In reading the first two chapters of Luke, I noticed a pattern of couples, duos, and opposites. Zechariah and Elizabeth are married, a couple who are righteous before the Lord and have always followed His commands. God selects them to be the parents of the prophet John the Baptist.
Mary and Joseph are engaged, and both are also good, upstanding people whom God chooses to become His Son’s parents.
Both Elizabeth’s and Mary’s pregnancies are miraculous, as an old, barren woman and a virgin are not supposed to be able to conceive children. Their pregnancies are both preceded by a visit from Gabriel, who tells the hearer not to be afraid.
I noticed that, upon hearing the angel’s message, both Zechariah and Mary are afraid and question the possibility of a child being born to them. However, the old man Zechariah is punished for doubting, while the young woman Mary is reassured by Gabriel.
Jesus and John are another duo: important, special children brought about by miracles, with names chosen by God. Their conception stories are remarkably similar.
Both Mary and Zechariah have songs in Luke 1, where they praise God for what He has done and will do for them and for Israel.
The last ‘couple’ is Simeon and Anna, two elderly prophets who prayed and prophesied over Jesus when He was brought to the temple for the purification rites (along with two doves!). In Jesus, they see the culmination of decades of waiting for the Messiah. This waiting of theirs parallels Zechariah and Elizabeth’s decades of waiting for a son.
Simeon and Zechariah are similar on the surface, as both are old, righteous men, but Zechariah is told he will have a son by an angel and doesn’t believe it, while Simeon simply sees Jesus with His parents and immediately believes.
Interestingly, the temple itself plays a part in the beginning of John the Baptist’s origin story, as well as at the end of Jesus’ birth story.
We get two stories from Jesus’ childhood: the dedication at the temple as a baby, and being found in the temple at age 12, on the cusp of adulthood.
Luke 2 mentions that Mary “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” twice (verses 19 and 51).
Both Luke 1 and 2 end by telling us the child (John and Jesus, respectively) grew up and became strong in spirit and wisdom.
I know that Luke is narrating things that happened, but when something is in story format, my quasi-English major brain can’t help but pick up on literary devices. I wonder, why are there so many twos? What is the significance of that? I think as people steeped in Bible stories and Christian theology, we are used to twelves (tribes, disciples), sevens (days in the week), threes (the Trinity, the days spent in the whale and the tomb), and ones (one God above all others), so to see so many twos feels odd.
One thing I noticed is that in many of these pairs, there is usually one person who is greater or more important, and it’s not the person society would have you think. In their culture, Joseph would be more important because he was the man, but
Mary is infinitely more important because she is Jesus’ mother. Zechariah’s occupation, gender, and age position him to be an important figure in this story, but Mary is shown to be more faithful than him despite being female and young. John was born first to well-off parents and has a more dramatic origin story, but Jesus is greater despite his poor parents, because He is the Son of God. This echoes one of Jesus’ later sayings: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16)
It may be that pairs are a physical symbol of change, of relationships and of connections. Some well-known Biblical couples and pairs bring about change: Jacob and Esau, Moses and Aaron, Naomi and Ruth, Adam and Eve. These pairs’ relationships enabled them to change the world, and almost all of these figures are ancestors of Jesus.
These Biblical pairs tell us that despite our social status, our income level, our gender and our age, God can use us to change the world. In order to do so, we have to seek and build a relationship with Him—pair up with God!—as it is our faith in Him that makes it all possible. We may not know if the valleys in our lives have a purpose, or ever see the full impact we make in the world, but everything is connected and has a place in God’s plan. God wants to change the world forever, with us.
Michelle Rojas is the Reference & Special Collections Librarian at La Sierra University. She is a native of Loma Linda and enjoys reading, crafting, and the Internet.