Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,
Blessed. There is not a word in this noble burst of divine song about his own relationship to this child, nor about the child at all, until it has expended itself upon Christ. Like rapt Elizabeth, Zacharias loses sight entirely of self in the glory of a Greater than both.
Be the Lord God of Israel - the ancient covenant-God of the special people;
For he hath visited and redeemed his people - that is, visited in order to redeem "his people" - returning to His own after long absence, and now for the first time breaking the silence of centuries. In the Old Testament God is said to "visit" chiefly for judgment, in the New Testament for mercy. Zacharias-looking from the Israelite point of view-would as yet have but imperfect apprehensions of the design of this "visit" and the nature of this "redemption." But though, when he sang of "salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hated us," the lower and more outward sense would naturally occur first to Zacharias as a devout Jew, his words are equally adapted, when viewed in the light of a loftier and more comprehensive kingdom of God, to convey the most spiritual conceptions of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (But see the note at Luke 1:77.)