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After a sojourn of about three months with Elisabeth, Mary returned to Nazareth, and Joseph perceived that she was with child. Being a just man, he resolved on privately giving her a bill of divorcement, instead of making her a public example (Mtt. i.19). But as in deep perplexity he pondered on these things, he too was visited by an Angel in a dream, and bidden not to be afraid to take to him Mary as his wife. That which was conceived in her was not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the Holy Ghost, and the Son, to whom she would give birth, he was to name Jesus, for He should save His people from their sins (Mtt. i.21).

Meanwhile the event announced in the Temple to the aged Zacharias had taken place, and Elisabeth brought forth a son. Such an event in the East is always an occasion of unbounded joy. In the present instance it would be still more so, and the relatives and neighbours of Elisabeth came together with no ordinary feelings to rejoice with her. On the eighth day, the child was brought to the priest for circumcision, and the relatives proposed that it should be named after his father, but Elisabeth demurred, and declared that it should be called John (the grace of God). Marvelling at her wishing for a name, which had no precedent in the family, they appealed by signs to the speechless Zacharias. The aged priest called for a writing tablet, and wrote His name is John, and then, while all were lost in astonishment, his mouth, which had been closed for nine months, was opened, and he too burst forth into an inspired Psalm of exultant thanksgiving, in which he acknowledged the faithfulness of God in the birth of his son, and foretold his future greatness as the forerunner of the Messiah (Lk. i. 61–79).