Biblion Bible Commentary
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Anna, Who Did Not Leave
Luke 2:36-40
36 There was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (she was of a great age, having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, · WEB
An old widow who had spent sixty years in the temple arrives at the right hour and starts telling people.
There was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher Luke 2:36.
She is the second witness, and the pairing is deliberate — the law required two Deuteronomy 19:15, and this Gospel keeps giving a man and a woman in matched pairs. Simeon and Anna, Zechariah and Mary, and later a shepherd with a lost sheep and a woman with a lost coin.
The details given about her are unusually precise. She is called a prophetess, a title Scripture gives to few women and never lightly Exodus 15:20 Judges 4:4. Her father is named, and her tribe — Asher, one of the northern tribes swept away in the Assyrian deportations, so the account quietly notes that the old nation was not entirely lost.
Having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she had been a widow for about eighty-four years Luke 2:36–37. Seven years married, then a lifetime alone. A widow without sons in that world had no protection and no income, and she is one of the poorest people in the building.
Who didn't depart from the temple, worshiping with fastings and petitions night and day Luke 2:37. What she did with those decades is the sentence's answer to what such a life is for. She prayed, and she was there.
Coming up at that very hour, she gave thanks to the Lord Luke 2:38. Simeon was moved by the Spirit to come; Anna is simply always there, and so she is present. Sixty years of showing up put her in the right courtyard on the one morning that mattered.
And spoke of him to all those who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem. She does not sing. She goes and tells people — and the ones she tells are, like Simeon, those who were looking for it. There was a network of such people in that city, and an old woman knew who they were.
When they had accomplished all things that were according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth Luke 2:39. The family goes home, and the account closes the infancy the way it closed John's: the child was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him Luke 2:40. One sentence for a decade.
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