Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the Reformed Church,

but now an Orthodox priest serving at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia. There was in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zecharias,

of the Division of Abijah.

His wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth,

and they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.

So we have our time marker in the days of Herod, the king of Judea.

And because it's described as Herod the King of Judea, we know that this is referring to Herod the Great.

Because remember, after Herod the Great died,

his four sons, the Romans split it up into four pieces.

Instead of having one of them inherent, they split it in four,

and each of the four of them inherit a fourth.

So they were known as Tetrarchs, the rulers of a fourth. So the fact that this

is described as king of Judea, the whole thing, tells us this is Herod the Great. It's telling us

when this happened. So again, it's important because St. Luke is writing history. So he's giving

us a time marker. He's telling us when this happened. This isn't

just a fancable story or mythology or a folk tale or a parable. These are events that happen

at a particular time and a particular place. So now we meet our first two characters, Zecharias,

which is the Greek form of Zechariah, who we saw was the name of one of the

prophets in the Old Testament. It means roughly that Yahweh is wise. And then he is of the division

of Abijah.

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