in the Old Testament. When the priests had become numerous, David divided the whole body into twenty-four classes or “courses,” which were appointed to do service in weekly rotation, so that each of the courses had to attend at the temple twice in the year for a week each time. Of the twenty-four courses that of Abijah was the eighth. Of the number that went into captivity only four of the courses returned, and that of Abijah was not one of them. But these four were divided into twenty-four, in order to reproduce the former distribution; and, to render the analogy more complete, they received the same names as the original courses. (Dr. Kitto.)
The priestly orders
The word ephemeris means first “a daily ministry” (Hebrews Mishmereth), and then a class of the priesthood which exercised its functions for a week. Aaron had four sons, but the two elder, Nadab and Abihu, were struck dead for using strange firs in the sanctuary (Leviticus 10:1-20.). From the two remaining sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, had sprung in the days of David twenty-four families, sixteen from the descendants of Eleazar, and eight from those of Ithamar. To these David distributes by lot the order of their service from week to week, each for eight days inclusively from sabbath to sabbath (1 Chronicles 24:1-19; 2 Chronicles 31:2). After the Babylonish exile only four of the twentyfour courses returned--a striking indication of the truth of the Jewish saying, that those who returned from the exile were but the chaff in comparison of the wheat. The four families of which the representatlves returned were those of Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur, and Harim (Ezra 2:36-39). But the Jews concealed the heavy loss by subdividing these four families into twenty-four courses, to which they gave the original names, and this is alluded to in Nehemiah 13:30 (“I… appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business”). This arrangement continued till the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), at which time, on the ninth of the month Abib (August 5th), we are told by Josephus that the course in waiting was that of Jehoiarib. Reckoning back from this, we find that the course of Abijah went out of office on October 9, B.C. 6. The reader should bear in mind that our received era for the birth of Christ was only fixed by the abbot Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, and is probably foul years wrong. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
There may be succession in a forsaken Church. It remained when Christ was crucified, the Spirit quenched. (Van Doren.)